"Bang, bang, bang...", after the scattered gunshots, there was a burst of warm applause.
"Good!"
"Wang Keqin is really powerful!" Many PLA soldiers expressed heartfelt praise.
It turned out that the PLA soldiers outside the house were watching a veteran lying on the ground shooting a target, only to see the veteran hit the bullseye with a gun, winning a lot of applause from the audience.
At this time, the company instructor in the house heard the cheers but was a little annoyed, and it was Wang Keqin, the "sharpshooter" who was lying on the ground, who made him frown.
He was a liberation fighter, transformed from the prisoners of the Kuomintang army in the Battle of Handan, and his skills made the soldiers look at him with great skill.
However, the bad problems of the Kuomintang warlord troops in him were very obvious, and he often complained: "The Communist troops have no guns and no ammunition, how can they shoot Chiang Kai-shek's planes and artillery?" And so on.
This makes it extremely difficult for the company instructors to carry out their ideological work.
At this moment, whether it was Wang Keqin's instructor or the battalion instructor Wu Xiaoxian, they did not expect that Wang Keqin, the liberation fighter who now made them feel a little "distressed", was about to kill 232 enemy people alone in the next year, and was awarded the battle merit nine times, and was even rated as a "first-class hero of killing the enemy" and "a special meritorious hero", becoming the number one combat hero of the Second Field Army.
What they could not have imagined was that this veteran who had experienced hundreds of battles, who invented the "three major mutual aides" that was popularized to the whole army and was praised by Chairman Mao by name, died heroically just one year after joining the revolution!
Today, we will get to know the legendary "special meritorious hero" - Wang Keqin.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > black memory</h1>
In 1920, Wang Keqin was born into a poor peasant family in Fuyang County, Anhui Province, where his ancestors were tenants who worked for landlords for generations and had no savings to speak of.
In Wang Keqin's father's generation, it was even more difficult, and the four members of the family all relied on their father to rent two acres of thin land to the landlord to survive.
But even so, the grain obtained after a year of hard work is often left with taxes, and hunger and poverty are Wang Keqin's most profound childhood colors.
One year, because the family really could not open the pot, my father went to the landlord to plead for some rent to be reduced, but he did not think that the landlord had a bad attitude and refused, and his father was seriously injured after a few words of defense.
In order to treat his father's illness, the family could only borrow money to buy medicine, and even so, when Wang Keqin was thirteen years old, his father still hated it.
Wang Keqin, who had lost his father, put his shoulders on the burden of life early, while his mother and young brother, who were not in good health, went out to beg for a mouthful of food for life.
However, the debt borrowed for his father was getting bigger and bigger, and the poor life was like invisible hands, tightly strangling the throat of Wang Keqin's fate.
In July 1939, the landlord colluded with the baochang to sell Wang Keqin as a zhuangding, and Wang Keqin was nineteen years old this year.
After he first escaped from the Kuomintang troops, the baochang and the landlord rushed to the door and beat him badly, changed his name and sold him again.
The second time he escaped again, but he still could not escape the poisoner of the landlord and the chief of the security. The third time, he was not so lucky, and was sent directly to a company of the Twenty-seventh Division of the Kuomintang Thirty-seventh Army as a soldier.
Wang Keqin's biggest thoughts in the army were his mother and brother, and his relatives were Wang Keqin's last spiritual pillars.
One day, however, he suddenly received a letter from his fellow villagers, saying that his mother and brother were missing when they were begging in the field. At this point, Wang Keqin's last pillar had also collapsed, and he could only spend his days numbly in the Kuomintang army.
There is an old Chinese saying: a good iron does not strike nails, and a good man should not be a soldier.
Throughout China's history, with the exception of a few well-disciplined armies such as the "Yue Family Army" and the "People's Liberation Army," the warlord troops and the local people had a relationship between knives and meat, especially the Kuomintang troops.
As the saying goes, thieves come like combs, soldiers come like grates, and officials come like shaves.
In the eyes of many ordinary people, there is still something left in the places that the bandits have plundered, but there are really no particles where the Kuomintang troops have passed. For example, during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the people of Henan summed up the "four major pests": water (disaster), drought (disaster), locust (disaster), and Tang (Tang Enbo, commander-in-chief of the Kuomintang Lusu-Anhui-Yu Border Region, in charge of Henan).
Are the soldiers to blame for the poor military discipline of the Kuomintang troops?
In the soldiers, the strong men who had been pulled by Qiang did not know why they were fighting, and they had no faith in their hearts. Even relatives and family members have been living a miserable life in the Kuomintang-ruled areas for a long time, and some people have served in the Kuomintang troops, but they hate the Kuomintang government very much.
During training, the commander often beat and scolded his subordinates, and even found an excuse to shoot his unpleasant soldiers.
In terms of treatment, the soldiers who had supplies from the Kuomintang Central Committee in the same period actually ate as well as the Communist soldiers, and the middle and high-ranking officers ate a lot of empty pay, but they sucked the marrow of the lower-level officers and fighters.
Wang Keqin grew up in such an environment, his heart was also full of fatigue, he wanted to go home but he was already homeless, and there were no close relatives in the world.
In a battlefield of nine deaths, perhaps Wang Keqin told himself that there was only one goal now: to live
By 1945, Wang Keqin had become a veteran of the Nationalist Army.
However, in the same year, under the leadership of Comrades Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping, the troops of the Jinji-Hebei Luyu Military Region launched the Battle of Handan, and the Kuomintang 30th Army was completely destroyed, and Wang Keqin was also captured.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="135" > red revolution</h1>
But unlike others after he was captured, many Kuomintang soldiers would choose to take the road fare home after being captured, but Wang Keqin insisted on joining the People's Liberation Army.
It is said that Wang Keqin's greatest wish at this time was to stay away from war, so why did he join the People's Liberation Army?
This has to be said three years ago, as early as 1942, when the Kuomintang army provoked friction and attacked our party's base areas, Wang Keqin was captured, and at that time he was not embarrassed, and the cadres of the Eighth Route Army who captured him told him the truth of "national reunification and resistance against Japan" and then released him.
The character of the Northern Anhui Hanzi Zhi'en Tu bao made him join the Communist Forces even for the sake of the "grace of not killing" twice.
But in fact, this does not mean that Wang Keqin has complete trust in the People's Liberation Army, nor does it mean that he has a sincere belief in communism.
In the company, Wang Keqin often felt that the Plakmen was short of ammunition and food, that even the two light and heavy machine guns of a squad standard were not matched, and that some units had not yet been able to produce a rifle per person, which was in stark contrast to the planes and tanks of the Kuomintang army he saw.
For this reason, his company instructors felt that his ideological work was extremely difficult to do, and Wang Keqin's excellent military qualities that he had honed after many baptisms of war had to be admired.
The battalion commander Wu Xiaoxian personally went to talk to Wang Keqin after learning about this, but he did not go empty-handed, he brought a Teggarev light machine gun.
The machine gun was captured during the Battle of Handan in October, but no one in the battalion knew how to use it, let alone maintain it, and everyone was afraid of breaking the precious machine gun.
Not only did the new soldiers in the company look at this Soviet-style machine gun with curious eyes, but the company commander and instructor would not actually use it, and Wu Xiaoxian knew that giving Wang Keqin could be of great use.
Wang Keqin took the machine gun in the instructor's hand with a little shyness in everyone's curious eyes, and when he got the machine gun, he seemed to have changed into a person, put the gun on the table and began to skillfully decompose and combine.
A machine gun with a complicated structure quickly turned into parts under his hands, and even the thick drum on the back of the machine gun was dismantled by Wang Keqin.
After the parts of the whole gun were disassembled, Wang Keqin took a look at the comrades around him, but the movements in his hands did not see the slightest, only to see that "rubbing" a few times, the whole gun had been combined.
This operation conquered many warriors, but even more powerful ones were still to come.
Wang Keqin took a box of bullets brought by the camp correspondent and began to perform shooting.
"Bang, bang, bang", a few gunshots, a few wisps of gun smoke, all the targets in the distance were all shot, the soldiers found that Wang Keqin was still firing, and used the machine gun to shoot out the accuracy of the rifle.
"Hahaha, Comrade Wang Keqin is really powerful, on behalf of the battalion party committee, I assigned the light machine gun to Comrade Wang Keqin's class." Comrade Wang Keqin, how's it going? ”
"Really! Thank you sir, oh no, thank you sir. Wang Keqin felt very happy when he touched his "old buddy".
"But I have a request for you." Wu Xiaoxian smiled, "I want you to teach the whole class how to use this machine gun!" ”
"Yes! Mission accomplished is guaranteed! ”。
It is this gun that accompanies Wang Keqin to become an extremely rare "special meritorious hero" in the entire People's Liberation Army, and it is also this gun that accompanies Wang Keqin to sprinkle blood on the battlefield.
Wang Keqin only stayed in the ranks of the People's Liberation Army for more than a month, and although he felt that the Kuomintang army was slightly superior in weapons and equipment, it was better than the Nationalist army in other aspects.
At this time, Wang Keqin was only one transformation away from "first-class hero who killed the enemy" and "special meritorious hero".
One day at the end of December, the battalion headquarters organized everyone to carry out a "grievance conference".
Wang Keqin had already heard some news that the agrarian revolution had been vigorously carried out in all the liberated areas, and that the Communist Party had made all the toiling masses want their own land.
On the first day of the grievance conference, several fighters from poor families came to power to bitterly accuse the Kuomintang reactionary forces and the inferior gentry, and some inferior gentry even took advantage of the disaster year to buy the land of the poor families of the whole village.
Death, hunger, humiliation, misery... The deep darkness didn't just envelop Wang Keqin.
Wang Keqin bowed his head deeply, inhaled long, and forced to hold back the tears in his eyes.
In the year of his father's death, his tears dried up, and he often remembered his father's teaching: as a man, you are not allowed to cry.
Just when Wang Keqin was forbearing his emotions, it was the turn of the deputy company commander Party Building Court to come to the stage to tell that some serious party building courts had left tears before they came to power, and when he said that his father was forced to die by the landlord and his mother went out to ask for food with himself who had just been able to talk.
Wang Keqin could no longer suppress his emotions and cried out loudly, he still didn't know where his mother and brother were?
I don't know when it started, I don't know who to start with, the three words "to take revenge" resounded throughout the whole field, and the more it spread, the louder it became, the louder it shouted, and the simplest voice of the most simple people shouted from the bottom of their hearts flew to the sky. The dark clouds of the earthquake will also dissipate, the undercurrent of the earthquake will also recede, the rule of the Earthquake Chiang Family Dynasty will be crumbling, and the 3.6 million troops of Chiang Kai-shek of the Earthquake will be wiped out in an instant!
The next day, Wang Keqin also went to the podium of the grievance conference and told him what had happened, and the tragic situation of twenty-six years had made him suffer all the time in his heart, and he was completely released for the first time.
Since then, Wang Keqin seems to have changed as a person, he knows that only by overthrowing Chiang Kai-shek's reactionary rule can the people of the whole world live a good life, and he knows that the comrades-in-arms around him are his last relatives.
In this way, Wang Keqin's thinking underwent a complete change.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="143" > gold medal</h1>
In June 1946, Chiang Kai-shek tore up the Double Tenth Agreement and launched an all-out offensive against our base areas, and the second Kuomintang-Communist civil war officially began.
The Jin-Hebei Luyu Field Army, under the command of Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping, began to counterattack the invading enemy, and although Wang Keqin was only an ordinary soldier at this time, he had deeply understood that the People's Liberation Army was the people's army.
On July 9, 1946, the Lanfeng Liberation War was in full swing, this was the first major war since Wang Keqin participated in the revolution, when the charge horn sounded, Wang Keqin hesitated, but then he saw the company commander Chen Fengxiang, the instructor Wang Yukun rushing to the front, squad leader, platoon leader, deputy company commander ... None of them hid behind, and the last doubt in Wang Keqin's heart was dispelled, because he often heard when he was on the Kuomintang side that the Communists used captive soldiers to take the lead.
Obviously, the rumors are self-defeating.
Wang Keqin charged forward with the machine gun personally approved by the instructor, and when the front firing boundary was open, he looked for a cover to shoot, and if there were obstacles in front of him that affected the ballistic trajectory, he left the bunker and stood up and swept flat with the machine gun.
In September 1946, when Liu Deng's army fought a bloody battle at Dayang Lake, Wang Keqin and his machine guns were on the front line, fighting bloodily, and soon after the war, he was promoted to machine gun squad leader.
In October 1946, at the Battle of Juye in Shandong, Wang Keqin and his machine gun squad, as elite firepower, relied on a machine gun and a crooked handle in Xuzhuang to undertake the task of defending against the entire 11th Division, one of the "five main forces" of the Kuomintang opposite.
This battle was the most brilliant moment in Wang Keqin's life.
There were seven people in Wang Keqin's class, and due to the heavy losses of the Dayanghu troops in the bloody battle, four of the squad were supplementary recruits, and three of the four had only five rounds of military training, and then embarked on a brutal battlefield.
Wang Keqin summed up his experience as a soldier for many years in the past, and divided this team into two military mutual aid groups, with two experienced veteran soldiers leading the new soldiers, and himself leading the new comrade Bai Zhixue to help him adapt to the battlefield.
After the whole class entered the front line position, it immediately began to repair the fortifications, the two veteran soldiers led the new soldiers to build, and at the same time taught combat skills, Bai Zhixue moved to find several thick door panels to form a slope on the front side of the fortifications, which greatly strengthened the protective ability of the fortifications.
The entire 11th Division, led by the Kuomintang general Hu Lian, immediately launched an attack on Wang Keqin's position, and a shell fell on the position, and Bai Zhixue, who was the youngest son in the family and had not even done heavy work, ran out of the position in fear, and Wang Keqin shouted "Lie down" and rushed up to throw Bai Zhixue to the ground.
Wang Keqin lay on the ground and raised his gun to aim at bai zhixue while pacifying bai zhixue:
"Little white, don't be afraid, bullets have long eyes, looking for people who are afraid, you are not afraid of it will not look for you." Eyes staring at the opposite side, the enemy is coming up, you can hit him through the hole. ”
"Yes, yes... Monitor. ”
Bai Zhixue hid in the fortifications, aimed at an enemy, "banged" the enemy to the ground, the first shot, the second shot, the third shot...
The sun rises and the moon sets, and the moon sets and the sun rises.
Wang Keqin's class held out in Xuzhuang for a whole day and a night, and Hu Lian's elite 11th Division attacked more than a dozen times, bombed by aircraft and covered with artillery, and only one straw house was erected after the battle of Xuzhuang.
In this way, wang Keqin's class at the forefront of Xuzhuang did not have a single casualty, killing and wounding more than a hundred enemies, and even Bai Zhixue, the most timid one before, also achieved the battle merit of killing and wounding 45 enemies, which is not a miracle.
After the Battle of Xuzhuang, the deeds of Wang Keqinban were immediately widely sung in Liu Deng's army, and Wang Keqinban's seven people and four people were commended as combat heroes and made a collective first-class merit, and Wang Keqin was promoted to platoon leader after the war.
When the officers went to Wang Keqin's class to study, they found the reason for the strength of Wang Keqin's class- the three major mutual aides.
Greater than Wang Keqin's own combat effectiveness, he created a movement named after him: three major mutual aid movements (Wang Keqin's movement), namely ideological mutual assistance, life mutual assistance, and technical mutual assistance (military mutual assistance).
In the early days of the Liberation War, our army had a complex military base, including veteran soldiers, new soldiers who had just enlisted from the liberated areas, and quite a few liberation fighters.
How to make these three kinds of soldiers work together and twist them into a rope is a problem that the whole army is studying, and Wang Keqin gave his own answer to this, that is, the "three major mutual assistance.".
Politically, veteran fighters help new fighters and liberation fighters to get rid of bad problems and enhance their ideological awareness.
Militarily, veterans and liberation fighters take new fighters to training by hand, and one person helps to lead one person.
In life, everyone helps each other, the superior loves the subordinate, and the subordinate respects the superior.
Wang Keqin often washed the feet of the new soldiers on the first day of their arrival, personally helped the new soldiers wash their feet, and the habit of the squad leader washing the feet of the new soldiers has been passed down to this day.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="149" > spirit that never fades</h1>
Wang Keqin's three major mutual aid movements were rapidly promoted throughout the army, from the Sixth Column Headquarters to the Field Army Headquarters to Yan'an, and many articles on the three major mutual aid movements came into being.
At that time, almost all the squads and platoons of the whole army formed "three major mutual aid groups" and carried out various "three major mutual aid" movements.
With the help of the three major mutual aides, the originally complex grass-roots squads and platoons quickly formed a joint force, the combat effectiveness of the troops increased greatly, and a number of Wang Keqin-like figures emerged, and even the "Liberation Daily" published editorials for the Wang Keqin Movement.
But no one could have imagined that just when the "Wang Keqin Movement" was in full swing, Wang Keqin encountered misfortune.
In July 1947, Wang Keqin's regiment attacked Dingtao, and although Wang Keqin was seriously ill, he still grabbed the first offensive task.
On the night of July 10, Wang Keqin led a platoon to prepare for the siege mission, at this time he had not eaten for several days, but still insisted.
When the battle began, Wang Keqin took the lead in the charge, taking the lead as a soldier, but just when Wang Keqin was about to rush to the head of the city, the enemy's grenade hit him, although he was seriously wounded, but thinking of the battle, Wang Keqin refused the help of his comrades and ordered them to quickly attack the city.
At that time, Hu Zheng, a reporter accompanying the army, was interviewing in the Fifty-second Regiment, and when he learned the news of Wang Keqin's injury, he hurried to the front line, and as a reporter, he used paper and notes the last words of Wang Keqin's life:
"Please tell the Party Central Committee, Chairman Mao, I am sorry for the Party, I have not fulfilled the Party's tasks, please tell the comrades of the whole platoon again, we must unite, we must help each other, we must fight well against old Chiang Kai-shek, and make new contributions to the people..."
When the news of Wang Keqin's sacrifice reached the headquarters, Liu Bocheng was extremely sad and constantly said, "Chiang Kai-shek's brigade cannot be exchanged for me a Wang Keqin!" ”
On the same day, Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping wrote a very weighty condolence telegram:
"We mourn with great sorrow Comrade Wang Keqin, the famous hero of our army... Indicates infinite reverence. In order to forever commemorate Comrade Wang Keqin, it was decided that Wang Keqin's platoon would forever maintain the glorious title of Wang Keqin platoon. ...... And to continue to carry out the Wang Keqin movement,...... Comrade Wang Keqin is immortal!"
In the magnificent history of the revolution, the chief of the field army personally wrote for platoon officers such words as "immortality" and "infinite reverence" and few words of condolence.
And Wang Keqin also fulfilled the oath he took when he joined the party - to dedicate everything to the party!
Today, although Wang Keqin has been sacrificed for many years, the "Model Company of Respecting Cadres and Loving Soldiers" (Wang Keqin Platoon) of a brigade of the former Twelfth Army of the Nanjing Military Region is still continuing to write the spirit of Wang Keqin, and the spirit of Wang Keqin and Wang Keqin will inevitably inspire generations of Republican soldiers to forge ahead courageously.
In this article, I would like to pay my highest respect to the revolutionary ancestors who sacrificed their lives for the liberation and revolution of the Chinese nation.