During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, because the enemy usually adopted various blockade policies, the anti-Japanese materials behind the enemy became very scarce, and many weapons, ammunition and even daily necessities had to be captured by the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army themselves, and the canned food, steel helmets, medicines and other materials used by those devils also became "hot goods" on the battlefield.
However, there have also been cases where he was accidentally injured because of "Japanese costumes", and Commander Kang Junren encountered such an incident.
The invincible Kang Brigade
Every time they ambushed the Japanese invaders and cleaned up the battlefield, many officers and soldiers of the Eighth Route would take away all weapons, ammunition, and daily necessities to improve the life of the station.
At the beginning of 1938, Lin Biao had obtained a good yellow tweed coat after an ambush, and specially selected a "thousand miles of snow", one morning, he rode an Oriental horse, wearing an overcoat to go out, because the fog was very obscured from view, the sentry of the Jin Sui army mistakenly thought that Lin Biao was a Japanese officer, and shot him directly to seriously wound.
The Central Committee and the Eighth Route Army Headquarters attached great importance to the incident, and ordered officers to be prohibited from carrying the equipment of the captured Japanese invaders privately, so as to avoid the recurrence of accidental injuries.
Although the central government has issued a notice, there are still some generals who will keep a commemorative memory after winning the battle, because it represents the fruits of their victory.
No one wants to see another tragedy happen, but that tragedy still happened to Kang Junren.
Kang Junren is an outstanding cadre in the history of the Eighth Route Army, after the outbreak of the all-out Anti-Japanese War in 1937, as the head of Zhoucun Village, he heard that the Communist Party "reduced rent and interest", so he called on all the villagers to fight against the old society, everyone burned the landlord contract, raised the banner one after another, and soon, Kang Junren joined the Communist Party of China.
In other words, the accidental injury to Lin Biao was before Kang Junren joined the organization.
The Japanese invaders were often harassed, and Kang Junren also decided that only by building up arms could he avoid being bullied.
He reported his ideas to the higher-level leaders, and the secretary of the Xia County CPC Committee instructed him to join the guerrilla force led by Feng Hulin to see if he could do Feng Hulin's work and strive to make this team a revolutionary force.
With the addition of Kang Junren, the strength of Feng Hulin's guerrillas continued to grow, and the Japanese puppet army was often attacked, and he also thought about how to solve the guerrillas.
At the same time, a local spy leader named Jia Zhenyi also noticed Kang Junren and Feng Hulin, he used the signboard of the "Field Army" to win over Feng Hulin in the way of high-ranking officials, Feng Hulin was a backbone person, he was unwilling to accept the so-called "adaptation", but after his sacrifice, his subordinate Wang Wenhai couldn't sit still.
Wang Wenhai accepted the adaptation in the process of contacting Jia Zhenyi, but Jia Zhenyi found out in hindsight: In addition to contacting him, Wang Wenhai also contacted many members of the Communist Party of China.
So, Jia Zhenyi concentrated all Wang Wenhai's troops in Xiwen County and disarmed them in the name of "pay", and directly killed Wang Wenhai on the spot.
This sudden change broke the layout of the Western Prefecture Committee of the Communist Party of China, and in 1941, the organization decided to let Kang Junren set up an anti-Japanese armed force of his own, named the Kang Brigade of the Xia County Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Army.
Since Feng Hulin and Wang Wenhai are no longer alive, Kang Junren's influence is very great, and many people who have obviously accepted Jia Zhenyi's adaptation have run back by themselves.
In order to form a greater influence, Kang Junren immediately decided to launch several fierce battles.
In the middle of the same year, Kang Junren led his troops to kill Zhang Shusen, a bandit leader who was doing evil in the local area, and seized a batch of equipment and ammunition.
Subsequently, Kang Junren dispatched again and ambushed the five or six hundred puppet troops transporting supplies, and ended the battle in less than half an hour, capturing a large number of civilian supplies.
These good news had a great impact on the local area, and more and more people were willing to join the Kang Brigade to contribute, and in less than two months, the Kang Brigade developed into an anti-Japanese force of nearly 1,000 people.
In the face of this locally-grown anti-Japanese force, the Japanese were helpless, because many members of the Kang Brigade grew up locally, and they knew the local geography very well, and they could suddenly appear from time to time to give the enemy a fatal blow.
The poor people passed on the heroic deeds of the Kang brigade by word of mouth, and those Japanese puppet soldiers were like frightened birds, and they couldn't wait to quickly wipe out the Kang brigade.
So, in August, the Japanese army mobilized more than 20,000 troops and marched along the railway line to "exterminate" the Kang brigade.
Kang Junren knew very well that the enemy had come prepared this time, and that if he fought hard, he would only suffer losses, so he immediately ordered the troops to break up into pieces, fight separately, fight fiercely when they can, and leave immediately if they can't, so as to ensure that the strength of the guerrillas will not be lost.
On the local battlefield, the firepower of the Japanese invaders was usually very fierce, and the members of the Kang Brigade suffered heavy losses and had to retreat in a hurry, which also made the enemy think that the Kang Brigade was basically destroyed.
And just when the Japanese invaders were complacent, Kang Junren would seize the opportunity to fight back fiercely, once again making the Japanese invaders scratch their heads.
After Kang Junren returned, he continued to find ways to gather hidden fighters, and also mobilized everyone to go up the mountain to find weapons and ammunition left by the Kuomintang rout.
When the time was ripe, the Tiaoxi Prefectural Committee also decided to regularize the troops, so that the guerrilla areas could also be expanded and base areas could be established.
At this time, Jia Zhenyi's subordinate Li Yonggui led more than 300 people to harass the people and plunder money, Kang Junren was furious when he heard this, and concentrated more than 700 elite soldiers to clamp Li Yonggui from Sanbao, and ended the battle in just one hour.
When the people heard this, they all applauded, which also gave Kang Junren greater determination: to completely eradicate Jia Zhenyi.
Immediately afterwards, he gathered elite soldiers and strong generals, using various tactics to break down, and spent two days and one night to break up all of Jia Zhenyi's more than 800 people, when these things were reported back to the villages, those hot-blooded men took the initiative to join the Kang team, which also further expanded the strength of the Kang team.
Due to its rapid development and strong combat capability, the troops led by Kang Junren became the main anti-Japanese armed force in the Zhongtiao Mountain area.
After organizational research, the Taiyue Fifth Army Division was established in November 1943, with Kang Junren as the commander and Chai Zemin as the political commissar.
In this way, the village chief Kang Junren became the commander Kang Junren, who was supposed to witness the victory of the war, but on the eve of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he left forever because of an accident.
Fell on the eve of dawn due to an accident
It is precisely because he has stood firm in the anti-"sweeping" many times that the local people worship the soldiers of the Kang Brigade very much, and Kang Junren himself has never changed for many years, he loves to fight and hold grievances, and he is deeply loved by the villagers, and everyone also regards him as a "protector", and likes to ask him for advice when encountering anything.
Unlike many other commanders of the Eighth Route Army, Kang Junren did not serve in the Red Army, but developed from a guerrilla leader, although the military division was not established for a long time, but under the leadership of Kang Junren, everyone still fought many great victories, captured countless Japanese ammunition and equipment, and almost all the soldiers had some Oriental goods in their hands.
After the establishment of the military sub-district, political commissar Chai Zemin said: Now the party's anti-Japanese armed forces in the Hedong area have reached a considerable scale, which also means that we will have to shoulder more arduous and strong combat tasks, and the burden on our shoulders is very heavy, and the common people in this area also rely on this contingent.
Due to the development and growth of the strength of the Eighth Route Army, the Japanese invaders increased the frequency of "sweeping", and the number of people dispatched each time reached four or five thousand, and they were like swarms of ants coiled on the road.
These things also made Kang Junren very anxious, and now that it was the Spring Festival in 1944, he wanted the local people to have a good year.
One day, Kang Junren said to Chai Zemin: "It is estimated that there will be a vicious battle to be fought soon, and we still don't know about the garrison of the Japanese devils under the mountain, and it is difficult to know the battle situation, I want to take two people down the mountain to have a look and reconnoiter the situation." ”
Chai Zemin was worried that Kang Junren would be in danger, so he hurriedly shook his head and vetoed: "Comrade Kang Junren, as the commander, the troops must rely on your overall command, it is too dangerous for you to go down the mountain to reconnoitre, so it is better to send other comrades to go." ”
After many years of experience in guerrilla warfare, Kang Junren had long been accustomed to commanding by checking the situation in advance, but he still insisted on going: "Seeing that the enemy is about to attack, we cannot wait here to be beaten passively, we must fight a counterattack war, but I am not able to command if I don't know the enemy's situation, and I will go down the mountain no matter whether it is dangerous or not." ”
The commander and the political commissar had a dispute over this matter, but Kang Junren always claimed that he was from Xia County, and he knew the terrain in this area very well, and other comrades would also encounter risks when they went.
Since he couldn't stop it, Chai Zemin nodded helplessly, and said to the guard: "Let's let the commander go, so that he can really know in his heart." ”
Due to the very cold temperature in winter, Kang Junren put on the captured Japanese army's yellow tweed coat, pinned a knife to his waist, and set off on horseback.
The reconnaissance went well, and Kang Junren led the squad back to the military sub-district station late at night on the 21st.
Late at night, there was fog everywhere, and Kang Junren was thinking about how to deploy the battle next, but he didn't expect that when he and his team just walked to the periphery of the station, a gunshot suddenly rang out.
The soldiers of the squad immediately wanted to protect the commander, only to find that Kang Junren, who was walking in the forefront, had been shot and fell to the ground, and he didn't even say a word, because the bullet hit the vital part.
The angry soldier hurriedly stepped forward to check, and found that the person who shot was actually a sentry standing guard at the entrance of the military division, and when he learned that he had shot the commander, the sentry was also anxious and annoyed.
It turned out that the little soldier was on duty when he found that the fog was very strong, and all the checkpoints were equipped with additional guards, and when he heard a sound while patrolling, he immediately became alert.
When the sound of walking was getting closer and closer, he was just about to ask for the pass, but found that there was a "Japanese officer" walking in front of the team, and the sentry suddenly thought of the "Japanese night attack", so it was meaningless to ask for the password at this time, so the sentry immediately opened fire, which led to the tragedy.
The commander died, inflicting great pain on the troops, but the sentry who fired the shot was not punished.
The Taiyue Military Region also held a special meeting on Kang Junren's matter, and once again asked all officers and soldiers to take caution and avoid similar things from happening again.
Kang Junren was only 36 years old in the year of his death, if there was no accident, then he would have been able to see the victory of the War of Resistance against Japan in the second year, he had been the village chief and the commander, and he should have made greater contributions to New China, but he died on the eve of dawn because of his own mistakes.
If he were still alive, he would have been able to be elected general in 1955.
Chai Zemin, who worked with him, later served as president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and vice president of the Chinese Society for Diplomatic Affairs, and he also became the first plenipotentiary ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the United States, witnessing China's continuous march to the world.
Resources
- The Death of Kang Junren "Chai Zemin in Hedong"
- Heroic martyrs of the Chinese Communist Party's War of Resistance: Kang Junren Communist Party of China News Network