Zhu Jikai, nicknamed "Zhu Scar", was born in 1904 in Jiangkou Village, Tieluoping Township, Hefeng County, Hubei Province.
He came from a poor background, was talented, and had the courage to be a man. When he was fourteen or fifteen years old, he saw that his cousin, who was the township chief, had a foreign gun "Hanyang Stick", and he moved his mind.
One day, Zhu Jikai carried the reams he used to drive the mountains, asked his cousin to go up the mountain to hunt wild game, and took the opportunity to learn from his cousin to make a foreign gun.
The cousin knew his plan, and when he went up the mountain, he saw Zhu Jikai's eyes gluttonous with his own "Hanyang stick", and he didn't care, and handed it over to him to fiddle with.
Who knew that after the "Hanyang Stick" arrived, Zhu Jikai turned his face and falsely claimed that there was "rotten grass yellow" behind his cousin, and when his cousin turned around, he sent his cousin to the Yin Cao Mansion with a shot of "Oh".
When the hunters in the mountains heard the gunshots and thought that someone had played wild game, they gathered around with the guys and wanted him to honor the mountain rule that "there is meat in the mountain, and those who see it are all.".
Zhu Jikai was a thief with a weak heart, and shouted with a hammer: "Put the guy down, or Lao Tzu will open fire!" He only listened to the muffled sound of "boo", but he himself fell to the ground in response. It turned out that he had a black heart to grab the gun, charged too much medicine, and wanted to murder his cousin.
Unexpectedly, the barrel burst and blew himself up, leaving a face of scars and a disability of breaking two fingers, and has since gained the nickname of "Zhu Scar".
In the summer and autumn of 1949, our 480th Regiment was ordered to move to Shimen, Hunan, and was responsible for suppressing the Kuomintang reactionary bandit forces in Shimen and Cili counties to ensure that Erye entered the river to fight. Zhu Jikai (Scar), the bandit leader who had been entrenched in Cili for many years and whose hands were stained with the blood of the people, and the deputy commander of the Xiangxi Suppression Communist Party, once fought against our army five times using the two-sided method of false surrender and true anti-communism.
Track the chase
After our 480th regiment moved to guard shimen, it was found that Zhu Scar was not in the county seat, but was hiding in the mountains in the northwest of the county. The regimental headquarters sent 3 battalions to track and pursue to the moshi mountainous area, moshi is more than 200 miles away from the county seat, the traffic is extremely inconvenient, along the way the deep mountains and old forests cover the sun, ravines crisscrossing, thorns, a little inattention will fall into the abyss, we walked for two days to reach the moshi.
The troops sent scouts to spy on Zhu Scarzi's whereabouts. Local people reported that Zhu Scarzi did sneak here, and there were more than 800 bandits gathered around him, so as to deceive the people's hearts, they were known as 3 regiments. Before dying, this evil-ridden bandit was struggling to the death, robbing homes and houses everywhere, and oppressing the local people.
On the afternoon of September 19, a gentleman dressed as a gentleman came to the camp to report that Zhu Scar was ready to surrender the day after tomorrow. The person who came was called Xiang Zelun, who was Zhu Scarzi's brother-in-law and served as the chief of staff in Zhu Bu. But after waiting for two days, there was no one there. According to his own account later, the so-called surrender was actually a deception set up by him to test the falsehood of our army.
On October 18, Xiang Zelun came again to report that his wife and brother had not come to the people's liberation army last time, and were ready to surrender in the city. Therefore, our battalion rushed to the city according to the situation described. This time, Zhu Scar only sent his secret service chief Liu Yunyou to bring a guard to surrender, and Zhu Scar did not show his face. I remember that time, Liu Yunyou handed over 1 revolver and 3 rounds of ammunition (2 of which were stink bombs), and his guards handed over 1 submachine gun and 2 rounds of ammunition.
In order to disintegrate the enemy army, our army bought pigs and sheep and slaughtered them, set up a banquet to entertain them, and left them in the army to stay, and sent instructors to accompany them. After our army's patient education, Liu Yunyou lifted his guard and went out with us every day to find Zhu Scar. By chance, he heard the news of Chen Yaoyu, the leader of the Shimen bandit brigade, and Chen Jinci, the local bandit commander, and detected that Chen Yaoyu's bandits were located in Tongzipo, 10 miles away from the city.
These two bandits had a very close relationship with Zhu Scarzi in the past, and it is likely that Zhu Scarzi was also there, and the battalion commander sent two companies to surround Tongzipo.
After the battle broke out, Chen Bandit organized a counterattack, was killed and injured by a large amount of firepower from our army, killed more than 30 bandits on the spot, including Chen Yaoyu, more than 90 people were captured, Chen's wife was taking a bath, she could not get dressed, grabbed two guns and clothes with her bare hands, and even shot a gun to jump out of the window to escape. Just after escaping from the window, she was hit in the thigh and grabbed by the warriors in the house, and her son was also grabbed.
After Liu's mother and son were captured, they were taken to the battalion headquarters overnight for surprise interrogation, and learned that Chen Jinci was at the mouth of the jikou 8 miles away from our station. The commander immediately made a decision, ordered the troops to surround The Gate of Theoji Pass, and dispatched 40 commandos from each company to all carry automatic weapons led by the reconnaissance staff officer to preemptively occupy the commanding heights of the mountain behind the Mouth of the Pick-up Pass; the reconnaissance platoon ambushed at the Chen Residence. Chen Jinci was shocked and quickly led more than 400 bandits to the commanding heights to kill. When the bandits swarmed up, they were confronted by my commandos on the top of the mountain, killing and injuring most of them, and the remaining bandits rushed around Chen Jinci. Chen Jinci and the remaining more than 100 bandits desperately retreated to the Chen Residence, in a vain attempt to resist with the organs inside the house.
When Chen Bandit stepped into the house with the remnants, what was waiting for him in the courtyard was the warrior of my reconnaissance platoon, and he had to raise his hand and surrender.
In this battle, we captured 6 machine guns, more than 300 long and short guns, more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as 1 radio and 3 telephones.
Bite it
After temptation, Zhu Scar tried to eat us when he learned that our troops were only a battalion.
On the 26th, the 6th day after Chen Jinci was captured, Zhu Scarzi played a trick and believed that our side intended to surrender. Our ministry preferred to believe that it was there, and sent a reinforced company to the city of Sioux to be surrendered. However, Zhu gathered about 2,000 people from 12 bandit detachments and surrounded them. Thanks to the help of the masses, the troops were able to break through the siege, but the casualties were heavy.
The commander of our regiment quickly concentrated the strength of 7 companies, marched all the way to the city of Sioux at dawn, and inflicted heavy blows on the enemy. The battle killed and wounded 300 bandits, captured more than 500, and scattered the rest of the bandits. Zhu Scarzi saw that the situation was not good, and quickly fled with the remnants into the large mountainous area around the Brown Ridge in Nishi City. Here he gathered more than 600 bandits and continued to hide and seek with our army.
In early December, he held a meeting at Brown Ridge to order his subordinates to unite sincerely, oppose the reunification of the communists, and confront our army to the end. My bandit troops surrounded Brown Ridge, and it was sunny after the rain that day, the fog was particularly large, and the visibility was very poor. The guide led us up the steep wall to the edge of Brown Ridge, and the main attack team was facing the enemy.
When the battle began, the Zhu bandits were in chaos and suffered heavy casualties. The battle killed more than 200 bandits and scattered more than 300. When Scar escaped, "there were only 7 bodyguards and his little wife left." He was supported by 4 people, 1 other person was sent as a sharp soldier, and 2 people were cut off. Zhu Scarzi's little wife was out of breath in the back, he felt that she was a burden, Zhu Scar blushed, pulled out a gun and killed her, escaping into the dense forest.
Trick the bandit nest
At the end of the year, just as we were preparing to go to the mountainous areas near Hubei to search and suppress, we received a notice from the regimental headquarters asking us to march south to cooperate with the 477th Regiment in liberating Jiangya. At noon on December 30, our battalion set out from Moshi and rushed toward Jiangya. The next night, rushed to the top of Jiangya North Mountain to camp. The regimental headquarters briefed our battalion on the situation of liberating Jiangya and told us that Zhu Scarzi had an important nest in the area of Shimenya.
On the night of New Year's Day, the troops braved the rain to descend the mountain, and arrived at their destination at dawn on the 2nd. Despite fatigue, the troops learned about the enemy situation from the masses and found out that Zhu Scarzi did indeed have a nest on the cliff cliff 10 miles away, called The River Eagle Cave. The battalion commander ordered the troops to cover the hole.
At dusk that day, the troops took refuge in the dense forest on the top of the hill opposite the River Eagle Cave, and Xu Hongshan, commander of the 7th Company, led the platoon commanders to observe the enemy situation. Due to the fog, the entrance to the cave can only be faintly visible, and the defense of the bandits in the cave is not clear. There are about five or six families in the ravine about two miles to the left of the cave entrance, and a family on the side of the mountain is cooking smoke, as if someone is entering and leaving. The company commander asked Li Fengchun, the commander of the 3rd platoon, to quickly lead the whole platoon down the mountain in shade, and the other platoons followed behind. The comrades of the 3rd platoon searched forward, and when they approached the smoke-emitting households, they found a bandit sentry standing guard outside the house. We took advantage of his lack of preparation to arrest him for interrogation, and he confessed that he had come down the hill to get wine, and there was a bandit company commander in the house, and we quickly entered the house and caught him while the bandit company commander was drinking.
During the interrogation, he confessed that more than 100 bandits lived in the middle of the river eagle cave, all of whom had returned from going out to collect food and were now sleeping.
Later, we left a squad to watch over the bandit company commander, and Xu Hongshan led the troops to force the bandit sentry to lead the way, and in the middle of the night, he approached the mountainside bandit nest. The bandits were already asleep, and after several veteran soldiers entered the house and removed the bandits' 3 machine guns, 5 submachine guns and 40 rifles several times, 3 platoons of long men with torches in their hands led the fighters into the house and ordered the bandits to surrender. A platoon leader sleeping on a corner bed was trying to draw a gun from under his pillow to resist when he was killed by the 7th squad leader with a submachine gun. The remaining bandits all raised their hands and surrendered, capturing 98 bandits alive here and eliminating all the bandits outside the River Eagle Cave. Afterwards, we escorted the prisoners back to the camp headquarters for surprise interrogation. The bandits gave the cave a platoon of troops to defend, and there were more than 10 family members of the bandit leader, who passed through the rope ladder.
The next day, our battalion marched to the area around the River Eagle Cave, closely monitored the enemy inside the cave, and at the same time built fortifications a few hundred meters from the mouth of the cave to prepare for the attack. Just as the assault platoon was preparing to launch an attack, the comrades of the battalion reconnaissance detachment brought an old hunter surnamed Xiang, whom we all called Xiang Bo. He told us that this cave was not a road, and that there was another cave behind the mountain that connected to the River Mo Cave. When he was young, he loved to hunt, and once a group of pig badgers burrowed into a cave, and he let the hounds into the cave to drive them away, and the hounds went in for a long time and did not come out. He went home and found a few guys with a bundle of torches to go into the hole to find the hounds, drilled dozens of "copper money eyes" to find them, and beat a dozen pig badgers. Since the hole is tens of feet high from the ground, it can only be drilled out of the back hole. When I came out, I drilled the wrong hole and almost couldn't get out.
Xiang Bo, after encouragement, decided to take us into the hole. The battalion commander selected 8 party members from the 7 companies to form a hole-attacking death squad, all carrying submachine guns, each carrying two torches, and entering the cave through the back door. After walking for more than 6 hours and drilling more than 20 "copper money eyes", I saw a little bright light in front of me. We stopped and looked closely, and found that there were lights not far from us, and there were still people talking in the cave, and everyone knew that they were approaching the bandits.
In order to have enough energy to deal with the bandits, everyone sat down to take out dry food and eat their stomachs, and they had to stay hidden with Bo to avoid being injured by stray bullets, and then pick him up after eliminating the bandits. The 8 soldiers were divided into 4 groups to meet the enemy, and when we entered the last "copper money eye", the comrades in front found that there was a machine gun placed there, and we quickly stopped advancing.
After a pause, there was no movement, and the two daredevils in the first group in front of them slowly approached the machine gun with a fast and slow machine in one hand and a grenade in the other, but did not find the bandit's machine gun shooter. Presumably the enemy was defenseless against us entering the cave through the back door, and we all concentrated in the fortifications of the front cave to deal with the Platon Army that attacked the hole.
According to the situation, two comrades were left to aim their machine guns at the enemy in the front cave, and the 6 comrades in the back quickly passed through the "copper money eye" and suddenly attacked the bandits in the front cave, catching him off guard. During the march, due to the darkness in the hole, one of the team members kicked down the kerosene bucket that the bandits had placed on the ground, exposing the target.
We threw grenades and moved forward as we fired. Most of the bandits were killed, and the 9 bandits and 13 family members who were alive were frightened and all captured alive. We took the captives in a side hole and sent 4 members to watch over them. Two of the rest of the team went to the mouth of the cave to put a rope ladder to welcome the large troops into the cave to clean up the battlefield, and the two members of the team went to the back hole with torches to pick up bo out of the hole.
The lair that Zhu Scar had been running for many years was breached. We seized more than 800 quilts, more than 1,000 kilograms of bacon, 13 water tanks of clear oil, a few thousand kilograms of yin rice (glutinous rice steamed and then dried), several thousand kilograms of salt, nearly 100,000 kilograms of rice, 500 kilograms of opium, more than 400 guns of various kinds, more than 100,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as 2 radios, 7 telephones, and various cloths for thousands of meters, but unfortunately Zhu Scar was not in the hole.
Finally caught
Breaking through the River Eagle Cave, Zhu Scar basically lost out. At this time, there were still more than half a month before the Spring Festival, and the superior issued an order: if Zhu Scar could not be caught, he was not allowed to go down the mountain for the Spring Festival. We have ambushed our troops in the places where Zhu Scarzi may be hiding, and in addition, most of the counties of Ci and Shi have been liberated, the masses of the people have been mobilized, and the troops have released some of them who are willing to change from the new Zhu bandits' old departments to assist us in the battle.
In the middle of January 1950, Liu Yunyou, the head of Zhu Scarzi's secret service, finally visited Zhu Scarzi's information after several days of inquiry. At this time, Zhu Scarzi proposed negotiations on the condition that the PLA negotiators could only go to two people. From the perspective of safety, the battalion commander sent a reconnaissance platoon at dawn on the 19th to lurk in the archway of the Ancestral Hall and set up a formation in the grass on the hill around the ancestral hall.
After dawn the next day, we sent more than 40 soldiers in plain clothes and short guns to chop wood and work in the fields on the hills around the ancestral hall, making preparations in advance for the capture of Zhu. In the early morning of the 20th, Zhu Scarzi also sent a squad of bandits with machine guns to the Ancestral Hall to set up an ambush. The bandit machine gunners set up machine guns at the window of the ancestral hall archway to control the passage intersection on the front of the archway, and the rest of the bandits were hidden in the pavilion. These actions of the bandits have long been mastered by my scouts. While sending an ambush to the archway, Zhu Scarzi also sent a company of troops to hide in the oil press hole opposite the ancestral hall as a response.
Shortly after dawn this day, more than 30 ordinary people came to the entrance of the ancestral hall, and they picked up the grass and spread it on the ground, and used cattle to pull stones to beat the grass, but they did not have short guns at their waists. These people were bandits sent by Zhu Scar, and their action signal was to use the machine guns on the archway as a signal to arrest our negotiators. In the early afternoon, our negotiator, Commander Yu, appeared with a correspondent at the intersection in front of the Xiang family ancestral hall.
At this time, Zhu Scarzi also came cautiously with his personal bodyguard. The enemy machine gun shooters who were ambushed in the window of the archway saw our representative appear, and were subdued by our scouts when they were preparing to attack, and the bandits on the grass field saw that the machine guns on the archway did not sound, thinking that they were waiting for the opportunity to continue to fight grass.
Zhu Scarzi had no choice but to patiently walk into the ancestral hall with our representative. Zhu Scarzi did not have the sincerity of negotiations, and also wanted to threaten our representatives with ambush troops, and shook his head to suggest that the bodyguards would go to the gate of the archway to inform the bandits who were playing grass to come and kidnap our negotiators. Seeing the hint, the grass bandits drew their guns and rushed to the gate of the archway, but were repelled by my ambush. All the soldiers in the reconnaissance platoon subdued the bandits separately, and Zhu Scar was also captured on the spot.
The People's Liberation Army on the surrounding hills concentrated its fire to block the mouth of the oil-pressed cave, and the bandits in the cave could not rush out of the cave to meet Zhu Scar, so they had to shrink into the cave and wait for the opportunity. At this time, the soldiers of our army at the top of the hills began to surround the oil press hole. When the bandits saw that the trend had gone, they had no choice but to use white shirts to pick up on the wooden poles when the white flag was shaken to show their concede. My machine gun that blocked the entrance to the cave stopped firing and accepted the bandits to surrender.
In the battle of Xiangjia Ancestral Hall, 106 bandits, including Zhu Scarzi, were captured, 140 guns of various kinds and more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition were captured, and more than 30 bandits were killed.