Qiu Yueming
In June 1962, in order to smash Chiang Kai-shek's conspiracy to clamor for a counterattack on the mainland, according to the telegram order of the Central Military Commission, the 10th Division of the Railway Corps transferred part of its troops to Jinhua and Xiamen to enrich the front-line combat troops, of which the 1st Company of the 47th Regiment was transferred to the front-line troops except for the company cadres, platoons, squad leaders and 5 backbone soldiers who enlisted in 1961 (Chang Genjing, Zhao Xianggen, Liu Sheng, Chen Changfu, and Zhao Jingchun). I and nearly 100 recruits from Zhejiang (83 in Tongxiang and 16 in Changxing) were all added to the 1st Company and began our military career.
The comrades-in-arms of the 1st Company took a group photo in the sesame field of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway
At that time, the party Central Committee implemented the principle of "readjusting, consolidating, enriching, and improving" the national economy, the industrial production and capital construction targets were adjusted and compressed, the construction of large-scale railway projects was delayed, and the main forces of divisions and regiments were scattered to carry out their tasks. According to the deployment of the superiors, the 1st Company successively undertook part of the construction tasks of the housing construction project of the Fifth Research Institute of the Ministry of National Defense in Liangxiang, Fangshan County, Beijing, the new construction project of the Yellow River suspension bridge in Longyangxia on the Longyang Gorge (Maying) Highway in Qinghai, and the 4742 national defense project of the Datong Office of the General Logistics Department in Zhuozi County, Inner Mongolia.
The veterans of the 47th Iron Regiment returned to the battalion of Zhuozi County, Inner Mongolia
Longyang Gorge Yellow River Suspension Bridge
In August 1964, the CPC Central Committee made a strategic decision to speed up the economic construction and national defense construction in the interior, Chairman Mao issued an instruction that "the Chengdu-Kunming Railway should be repaired quickly", and the State Council and the Central Military Commission adopted a series of major measures to speed up the construction of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway. Our railway soldiers and the 300,000 road construction troops of the Engineering Bureau of the Ministry of Railways rushed to the southwest region to participate in the construction of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway. In accordance with the orders of the superiors and the unified command of the regiment, the commanders and fighters of the 1st Company arrived at Qinglongchang, Sichuan on September 23 and threw themselves into the road construction army of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway, starting a new journey.
Our convoy set off from Qinglongchang, along the way the Sichuan people beat gongs and drums, sang and danced, slogans, and welcomed, and its warm scene made each of our commanders and fighters deeply moved, and they were secretly determined to build a heavenly road and a golden bridge for the people of Sichuan, and create a new world. In the evening of the same day, our 1st Company and the 47th Regiment Headquarters were stationed in Shawan Zhenxi Town on the west bank of the Dadu River, and were warmly received by the local villagers. During the nearly two years of construction in Zhenxi, the masses of the people in the old revolutionary base area supported the People's Liberation Army (PLA) as they did during the war years, and carried out activities to support the army such as delivering vegetables and meat every New Year's holiday. It can really be said that the military and the people have a deep friendship between fish and water, and work together to build a new Sichuan.
Schematic diagram of the direction of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway
The Chengdu-Kunming Railway runs through 25 counties and cities in 2 provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan, crosses the Dadu River and Jinsha River, and crosses the Hengduan Mountains of the Great and Small Liangshan Mountains, with a total length of 1,083 kilometers. The total length of bridges and tunnels along the line is more than 400 kilometers, and karst caves, dark rivers, faults, quicksand, gas, rockbursts, debris flows, and nitrate salts can be encountered everywhere. The geology along the Chengdu-Kunming Railway is complex, which can be called the World Geological Museum, and the arduous construction of the project is rare in the world.
The Chengdu-Kunming Railway is surrounded by mountains and rivers
The 47th Regiment accepted the construction tasks of the section from the earthen tomb package of the Chengkun Line to the Huixian Bridge and the section from Dashiban to the Quanshui River Bridge. The railway from Tu Tomb Bao to Quanshui River stretches between the Emei Mountains, meanders along the Dadu River, is located in deep valleys and cliffs, flows rapids, crosses limestone, basalt, sand shell, phyllite and granite along the line, and weathering and fragmentation, accumulation of multiple layers, groundwater is relatively rich, there are many karst caves, rock crevices are dense, and the construction conditions are extremely difficult. In addition, the mechanical equipment rate and technical level of the troops at that time were not high, which also increased the difficulty of completing engineering tasks.
Chengdu-Kunming railway construction site
The task of our 1st Company was to excavate the Gray Kiln Ping Tunnel west of Shawan Town, which was surrounded by steep mountains, towering peaks, deep streams, ravines, and extremely complex terrain and geology. When the troops were stationed, there were no roads or houses, and the commanders and fighters tied bamboo ropes around their waists and climbed the cliff with their feet, and built a 3-kilometer-long construction road with a hammer and a drill, so that the troops' machinery and equipment could enter the construction site in time to carry out construction work. In the early stage of construction, the tunnel construction was done without electric lights, and manual mixing and pouring were used without electric mixing, and sledgehammers were smashed out of the blast holes without air guns, and villagers were borrowed from windmills instead of blowers. It truly embodies the spirit of seizing the day when there are conditions and creating conditions without conditions, rushing to meet the construction period, competing for speed, and rushing for time, all for the progress of the project.
Due to the general lack of technology and experience in tunneling and the lack of machinery and equipment, our soldiers do not have sufficient protection against common safety hazards such as landslides, dust, and squibs. Under such extremely difficult circumstances, the commanders and fighters of the entire company faced the test of life and death at every moment. One morning in September 1965, I, then the deputy platoon commander, led the whole platoon of soldiers into the construction on the tunnel exit of the Ash Kiln Ping Tunnel. Just as everyone picked up air guns, shovels, hammers, and pushed mine carts to load stones for intense construction, suddenly there was a strong explosion and the sound of stones hitting the ground from not far from us, and suddenly the smell of smoke and gunpowder filled the entire cave. It turned out that one of my platoon air gunners touched a squib while he was at Diamond Head and caused an explosion that resulted in injuries. The source of the accident was that the previous shift did not strictly abide by the handover system, did not deal with the squibs in a timely manner, and did not explain the situation and specific location of the squibs to our platoon clearly, resulting in the explosion caused by the air gunners working under unknown circumstances. In the face of the bloody lesson, the commanders and fighters of the whole company conscientiously carried out rectification and reform in accordance with the construction safety system, and the bad thing became a good thing, and in the whole process of tunneling in the future, the system of violations of rules and regulations was eliminated. After the hard work of all the commanders and fighters participating in the battle, the construction task of the ash kiln tunnel was finally successfully completed.
The cadres of the 1st Company took a photo at the exercise at the Sesame Land Station of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway
(The second from the right in the back row is the author of this article)
On November 30, 1965, in the "Construction and Production Climax Campaign" carried out by the Party Committee of the Division, the Ash Yaoping Tunnel constructed by the 47th Regiment maintained a good result of more than 100 meters in the monthly tunnel for four consecutive months, and was commended by the Southwest Engineering Headquarters of the Railway Corps and the Party Committee of the Division.
In October 1966, the 47th Regiment moved to the lower reaches of the Long River in the southern border of Sichuan to participate in the construction of the Li (Zhou) meter (Yi) section of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway. The Limi section starts from Lizhou, Xichang in the north, and reaches the Liuxi River Bridge in Miyi County in the south, surrounded by mountains along the line, the river is turbulent, the terrain is narrow, and the natural environment is harsh. The 1st Company first undertook the construction of the new house tunnel, and after a short time, it was transferred to the more difficult Sesame Ground Tunnel by the superiors.
Chengdu-Kunming railway construction site
Sesame ground tunnel is the south end of the Chengkun line of the famous "rotten hole", located in the red clay stone accumulation layer, look at the surface of the green mountains and green water, the inside is the mountain fragmented, it can really be described as "the outside light is rotten inside", "the face is good and the heart is evil", the surface of the slightest disturbance can cause a debris flow. In the face of the objective factors of particularly poor geology, the tight construction period, lack of experience, and other practical difficulties, the commanders and fighters of the whole company fought together with the brothers and companies with a high sense of political responsibility, carried forward the tenacious spirit of enduring hardships and standing hard work, and dared to fight evil battles. It was rated as a model site in the division quality inspection and was commended by the Ministry of Railways and the division headquarters.
On July 1, 1970, after the all-out construction of the railway troops, railway workers and migrant workers along the line, the Chengdu-Kunming Railway was opened to traffic in Lizhou on the occasion of the 49th anniversary of the birth of the Communist Party of China. On the day of the opening of traffic, two floats in the south and north full of workers, peasants, soldiers and representatives of various nationalities, set off from Chengdu and Kunming respectively and arrived in Xichang through mountains and rivers. A grand celebration ceremony was held in Xichang for 100,000 soldiers and civilians, and the party Central Committee sent congratulatory messages to all comrades participating in the construction of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway.
In December 1970, in a comprehensive summary of the five-year work, the Party Committee of the 47th Regiment commended the 1st Company for its outstanding achievements in the construction of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway. Since the 1st Company entered the ranks of the Four Good Companies in 1966, it has maintained the honor of the Four Good Companies for five consecutive years, and has successively trained 27 activists who have studied and applied Mao Zedong Thought, and the four company leaders of Zhu Xiuwen, Cheng Fengtian, Chang Genjing, and Zhao Xianggen have successively participated in the "Congress of Activists for Learning Mao Zedong Thought, Four Good Companies, and Five Good Soldiers" held by the Railway Corps on behalf of the company, and were received by Chairman Mao, Premier Zhou and other party and state leaders. The commanders and fighters of the 1st Company are not afraid of hardship and tiredness in the construction, and have successively overcome more than 500 landslides, and have been established as pacesetters of the four good companies of the division and regiment, and a large number of cadres and soldiers have received awards for meritorious service, and dozens of outstanding soldiers have been promoted. Among the Zhejiang soldiers who enlisted in 1962 alone, there were Hu Pinxiang, Hu Jinquan, Li Jinquan, Li Shanqing, Dai Xuelin, Tan Shaolin, Shen Jinhu, Shen Wenhu, Xu Zongqiang, Xu Guanren, Wang Jinfang, Yan Bingrong, Qiu Yueming, Xu Xuequan, Chen Bingnan, Hu Linsheng, Jiang Dongyun, Lu Zhihong, Wang Shengrong, Luo Shiquan, Zhang Xiaoqing and other 21 people from Tongxiang (some were promoted to their own companies, and some were promoted to other companies).
Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou met with representatives of the Railway Soldiers Conference
The total length of the Chengdu-Kunming railway is 1085 kilometers, one-third of the road section falls in the earthquake area, the mountains are high and the valleys are deep, hundreds of mountains are chiseled, 427 tunnels are built, 653 bridges are erected, and the total length of bridges and tunnels is more than 400 kilometers. Because the Chengdu-Kunming Railway has created a miracle in the history of railway construction in the world, the moon rock brought back by Apollo of the United States and the first artificial earth satellite of the Soviet Union have been called "the three miracles that symbolize the conquest of nature by mankind in the 20th century" by the United Nations. In 1974, as one of the greatest masterpieces created by mankind in the 20th century, the ivory carving artwork of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway was placed in the United Nations Building, and in 1985, the Chengdu-Kunming Railway won the National Science and Technology Progress Award.
Opening ceremony of Chengdu-Kunming Railway
Ivory sculpture of the Chengkun Railway
The Chengdu-Kunming Railway is a miracle of human conquest of nature, a monument in the history of railway construction in the world, and the pride and pride of our railway soldiers.
Zhejiang Tongxiang Railway Soldiers commemorated the 55th anniversary of enlistment
Author: Qiu Yueming, who enlisted in the army from Tongxiang, Zhejiang Province in 1962, served as the platoon commander of the 1st Company
——From "Iron Soldier Love", December 2019
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