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One day in 1942, a bizarre incident occurred in the camp of the Chinese Expeditionary Force on the border between India and Burma, when a female soldier of the Expeditionary Force suddenly disappeared without a trace.
Located at the rear of the battlefield, this expeditionary force camp was mainly set up to provide medical assistance to the front line, and was equivalent to a field hospital for the troops, but unlike other hospitals, in addition to the wounded and sick, there were many Chinese female soldiers and female doctors.
During the war years, female soldiers will undoubtedly face more severe tests, for example, just a few days ago, a female soldier of the expeditionary force in the camp was bullied by the Japanese army, and a few days later, this female soldier disappeared mysteriously.
After the incident, the whole camp was panicked, and in the face of such a grim situation, a female military doctor of the expeditionary force said something shocking, only to see her unhurriedly said to several anxious female soldiers: "Take off your underwear!"
You know, at this juncture, ordinary people are cautious and afraid, let alone take off their underwear, which is tantamount to killing themselves, so who is this female military doctor? Why did she do this?
Night Flame Demon
In 1942, Fang Shouchun, a female military doctor in the rear hospital of the Chinese anti-Japanese army, made the most important decision in her life - to join the Chinese Expeditionary Force.
At this time, China was the most difficult period of the Anti-Japanese War, and with the repeated setbacks of the Japanese army in Chinese mainland, their ambitions were swelling and they set their sights on the sea.
In December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in the United States, provoking the Pacific Naval War, and successively launched attacks on Vietnam, Burma, and the Philippines in the Taiping Rim in an attempt to cut off China's last international transportation route, the Yunnan-Burma Highway.
Prior to this, most of China's ports were occupied by Japanese troops, and the invaders imposed strict air bans, so the Yunnan-Burma Highway between China and Southeast Asian countries became the last route for Chinese troops to communicate with the outside world and obtain supplies.
In order to protect this only hope, in early 1942, the Kuomintang formed the Chinese Expeditionary Force and sent to Burma to fight the invading Japanese army.
It was against this background that Fang Shouchun, who used to work in the rear hospital of the National Army, decided to sign up for the expeditionary force and contribute his own strength to the anti-Japanese resistance.
With enthusiasm, Fang Shouchun joined the expeditionary force with four other sisters and was assigned to the field hospital in India and Burma as a military doctor.
It stands to reason that as a doctor, being in the rear should not be as dangerous as the front line, but for Fang Shouchun and them, this is not the case.
Soon after arriving at the field hospital on the border of India and Burma, Fang Shouchun and others witnessed that three Indian female nurses in the hospital were violated and killed by the Japanese army.
The successive accidents made the entire hospital panic, but because of the urgency of the war ahead, the soldiers in charge of guarding the hospital were all transferred to the front line to support.
In order to protect the remaining sisters, Fang Shouchun, as a military doctor, decided to take the initiative, she called on the sisters to hang their underwear outside the door, and made blankets, pillows, coats, etc. into human shapes, and covered them with quilts, making the illusion that someone was sleeping.
After doing all this, Fang Shouchun and a few sisters ambushed in the hidden place outside the door, waiting for the murderer to appear, sure enough, at one o'clock that night, a sneaky figure touched into the tent of several female soldiers, Fang Shouchun saw this, knew that the time had come, and immediately led the sisters to rush up, threw the cowardly Japanese soldier to the ground, broke his legs, and then handed it over to his superiors to deal with.
Under Fang Shouchun's conspiracy, a panicked invasion crisis has passed, but for the female soldiers of the expeditionary force, the difficulties they have to face are far more than these.
Birth to death
Before joining the Chinese Expeditionary Force, Fang Shouchun never expected that the test they would face would be so severe, and the environment would be so difficult and sinister.
Fang Shouchun was born in 1920 in Huangshi, Hubei Province in a family of traditional Chinese medicine, and once studied traditional Chinese medicine with his father when he was a teenager.
In 1937, after the July Seven Incident, a wave of anti-Japanese resistance was set off across the country, and Fang Shouchun, who was only 17 years old, also had a patriotic heart and joined the anti-Japanese army, using the medical knowledge he had learned to become a military doctor in the rear hospital.
In May 1942, due to various subjective and objective reasons, the first operation of the Chinese Expeditionary Force into Burma was frustrated and could only be forced to retreat, among which the new 38th Division led by Sun Liren retreated to India.
In order to replenish the troops, the new 38th Division had recruited a large number of recruits in Kunming and other places, and it was at this time that Fang Shouchun learned the news of the recruitment of the Chinese Expeditionary Force.
In order to be able to go abroad to fight and do his best to resist Japan, Fang Shouchun took the initiative to find the recruiting officer and asked to enlist in the army, but who knew that the other party rejected her on the grounds that they only recruited male soldiers.
When Fang Shouchun heard this, he immediately became angry, and immediately retorted: "What's wrong with women, women can't go to the battlefield? Since ancient times, women have not allowed them to shave their eyebrows, half of China's 40,000 compatriots are women, men can fight, why can't women?"
These impassioned words deeply shocked the recruiting officer, and he told Fang Shouchun that he couldn't make the decision on this matter, and he had to go back and ask the commander.
Soon after, the good news came that Sun Liren, the commander of the new 38th Division, personally approved Fang Shouchun and four other girls to join the expeditionary force and join the rear hospital.
In this way, Fang Shouchun, who was full of enthusiasm, boarded the transport plane to India, and after arriving, Fang Shouchun really realized why the expeditionary force did not recruit female soldiers.
Fang Shouchun's rear hospital is located on the border between India and Myanmar, and it is said to be a hospital, but in fact, it is a few rows of tents set up in an open field, not only the living conditions are very bad, but even the most basic personal safety cannot be guaranteed.
Due to the shortage of troops on the front line, there were almost no guards in the hospital, and there were only a few Indian female soldiers as sentinels, but Fang Shouchun and they didn't have long before these Indian female soldiers were violated and killed, and their bodies were violently killed in the wilderness, and it was the Japanese who did this kind of thing.
As soon as this incident came out, it immediately caused a sensation in the entire hospital, and the few female soldiers and medical staff were even more panicked, and several Indian female nurses were so frightened that they left the hospital overnight.
Fortunately, Fang Shouchun has been in the army for some years, and with patriotic enthusiasm, she was not intimidated by this danger, and she took the initiative to propose to the dean that a secret post should be set up at the same time as standing on the bright post to subdue the Japanese invaders, and this proposal was quickly agreed by the dean.
So, since then, Fang Shouchun has been squatting in the dark grass every night, enduring the infestation of mosquitoes, snakes and ants, looking forward to catching the Japanese murderer, and this opportunity will soon come.
One night, Fang Shouchun squatted in the grass as usual, and in the second half of the night, he saw a few sneaky figures appear outside the camp, by the moonlight, Fang Shouchun saw that there were three people on the other side, and when the three approached, she did not hesitate to pick up the machine gun and shoot, and in an instant, the people who came were killed on the spot.
It was later found out that these three people were the daredevils of the 56th Division, the ace unit of the Japanese army, and highly toxic potassium cyanide, silenced pistols, daggers and other items were also found on their bodies.
Because of this incident, Fang Shouchun made great contributions and was awarded the rank of lieutenant by General Stilwell, the commander-in-chief of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, but compared to receiving these honors, Fang Shouchun obviously wanted to go to the front line and exert greater light and heat.
Sonorous roses
In 1944, the Chinese Expeditionary Force regrouped and assembled 16 divisions and about 200,000 troops to launch a counterattack against the Japanese army on the Yunnan-Burma border.
After learning the news in the rear hospital, Fang Shouchun couldn't sit still anymore, she once again took the initiative to sign up and participated in the Tengchong team of the 71st Field Hospital.
Fang Shouchun's squad has a total of 5 people, because the combat unit is in the deep mountains and old forests, therefore, several of them also need to carry a medical box through the jungle, one night, several people carrying medicines and weapons on the mountain road, suddenly were strafed by the Japanese army, three people in the squad died on the spot, Fang Shouchun and another military doctor comrade-in-arms hurriedly ran into the mountain forest, ready to counterattack.
However, because the enemy was outnumbered, coupled with the firepower being inferior to the other party, another comrade-in-arms also died heroically soon, seeing that the Japanese army was about to rush over, Fang Shouchun gritted his teeth and stomped his feet, and rolled towards the bottom of the cliff.
The sharp stones and bushes stabbed Fang Shouchun all over the ground, but it also made her lucky to avoid the shooting of the Japanese army, I don't know how long it took, Fang Shouchun was lucky to be stopped by a tree root, and she immediately got up without being confused, and stumbled towards a cave not far away.
Fang Shouchun, who thought that he had escaped the catastrophe, did not have time to be happy, and soon heard the voice of the Japanese not far from the entrance of the cave, at this time, her pistol had already disappeared, almost with the determination to die, Fang Shouchun threw the only two grenades left in his hand in the direction where the sound came from, and after two consecutive explosions, there was silence outside.
I don't know how long it took, the people from the 71 Field Hospital rushed to rescue Fang Shouchun, who was already exhausted, until this time, Fang Shouchun knew that his two grenades killed a total of 7 Japanese soldiers and wiped out a small detachment of the opponent.
In this way, Fang Shouchun followed the field hospital day after day in the jungle, busy treating the wounded and transporting ammunition until the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Fang Shouchun married an American doctor in China and gave birth to a daughter, although he later suffered a marriage change, but he spent the second half of his life peacefully until his death at the age of 98.
In that era, female soldiers of the Chinese Expeditionary Force like Fang Shouchun were not very rare, and among them, the old man Liu Guiying was the most legendary and well-known.
Similar to Fang Shouchun, Liu Guiying is also a member of the female soldiers of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, and she is also a medical student who works as a hygienist on the battlefield, but compared to Fang Shouchun, her life and experience are more legendary and tortuous.
At the beginning of 1942, 22-year-old Liu Guiying entered Burma as a field health worker with 100,000 expeditionary forces.
At that time, there were two main ways to retreat, one was to withdraw to the country, and the other was to withdraw to India to recuperate, for example, the new 38th Division under the command of Sun Liren was withdrawn to India to recuperate, so that it was able to preserve its strength relatively intact.
Liu Guiying's new 22nd Division chose to retreat back to China through Savage Mountain.
The tragic situation of the Chinese expeditionary force when it crossed the Savage Mountain has been described in many documentary literatures, the trees on the Savage Mountain cover the sky, the sun is not visible, the poisonous miasma is pervasive, the beasts are swarmed, the leeches are everywhere, and the soldiers of the defeated expeditionary force are facing the pouring rain, stepping on the mud several meters deep, and walking through the dark primeval forest with hunger.
When the war horses were eaten up, they began to eat leather shoes and belts, and finally even the pistol holsters were eaten up, and in the end there was nothing to eat, and some soldiers could only eat poisonous wild fruits, and finally rolled on the ground in pain, and were poisoned to death.
At that time, the four female nurses who retreated with Liu Guiying died of hunger, some died of illness because of myrrh, some jumped off a cliff because they couldn't stand the torture of illness, and some were bitten to death by wolves.
It was in this desperate situation that Liu Guiying successfully walked out of Savage Mountain with tenacious perseverance and luck, and thus became the only female soldier of the expeditionary force who walked out of Savage Mountain alive.
Whether it is Liu Guiying or Fang Shouchun, they always have one thing in common, that is, while being a woman, they are also soldiers.
In that era when the country was in peril, they were like roses in the army, bravely and firmly blooming on the border of the motherland with the most sonorous and powerful attitude, and together with 100,000 young people, they swayed their blood to defend their homes and defend the country.
After reading the story of the female soldiers of the Chinese Expeditionary Force on the battlefield, do you have anything to say in front of the screen? Welcome to leave your views in the comment area.
Resources:
Fang Shouchun - Baidu Encyclopedia
Liu Guiying - Baidu Encyclopedia
Chinese Expeditionary Force - Baidu Encyclopedia
"The Combat Process of the Chinese Expeditionary Force in Burma" - Phoenix.com
"Fang Shouchun: The Legend of the "Military Flower" of the Chinese Army in India" - China Expeditionary Force Network
"Farewell to the Old Hero! The Only Female Soldier of the Expeditionary Force Liu Guiying Who Walked Out of Savage Mountain Alive" - Guangming Daily
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