Liu Wenzhi
In the summer of 2020, a spiritual hall was set up in chongqing's Shiqiaopu Funeral Home. Inside the spiritual hall, accompanied by the low sobs of the family members, the air was filled with solemnity and sadness.
In the center of the spiritual hall, the remains of an old man are surrounded by yellow and white flowers. On both sides of the hall are pasted with black characters on a white background, and on the links, the big characters of "Liu Wenzhi", "Long March" and "Red Army" are particularly eye-catching.
Obviously, the old man with the kind face on the posthumous photo was named Liu Wenzhi, a revolutionary Red Army soldier who participated in the Great Long March. In order to commemorate this Red Army soldier and enter Liu Wenzhi's life, what wonderful and legendary story does she have?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > child bride turned into the Red Army</h1>
In 1912, during the red season of maple leaves, Liu Wenzhi was born into a bitter family in Hongkou Town, Tongjiang County, the hinterland of Sichuan's Daba Mountain. Like many of her peers of that era, Liu Wenzhi was born with the brand of poverty, which doomed her childhood to be spent in bleak poverty.
To make matters worse, as Liu Wenzhi grew up, her parents gave birth to 4 younger brothers and sisters for her, which made their already poor family even more destitute.
As the eldest in the family, Liu Wenzhi's childhood was dark. At that time, Liu Wenzhi, who was still young himself, was going to start doing farm work with his parents to help take care of his younger brother and sister.
Every day before dawn, she would go out to prepare food for the livestock in her family in the starry moon; after dawn, she would go up the mountain to cut firewood in the blazing sun; when she returned home in the evening, she would take care of her crying brothers and sisters while cooking on the fire. A child should be carefree age, but the heavy farm work has made her young hands grind out layers of calluses early.
In this kind of "being a sister and a mother" day, Liu Wenzhi has spent 10 years, but she has also slowly developed her mature, stable, independent and responsible personality.
In that old closed society, the population was the labor force in the family, so almost every family had a special number of children, but there was still only a little food. As a result, the more people there are, the less everyone eats.
The mature and sensible Liu Wenzhi couldn't bear to look at the pitiful appearance of her younger siblings who starved every day, and in order to save the family's food, let her younger siblings eat more, and let them grow up healthy, she voluntarily became the child bride of other people's families. In the days when he was a child bride, Liu Wenzhi's life did not usher in the sunshine.
In order to live, she runs between farm work such as beating pig grass and watering dung every day, doing heavy and tiring work no less than other rural men.
The only fortunate thing is that Liu Wenzhi did not wrap his feet in order to climb the mountain and do farm work. Therefore, later, it was able to smoothly walk through the snowy mountains and meadows on the Long March Road.
At the age of 20, a beautiful age when a woman is blooming like a flower, Liu Wenzhi's life has not improved, and she is still a rural woman who picks up big dung. I thought that my life would be so sloppy, but the arrival of the Red Army brought Liu Wenzhi a glimmer of light of freedom and liberation.
It was one day in 1932, Liu Wenzhi was working in the fields, and suddenly a group of soldiers came to the village. At that time, the villagers had never seen the Red Army, did not know what the Red Army looked like, plus they had been bullied by warlords, and when they saw people in military uniforms, they were completely panicked, and they ran into the mountains like beasts of the flood, and Liu Wenzhi was also among them.
According to her recollection in her later years: "The people in the village did not know that they were the Red Army, they were very scared, and they all ran into the nearby mountains, and I followed them." This army that entered the village was the Red Fourth Front that Liu Wenzhi later followed, and they crossed the Qin Mountains and the Bashan Mountains to reach the boundary where Liu Wenzhi was located. Faced with the rejection of the villagers, they are not angry, and even often chat with the villagers to help them do farm work.
After a period of getting along, the villagers gradually discovered that these soldiers dressed like peasants were not as arrogant and rude as the warlords who squeezed the people like jackals, they spoke kindly and friendly, neither hit people nor cursed people but also helped people, and even treated the villagers as relatives.
In the process of getting along with the Red Army, Liu Wenzhi felt a little warmth, she was infected by the kindness and faith of the Red Army soldiers, and slowly germinated the idea of following the party and following the Red Army soldiers.
In the summer of 1933, Liu Wenzhi hid from his family and plunged into the ranks of the Red Army without hesitation. She didn't bring anything, her clothes, shoes, and even her long black hair were left in the home where she once lived, and she rushed to the party alone and to her new life.
In his later years, Liu Wenzhi said: "At that time, my family was poor, and since the Red Army came to help the poor, I also wanted to join the ranks of helping the poor. ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="21" > took his brother on the Long March</h1>
In the ranks of the Red Army, Liu Wenzhi was assigned to the women's platoon. At this time, there were only three people in the women's platoon, including Liu Wenzhi, and their task was to give full play to their women's strengths and help the male comrades in the Red Fourth Army sew clothes and mend hats.
There were so many male comrades in the Red Fourth Army, how could the three of them be busy. In order to expand the number of women in the platoon, Liu Wenzhi explained the story of the Red Army to the local people almost every day and publicized the Red Army team.
In two years, under the active guidance of Liu Wenzhi, dozens of female comrades joined the ranks of the women's platoon of the Red Fourth Army, and the women's platoon of the Red Fourth Army was expanded from only three at the beginning to eighty.
During this period, Liu Wenzhi also became the platoon leader of the women's platoon of the Red Fourth Army because of her excellent leadership ability and mature and steady style.
In January 1935, taking the steps forward and with the belief of following the party, Liu Wenzhi followed the Red Army team and left the hometown where she was born and raised.
A month later, smoke rose in the southern Shaanxi region. In order to smoothly enter Sichuan for the Central Red Army, Liu Wenzhi's Red Fourth Front launched the Southern Shaanxi Campaign, and when the Kuomintang troops were in a hurry to deploy and mobilize their troops to move north to reinforce the war, the Red Fourth Front immediately returned to northern Sichuan.
After another month, the Red Fourth Front launched another attack west of the Jialing River, which lasted more than twenty days, not only liberating many towns and villages in the Jialing and Fujiang areas, but also opening up a passage for the later invasion of the northwest of the Bingchuan River.
Subsequently, the Red Army declared the failure of the fifth anti-encirclement and suppression campaign, and the Red Fourth Front was forced to embark on a long march of 25,000 miles. Liu Wenzhi, who left his hometown to embark on the Long March, was not alone. She left her hometown with her 13-year-old brother, Liu Wenwen.
The Long March of the Red Army was not a simple long journey under peaceful conditions, but a strategic shift to advance while fiercely fighting with the enemy. During the Long March, the soldiers of the Red Army did not walk a wide and flat road, but a rugged and winding sheep gut trail and a dangerous alpine river.
Such a arduous trek, a 13-year-old, not tall and sick little teenager, if no one takes care of it, I am afraid that I will have fallen in the middle of the high mountains and dangerous rivers. As an older sister, Liu Wenzhi was obliged to take care of his younger brother.
When Liu Wenwen fell ill and fell, she took care of her closely. Even in order to ensure that her brother did not fall behind, she carried her brother forward on her back until his illness improved.
In the daily life of the march, Liu Wenzhi also took good care of Liu Wenwen. When he was shivering with cold, she would make a fire for him; when he was hungry, she would make a fire for him to pull weeds and cook for him. Liu Wenwen later also mentioned that thanks to his sister's careful care along the way, he was able to survive and complete the Long March.
As a platoon leader of a women's platoon, in the face of the hardships of the Long March, Liu Wenzhi not only had to take care of his brother, but also often helped his comrades in difficulty.
On the snowy mountain, a piece of silver connected to the sky and the ground, the temperature was so low that it was terrible, the oxygen was so thin that he could not breathe, Liu Wenzhi found the male comrade Yang Minquan who could not move forward, a thin woman gritted her teeth and carried a male comrade-in-arms across the snowy mountain.
The black water river, the water is turbulent, when crossing the river a little carelessly may be swept away by the river. Faced with the difficult problem of crossing the river, Liu Wenzhi was not in danger, calmly and calmly commanding the people in the front to pull the horse's tail, and the people in the back to pull the people in front, one by one, and slowly move forward in an orderly manner, forcing the women to cross the river in a neat row.
Liu Wenzhi, a woman who is not strong or even looks thin, can burst out amazing strength when her comrades are in danger, and show excellent organizational leadership ability to help and organize comrades to tide over difficulties. It can be seen that the tenacity of her faith and the firmness of her will make people have to sigh, really a veritable "Iron Lady".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="38" > led the women's platoon to "climb the snowy mountains and cross the meadows"</h1>
On the long march, crossing the meadow can be said to be the most difficult moment on the way of the long army. Hidden in the swamp under the grass, like a man-eating beast, as long as the walking person takes a wrong step, a word of help can not be issued, and it will be completely engulfed by this ruthless beast.
The comrades of the Red Fourth Army walked on the dangerous grass, not only to follow the team to avoid falling behind, but also to stay awake at all times, and to patrol the grass in front of them with their eyes to prevent stepping into the swamp and losing their lives.
To make matters worse, the daytime march consumed enormous energy, and the Red Army did not have enough food to supply, so they had to chew on the bitter weeds and barely fill their hunger.
In such a harsh environment and difficult conditions, many Red Army soldiers fell on the grass forever, never to get up again, and never to return home. Fortunately for the women's platoon, before entering the meadow, Liu Wenzhi and the team passed a salt mountain.
As the platoon leader of the women's platoon, Liu Wenzhi, who knows the importance of salt intake, held the idea of "being prepared" and dug a large lump of salt on his back.
Although Liu Wenzhi did not inform her comrades of the incident, her care saved the lives of all the women platoon members on the subsequent march.
There was an extreme shortage of food on the grass, and the comrades could only put wild grasses and wild vegetables in the basins they carried with them and barely cook them to fill their hunger. Liu Wenzhi recalled: "I still remember that taste, the taste that can't be said, but it was already very good to be able to eat at that time!" ”
Liu Wenzhi knew very well that if he ate so casually, if he did not have the intake of salt, the comrades would still have the strength to continue to move forward. But she did not dare to give the salt to everyone to carry alone, if someone could not control the amount, and ate the salt early, the next road would still have the strength to go forward.
As a result, Liu Wenzhi consciously shouldered the heavy responsibility of dividing salt. At every meal, no matter what she ate, she would knock a few grains of salt into the bowls of her comrades to replenish their strength. Unexpectedly, this insignificant salt actually became a great hero who saved the lives of women and female soldiers.
In addition to crossing the meadows, crossing the snow-capped mountains is also a nightmare for marching warriors. On the steep snowy mountain, the oxygen is thin, the weather is changeable, and the temperature is extremely low, which is a great challenge to people's physiology and psychology.
Liu Wenzhi recalled: "It was too cold, the oilcloths we used to cover the rain and snow were all frozen and brittle, and we did not dare to fold them at all. ”
Knowing that it is not easy, in the process of crossing the snowy mountains, Liu Wenzhi has been trying his best to take care of the younger and weaker comrades in the women's platoon, including a little girl named Zhang Wen.
Zhang Wenzhi is 7 years younger than Liu Wenzhi, and Liu Wenzhi will think of his young brother when he sees him, so he treats her like a sister.
But people can take special care of you, but the environment will not take special care of you. When crossing a snowy mountain called Jiajin Mountain, Zhang Wen, who was already thin, suddenly felt dizzy under the influence of extreme weather, and fell into a coma.
Liu Wenzhi saw this and adhered to the principle of not giving up any of his comrades-in-arms and hurriedly helped her up, and Zhang Wen poured her once and helped her once.
Zhang Wen
Even though Zhang Wen kept saying that it was okay, she could hold on. But Liu Wenzhi knew that if Zhang Wen was allowed to walk alone, he was afraid that his life would be in danger.
In order to save Zhang Wen's life, Liu Wenzhi unloaded all the luggage on Zhang Wen's body and put it on his back, and then summoned the chief of the management section, and the two of them worked together to carry Zhang Wen to the top of Jiajin Mountain. This seemingly inconspicuous little girl, Zhang Wen, was the wife of Hong Xuezhi, the founding general of the later country.
For the rescue of Liu Wenzhi on the snowy mountain, the founding general's wife felt nostalgic for life. Recalling this incident many years later, Zhang Wen even said gratefully: "On Jiajin Mountain, without the help of Liu Wenzhi's platoon leader and management section chief, I would definitely not be able to climb to the top of the mountain." I have a deep sense of gratitude to them all my life. ”
In this way, under the guidance of Liu Wenzhi's calm composure and personal practice, the members of the women's platoon united in the process of the Long March, helped each other, and stood up strongly. Until the end of the Long March, only two people were sacrificed.
Female Red Army soldiers who participated in the Long March
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="88" > return to the bland and deep hidden skills and names</h1>
After the end of the Long March, Liu Wenzhi led the comrades of the women's platoon into a quilt factory, resumed his old business, and continued to sew clothes and mend hats. Later, Liu Wenzhi reunited with a person who changed her life, and this person was Xie Yuanchang.
During the Long March, Liu Wenzhi saved many people, including Xie Yuanchang, who was honest and responsible. At that time, Xie Yuanchang was the leader of Liu Wenzhi's clothing factory, and after the two reunited, they had a long-term relationship in the process of getting along, and soon came together, but what initially attracted them to each other was a quarrel.
It was when arranging accommodation for the factory personnel, Liu Wenzhi and Xie Yuanchang's guards at the same time looked at a grass house in better condition. Liu Wenzhi believes that the grass houses with better conditions should be left for women to live in. Because lesbian life is more inconvenient, this grass house can make lesbian life more convenient.
The guards who were "opposite" to Liu Wenzhi believed that the grass house with good conditions should be left to the leaders who worked hard. The two, who were not convinced by each other, fell into an endless quarrel.
Liu Wenzhi and Xie Yuanchang
This matter was later learned by Xie Yuanchang, who was kind and simple and had no official frame, reprimanded the guards, and then distributed the grass hut to the female soldiers. Of course, Xie Yuanchang's approach has been looked at differently by his "savior" Liu Wenzhi.
In the subsequent process of getting along, Liu Wenzhi was attracted by Xie Yuanchang's simplicity, reliability, kindness, and grounding; Xie Yuanchang was attracted by Liu Wenzhi's ability to speak eloquently and be charitable.
Most importantly, both men have a strong belief in loving the Party, and both firmly believe that the Party and the Red Army can save the people from fire and water and bring peace and happiness to the people. Naturally, the two men came together, and in 1937, they officially became each other's other half.
In the revolutionary life after that, they were also sweet and happy, but they would often live apart because of the revolution and work. The longest time was when Liu Wenzhi was transferred to Yan'an to work, for three years.
They were the little people of that era and the powerful backing of the stormtroopers ahead. Their dedication is to let the frontline soldiers, without worries, carry guns and guns to kill the enemy heroically. They were both shining stars of their time, so for the separation of the revolution, the couple had no complaints.
In the later acquaintances, Liu Wenzhi successively gave birth to 4 children for Xie Yuanchang. Their two sons, inheriting their parents' strong revolutionary convictions, threw themselves into the party's army after the liberation.
Later, according to their recollections, their mother, Liu Wenzhi, taught them this way: "When you become soldiers, you should be good, and you should not be afraid of death in battle, and you should not be a deserter." ”
After the founding of New China, Liu Wenzhi, who despised fame and fortune, came to Chongqing No. 4 Factory and became an ordinary administrator. After experiencing the parting of life and death, she developed a good temper and a good attitude. Her daughter Xie Jiaxi mentioned in an interview about her mother:
Later, because of the need to set wages by grade, my mother's actual salary decreased to a certain extent compared with before. She did not complain in the slightest, saying that following the national policy, what level should be set, what level should be lowered, probably because she had experienced too much life and death, she regarded everything very openly, and would not be angry because of trivial matters. A good attitude is probably an important reason for the longevity of mothers. ”
The Long March has passed, but Liu Wenzhi's heart is still in the Long March, and at the age of 100, she offers to go to Yan'an to see. During the journey to Yan'an, she danced like a child, wherever she went, where she saw, where she remembered. Yan'an has left her too many memories, and also left too many memories of Chinese history.
After fulfilling his wish, Liu Wenzhi died in Chongqing on September 28, 2020, at the age of 108. Looking back on Liu Wenzhi's legendary life, it can be described as "the history of the Long March of Guns and Bullets, and the spirit of the Red Army bows down to pass on to future generations." "It is precisely because of the efforts of Liu Wenzhi and other heroes who do not care about personal gains and losses that there is now a beautiful new China." Thanks to the heroic martyrs, salute the heroic martyrs!