Today, we can often hear the praise of "one person joins the army, the whole family is glorious", and joining the army to serve the country has become a shining and proud valuable life experience in the hearts of countless people, and more and more heroic models have become examples for us to admire and learn.
However, going back in time, only a few decades ago in some regions, there was still a saying that "good iron does not hit nails, and good men are not soldiers". What kind of historical changes and trends of the times have made people's attitudes towards joining the army change so dramatically?
We can often see the description of "bandits are like combs, and soldiers are like grates" in history books, which means that bandits robbing the people in feudal society are like combs combed by combs, and there are survivors later, while the officers and soldiers of the old society are more harmful to the people than thieves, just like grates and grates.
The comb may be known to everyone, and the grate is a tool used by the ancients to remove lice from the hair, similar to the picture below.
Liang Qichao once said such a sentence: "Twenty-four histories, twenty-four family genealogies", the army of feudal society as a tool of imperial rule has no feelings for the people, since ancient times, generals eat empty salaries, low-level soldiers kill good and risky merits, and slaughter the people after seizing the city is not uncommon.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, due to the attack of the State of Qi on the State of Lu, the State of Jin, an ally of the State of Lu, sent troops to besiege the capital of the State of Qi. The Jin army could not attack for a long time, so they "burned and slaughtered its Guozhong", but behind the short six words in the history books were the blood and tears of countless innocent people. At the turn of the Qin and Han dynasties, the two protagonists Xiang Yu and Liu Bang have a record of slaughtering the city, Xiang Yu's army Xin'an slaughter, Xianyang slaughter, Xiangcheng slaughter, Liu Bang after Xiang Yu's defeat because of Lu Di refused to surrender "Han is leading the world to slaughter it". The massacres of the nomadic invasion were countless, and as far away as the Tatars, who had a genocidal nature during the Five Hu Rebellion, crossed the border and plundered hundreds of thousands of young men and women from the two rivers of Shandong. Kill them all"; The Yuan army, which was a little closer, "crossed the Tatar pass and took hundreds of thousands of young men and women from the two rivers of Shandong. All killed", the Qing army's Jiading three massacres, Yangzhou 10th, the Qing Dynasty general Amin in order to boost morale once said: "Since I am here, how can I make you wait for you to return without full desire?" ”； In modern times, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Hunan Army, and the Huai Army also had records of slaughtering and plundering cities.
The real world is far more cruel than what is recorded in the history books, and the slaughter we think of may be killed and robbed when we see people after entering the city, but the actual slaughter of the city has a more thorough grasp of human nature. The rebels would divide into groups of three or five and ask for money from house to house, and those who did not want to hand over the money and food would be wiped out, and the people would obediently hand over the money and food after seeing that there was hope of living, and the rebels would return to the camp to rest in the evening, and repeat this step the next day, and wait until the whole city was looted before entering the next step, slaughtering.
After several rounds of alternating torments of hope and despair, the will of the people was basically on the verge of collapse, and it was no longer possible to carry out organized resistance. In the face of such violence and massacres, it is not difficult to understand the disgust and fear of ordinary people towards the old army.
So why is it that today, our first reaction to the PLA is security, trust, and cordiality? There is such a saying on the Internet: "When disaster comes, God will not save you, but the PLA will". In the early days of its founding, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) was completely different from the feudal army, and its management was equal among officers and men, democratic and open, and it was even more famous for its strict military discipline.
From the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the War of Liberation, and the Korean War, this glorious group has withstood the test of war and fire, and has also been present in all major natural disasters and crises since the founding of the People's Republic of China. In the history of the mainland, there has never been an armed force that can be so loved by the people as the People's Liberation Army.
The people's trust in the PLA comes from their relentless efforts when foreign enemies invade and endanger security, from standing up again and again in times of crisis, and from the firm belief that has not changed for decades since the founding of the PLA. As the PLA military song sings: "We are the children of workers and peasants, and we are the people's armed forces"
In 1947, Xu Jianbo, then secretary of the Weibei County Party Committee, wrote a letter to the Ninth Column of the East China Field Army after the Kuomintang army caused the Lijiaying tragedy, in which he said: "Dear comrades...... We won't let you go, we want you to avenge us, and we ask you to destroy the enemy like you did in Menglianggu, leave a heroic victory in Weixian, and make great contributions. This is our noble faith in you, and it is also the command of the people to their own army. This letter has been treasured by General Xu Shiyou.
The world today is different from 70 years ago, but threats from within and outside have never gone away. History has proven time and again that "the deepest roots of the great power of war exist among the people," and that it is not enough to shout slogans with the word "national" in their names to obtain strength from the masses, but to have a group of people who truly infect the masses with their ideals and convictions.
When you hear "the time has come for the people to test us", it means that what you will do next will be recognized by the people of this country to the greatest extent, and this sentence is regarded by the PLA as the foundation of the army, which is why the PLA is called "children's soldiers".