In the war years, many soldiers had to say goodbye to their families in a hurry before leaving their hometowns, and this walk was sometimes a lifetime, and they may fall on the way forward and bid farewell to Chengyong. Many people have not even had the opportunity to meet their families and have since left the homeland where they were raised. The concern for his family and the attachment to his hometown are the warmest existence in the hearts of revolutionaries.
Li Xiannian, who was the former president of the country, had such a lifelong regret in his heart, and when he hurriedly said goodbye to his mother, he was angry with his mother, and since then, the yin and yang have been separated, and the mother and son have never seen each other again. In his later years, Li Xiannian was in tears and remorse whenever he thought about it.
Farewell to the Red Army
In October 1932, due to the erroneous judgment of the situation by Zhang Guotao, secretary of the Eyu-Anhui Branch Bureau of the CPC, Shen Zemin, secretary of the Eyu-Anhui Provincial CPC Committee, and others, they formulated a wrong military policy, and the Red Fourth Front's fourth anti-"encirclement and suppression" operation failed, the base areas fell day by day, and the chances of the troops turning defeat into victory were very small, and they were forced to leave the base areas and move westward.
In the history of the Red Army, there used to be one Huang'an for every three people, and one in every four heroic martyrs was a Huang'an national, and from here came more than 200 founding generals, and the people of Huang'an had already formed a relationship with the Red Army that was thicker than water and solidarity.
Hearing that the main force of the Red Fourth Front was going to move westward, the Kuomintang reactionary army was bound to retaliate against the people in the Soviet area, and the local villagers all "ran back" one after another and hid in the mountains. Almost every family in Huang'an County had children in the Red Army, and they all seized the time to meet with their relatives in the army before they "ran backwards."
Li Xiannian, the 23-year-old political commissar of the Red Eleventh Division, led his troops through the Hekou area near his hometown to cover the large troops, when there were enemy planes bombing and artillery fire, but the correspondent ran to report: "Political commissar, your mother is here!" ”
Li Xiannian
The Kuomintang "pursuit and suppression" column Wei Lihuang and Li Xiannian's troops were fighting fiercely, Li Xiannian was on the front line with all his thoughts, and when he heard that his mother was coming, he was angry and yelled at his mother: "Mom, why did you come at this time, what should you do?" ”
Li Xiannian's mother, Li Wangshi, knew that the situation in the army was unfavorable, but she missed her son very much, so she ran a long way to visit. Although Li Xiannian is already a division-level cadre, after all, he is only 23 years old, and in the eyes of his mother, he is still a child who has not grown up. Li Wangshi wiped a handful of tears, pulled Li Xiannian's wrinkled clothes corners, and gave some advice. Li Xiannian thought that his mother was long-winded, and he also made a fire.
Li Wangshi secretly put two silver yuan in his son's pocket and quietly left.
When the battle was over, Li Xiannian found that there was a jingle in his pocket when he was resting, and only then did he find that his mother had stuffed silver balls into his pocket, and he couldn't help but shed two lines of hot tears. He knew that the family life was more difficult, more in need of money, saving these two pieces of silver yuan meant that the family would not be able to open the pot for many days, so he entrusted the reliable villagers to carry it home.
Li Xiannian's former residence
The personnel of the Red Fourth Front who participated in the transfer of the western expedition underestimated the grim situation at that time, and all thought that the withdrawal of the troops was only a short and large-scale and long-term march, ranging from a few months to a year and a half, and the troops still had to fight back to their hometowns, and no one at that time would have thought of completely abandoning the Eyu-Anhui base area. Zhang Guotao, the supreme leader of Eyuwan, also said this when he was marching and mobilizing: "The western expedition we are talking about is not abandoning the current Soviet area, but temporarily jumping to the outside line, and can fight back later." ”
With the care of his mother, Li Xiannian embarked on the road of the Western Expedition. He couldn't have imagined that the battlefield was actually the eternal trick with his mother, and the mother and son would never see each other again in this life.
After the Red Fourth Front was transferred, it left Hubei and passed through Henan, but due to the unfavorable situation, it did not turn back again, and finally entered the Sichuan-Shaanxi border, and from then on it was far away from the Dabie Mountains and Eyuwan That gave birth to him.
After Li Wangshi bid farewell to his son, he fled east with the crowd of "running backwards", and later suffered from esophageal cancer and died two years later. Before she died, she was still shouting Li Xiannian's milk name: "Quan Ling..."
Li Xiannian's father was poor and sick and died in 1937. In order to escape the bandits and force her to remarry, Li Xiannian's wife Yao Shi had no choice but to go to the temple and become a nun.
Li Xiannian's parents
Born in 1909 in the Li family house in Huang'an County, Li Xiannian studied private school for two years, and at the age of 15 came to Hankou to learn carpentry work, known as "Little Li Carpenter". At this time, the vigorous wave of the great revolution swept through the three towns of Wuhan, and Huang'an was also an area that was earlier affected by the peasant movement led by the Communist Party of China, and the devastated and uneven social reality made him germinate revolutionary ideas.
In October 1926, when the Northern Expeditionary Army conquered Wuchang City, Li Xiannian, who was working as a carpenter in Hankou, ran to Wuchang by ferry of the Yangtze River, and with curiosity, excitement and excitement, witnessed the revolutionary style of the Northern Expeditionary Army and germinated the will to join the revolution.
After returning to his hometown, Li Xiannian joined the peasant movement, was elected as an executive member of the Gaoqiao District Peasants' Association in Huang'an County, and later became the leader of the Gaoqiao District Workers' Picket Brigade, and secretly joined the Chinese Communist Youth League. He lit a revolutionary fire in his hometown and led the Huang'an villagers to plunge into the revolutionary torrent.
On the night of the Jute Uprising on November 13, 1927, the peasants who participated in the uprising were still very ignorant and did not understand the revolutionary principles, and someone asked in a loud voice: "Is it grain that has been laid down in the county town?" ”。 Li Xiannian, who was only 18 years old at the time, told everyone a revolutionary principle in the most simple words: "Of course, the grain must be divided, but the roots and patrons of the landlords' old wealth are in the county town, and if they do not overthrow the county, they will still run amok." Today we will dig the roots first, and then cut down the trees. ”
After the failure of the jute uprising, the workers' and peasants' revolutionary masses were met with bloody revenge by the Kuomintang reactionaries, but Li Xiannian solemnly swore an oath to join the Communist Party of China in a dilapidated thatched hut facing the party flag under the white terror of the enemy's large-scale search and massacre.
Later, Li Xiannian was assigned by his superiors to Huangpi County to continue the peasant revolutionary struggle. Under the cover of learning carpenters, he went from village to village to contact the local poor peasants and kiln workers, preached the principles of the revolution to them, and taught them to sing revolutionary songs such as "Poor People's Song" and "Peasant Friend's Song".
Under his inducement and inspiration, his master carpenter and a number of other young peasants and kiln workers demanded membership in the revolutionary organization. Someone laughed and called him a carpenter, and he said, "I, the carpenter, made coffins for the old world!"
By 1931, Li Xiannian had become chairman of the Soviet government of Annan County, and was very authoritative among the local peasant masses. In the second half of 1931, the Eyu-Anhui Soviet District began to vigorously expand the red, and Li Xiannian's Pi'annan County was assigned 800 red to join the army.
Pi'annan County already had a large number of young and middle-aged people join the Red Army, and it was difficult to expand the number of troops for a while. Li Xiannian said confidently, "I have a fierce move." So, on the day of registration, Li Xiannian was the first to jump on the podium: "I am both a carpenter and the chairman of the Soviets, and I sign up today and take everyone with me to join the army." ”
Someone in the audience asked him if he was not the chairman. Li Xiannian said: "I signed up for the army to better become the chairman of the Soviet Union. If the Red Army is not strong and does not win a war, the Soviet government will be an empty stall, a paper shed, and the Kuomintang will be torn down as soon as it comes. "The Chairman of the Soviet Government took the lead as a soldier, so everyone competed for the lead. Under the leadership of Li Xiannian, 300 people signed up on the spot. Soon, the county completed the task of expanding the red of 800 people.
After Li Xiannian, who was rumored to be a good story, joined the army, he was appointed as the political commissar of the 33rd Regiment of the Red Eleventh Division of the Red Fourth Army.
Five years have passed since he joined the jute uprising in 1927 and joined the army at this time, and although he is only 22 years old, he can also be regarded as an "old revolutionary". But after changing from politics to the army, Li Xiannian was still a little uncomfortable, and when he first arrived at the army, he also made a lot of jokes and embarrassment because he could not shout passwords, could not ride horses, and could not organize marches. Because of the lack of cloth at that time and the lack of new military uniforms for a while, Li Xiannian could only continue to wear the pants of the past, known as the "big coat political commissar".
He secretly made up his mind to privately worship Sun Yuqing, the commander of the second battalion, as a teacher, and learned from scratch from horseback, shooting, marching, camping, deployment, individual training, synthetic combat, tactical application, and command essentials, and soon became an outstanding commander who was good at both military and political affairs, and was therefore favored by Xu Xiangqian and became a general he trusted and relied on.
Looking back on this experience, Li Xiannian was particularly grateful to Sun Yuqing, who led him to the road of military commander:
In the autumn of 1931, I became the political commissar of the Thirty-third Regiment of the Red Army, and Sun Yuqing was the commander of the second battalion. He told me some military knowledge, such as how to give orders, what is avant-garde, rearguard, etc. I transferred from the local to the army, studied desperately, drilled the military, read Japanese soldier books, Soviet military combat regulations, and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Water Margin".
After following the army's western expedition and entering Sichuan and Shaanxi, Li Xiannian was appointed as the political commissar of the Red Thirty Army, and after experiencing the Long March of three meadows, he embarked on the Nine Deadly Hexi Expedition. After returning to Yan'an, he was assigned by the Party Central Committee to organize the New Fourth Army's Eyu Advancing Column to march to the Central Plains. In February 1941, the central government appointed Li Xiannian as the commander and political commissar of the 5th Division of the New Fourth Army, which operated in the area around Dabie Mountain, where the Red Fourth Front was active.
Like Li Xiannian, the vast majority of the commanders and fighters of the Red Fourth Front Who participated in the Western Expedition did not survive their hometowns, and those who survived nine deaths, when they returned to their hometowns after the founding of New China, found that their relatives had passed away, and all that was left was endless thoughts and pain in their hearts.
Thinking of the last face with his mother and getting angry at her, Li Xiannian felt guilty all his life. In 1990, when he was 81 years old, he told the staff with tears about this regret:
"My mom found the position and came up. What if I beat her to death? I said there's a war going on here, how did you get here? She said she wanted to see me, and I got angry and told her to hurry up and send someone to take her back. ...... I haven't seen my mother since then, and I really regret that I shouldn't have been mad at her. Now I'm eighty years old, miss the old lady! ”
"Little Huang An, everyone is a good man; when the gong rings, four hundred and eighty thousand; men will fight, and women will deliver food."
Before his death, Li Xiannian often recited this song that attacked Huang An in the past, which was the hometown where he was born and raised, and his father and mother who haunted his soul.