Crossing the rolling mountains and cutting deep river valleys, the Yalu River rushes all the way to the territory of Dandong in Liaoning Province to meet the Hun River, and suddenly becomes soothing. The river network is dense and the vegetation is luxuriant.
On the right bank of the river, in Shancheng Village, Jinshan Town, Yuanbao District, Dandong City, lives Sun Jingkun, a veteran soldier of the Chinese Volunteer Army. After the end of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, he voluntarily returned to his hometown to work as a farmer and served as a production captain for half a lifetime.
For more than sixty years, he has been hiding his fame. It was not until the age of ninety-six that his heroic deeds on the battlefield were excavated and widely disseminated throughout the country, causing great repercussions. On the occasion of commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Volunteer Army's war to resist US aggression and aid Korea, he was awarded the title of "Model of the Times." In 2021, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, he was awarded the "July 1st Medal".
Sun Jingkun, a veteran soldier in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea on June 15, 2013. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Liu Haidong)
One
Born in October 1924, Sun Jingkun joined the army in December 1947 and joined the Party in January 1949. In October 1950, he joined the Chinese Volunteer Army and entered the Korean War, during which he was wounded and returned to China, but insisted on returning to the battlefield without waiting for his wounds to heal.
On October 14, 1952, the Battle of Shangganling began. Sun Jingkun's 119th Division of the 40th Army held back and attracted U.S. troops on the western front, preventing them from fully engaging in the direction of Shangganling. On October 27, a brutal scramble was fought at The 161 Heights of Nanshan in Pingcun. The enemy, supported by aircraft, heavy artillery, and tanks, launched a fierce attack on the 8th Company of the 357th Regiment of the 119th Division stationed on the 161st Heights. Tons of shells poured down on the positions, trees and rocks were blown up, dust was raised to cover the sky, and flames were burning on the positions. Subsequently, the enemy gathered his forces and pounced on the position. The 8th Company, supported by our artillery fire, calmly responded to the battle, fought tenaciously, and continuously crushed many enemy attacks.
The machine gunner Zhou Lasheng picked up the machine gun and fought desperately; the deputy company commander Zhi Quansheng's left leg was pierced by the bullet, and he simply bandaged it and continued to command the battle... The volunteer soldiers on the positions were either killed or wounded, and the situation in the two positions on the flank of Hill 161 was tense. The grenade was thrown out, the bullet was about to run out, and Zhi Quansheng had already made the worst plan, pressing the blaster under him, ready to die with the enemy who rushed up.
At this moment, Sun Jingkun came!
As the deputy platoon commander of the 1st Platoon of the 7th Company, he led nine soldiers to arrive in time and brought the most scarce supplies on the position - eight boxes of grenades and two boxes of turntable machine gun bullets. In condescending battles, grenades are no less powerful than shells, and the situation on the battlefield is immediately reversed.
It turned out that a squad of reinforcements brought by Sun Jingkun was appointed by the battalion commander. At that time, Sun Jingkun had just experienced continuous combat and rescuing the wounded, and he did not close his eyes for a day and a night, nor did he have time to eat. Finally able to sit down and rest in the bandage, he just wanted to put a few mouthfuls of fried noodles in his mouth, and the battalion commander's new task came down: to carry ammunition and immediately support The 161 Heights.
Heights 161, under enemy fire control on three sides. It's noon, the most exposed time of the day. After some reconnaissance, Sun Jingkun, who was experienced in the battlefield, finally found out the dead end of the enemy's firepower, and the opportunity was rare, and he encouraged everyone to quickly intersperse it. At this moment, a thick smoke suddenly rose on the battlefield. The comrades-in-arms thought it was the enemy's poison gas battle, and stopped and hid. When Sun Jingkun found that there were shadows shaking in the smoke, he suddenly understood that the enemy was rescuing the wounded and using thick smoke to block the sight of our army.
Since smoke can be used by the enemy, why can't it be used by me? Sun Jingkun shouted loudly, rush, rush, rush into the smoke! Rush in, and the American planes won't see us!
In this way, Sun Jingkun rushed into the thick smoke with his comrades-in-arms. The enemy plane lost its target, fired indiscriminately, and flew away. Sun Jingkun and his comrades-in-arms carried ten boxes of ammunition and rushed to the 161 heights intact. Zhi Quansheng, who was ready to be martyred, threw down the explosive canister, grabbed Sun Jingkun's arm, and said excitedly, Old Sun, you can come up!
Sun Jingkun quickly arranged the soldiers he brought and exchanged fire with the enemy. Sun Jingkun threw grenades one after another, and the muzzles of his comrades spewed out angry tongues of fire. After the enemy failed several counterattacks and began to flee, Sun Jingkun took up his rifle and aimed at the enemy who fled in a hurry, and at the sound of the gunfire, the enemy fell one after another.
At this time, some of the soldiers of the 7 companies who had come to support had been killed, and the remaining few were wounded. Sun Jingkun encouraged everyone to say, comrades, in the battle of Longshuidong, the fifteen warriors of our 7 companies were stunned to crush the enemy, and we must give play to the fighting spirit of Longshuidong! The wounded soldier listened, shook his spirit and said, Platoon, don't look at us injured, we must persevere to the end!
On that day, from noon to midnight, the enemy organized several counterattacks to the 161 heights, which were repelled again and again by Sun Jingkun and his comrades-in-arms. In the end, only Sun Jingkun and three comrades-in-arms were left on the position. The fierceness and length of that battle were deeply engraved in the rings of Sun Jingkun's life.
After the fierce battle, the reinforcements found Sun Jingkun under the dirt and stones raised by the shells. He suffered multiple injuries all over his body and deafened his ears until a few days later when he gradually regained his sense of hearing. On the way down, they encountered enemy aircraft bombing, and Sun Jingkun and Zhou Lasheng took turns and carried the wounded Zhi Quansheng down.
In Dandong City, Liaoning Province, Sun Jingkun, a veteran of the Volunteer Army, displays the Medal (pictured on July 7, 2020). Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Yang Qing
After the war, Zhi Quansheng and Zhou Lasheng were awarded the title of second-class combat heroes, and Sun Jingkun was awarded the first class merit.
Two
In 1955, after demobilization, Sun Jingkun gave up the opportunity to work in the city and returned to his hometown of Shancheng Village to work as a farmer and build his hometown.
Next to The Village of Yamashiro, there is a river called Dasha River. It is called the Dasha River because when the flood breaks out every year, the water level of the Yalu River rises, and the flood of the Dasha River has nowhere to go, often overflowing the riverbank, flooding the land and endangering the house. When the river receded, it left a lot of sediment, hence the name.
If you want to ask how wide the Dasha River is, no one can say for sure. Wherever the water can flow, it is the bed of the Dasha River. The whole river is curved and twisted, with many branches, and a simple mud dam with intermittent times cannot stop the river at all. Shancheng Village, which happens to be at the bend of the Dasha River, is the weakest place for flood control, and during the rainy season, floods will flood the land along the river in Shancheng Village.
Sun Jingkun became the captain of the first production team in Shancheng Village, and the flood of the Dasha River became his heart knot. The first thing he did when he returned to the village was to work with the whole village to manage the river. Some people say that dry is also white dry, and it is often said that the flood beast, people can't do anything about it. What Sun Jingkun thought in his heart was, no matter how stubborn and powerful he was, could he match the enemy's aircraft cannons? Even if the difficulty is a mountain, as long as you are willing to dig with a shovel and a shovel, the mountain will become flat.
Water conservancy experts came to the river and planned a plan to control the river. Like the war of annihilation on the battlefield in those years, Sun Jingkun led the villagers who ruled the river to fight day and night on both sides of the strait and carried out labor competitions. Sun Jingkun's family strongly supported him, and his wife worked on the dam during the day, went to night school at night to learn culture, and also did housework in a row. The daughter, who was less than ten years old, also became a helper, fighting with her father on the embankment.
In Dandong, Liaoning Province, Sun Jingkun, a veteran volunteer, displays more than 20 scars on his legs (pictured on July 7, 2020). Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Yang Qing
Sun Jingkun did not blindly increase the height of the dam, he and the technicians, together with the analysis of the causes of the flood, to find out the crux of the problem. The Dasha River not only infringes on the first production team of Shancheng Village, but also the orchards of Wuying Village on the other side of the river, and if it is to be completely treated, it is necessary to fix the river channel. But the land of the two villages is staggered on both sides of the river, the land is the lifeblood of the peasants, and no one wants to occupy the land of the fixed river.
Sun Jingkun made a decision, and the mountain city team exchanged land with the opposite village, and no one suffered a loss. In this way, the design plan of bending and straightening the Dasha River was formed, and the winter dam repair conference was vigorously launched on both sides of the strait. At that time, there was no mechanized equipment, and there were not many unicycles, so Sun Jingkun took the lead in picking baskets and carrying them on his shoulders, transporting soil and stones, eating and living on the construction site, and fighting for two or three months in a row.
The dam is repaired, and the consolidation of the dam body is a new issue. When the rain washes away every year, the mud dam will become shorter, and if it is left unchecked, the hard work of building the dam will sooner or later be wasted. The best thing to do is to plant trees and protect the dam with their powerful roots. So, when spring came, the dam was planted with poplar trees.
After several years of hard work, by the early 1960s, the dam was built higher and thicker, and the flood was tamed. Not only has the land on both sides of the strait been protected, the safety of the villagers' lives and property has been guaranteed, and the transformation of the river beach has also added more than 100 mu of cultivated land to the mountain city team. For farmers who cherish the land, this is simply great news.
Three
After harnessing the Dasha River, the production team began to ask for grain from the land. The village is low-lying, and after the flood, many mud ponds are left. Although the mud pond is also counted as land, it will not be harvested for nine out of ten years because of waterlogging. Sun Jingkun started the idea of mud pond. He thought that the silt also had good fertility and could not be wasted year after year.
How to dredge, drain, and harvest grain? Sun Jingkun thought of a new way: to improve the planting method and build a terrace. The top of the field is dry, suitable for planting corn, and the bottom of the field is a continuous surface of water, and the water is full of silt, just to plant rice. Shancheng Village had no experience in growing rice, and Sun Jingkun took people to the Liulin area of Qianyang Commune in Donggou County (now Donggang City) to learn the scriptures. The ears of rice grown there are large and thick, full of grains. Shancheng Village is not far away from it, the climate is the same, the water source is abundant, why can't we grow rice?
It was the Mid-Autumn Festival, and a group of people drove to Liulin, which is the mouth of the Yalu River. At this time, the rice is close to maturity, and the rice field that cannot be seen is golden, and the wind is blowing, shaking the smell of harvest everywhere. People worked hard to learn from agricultural technicians, and the soil, seedling raising, planting, irrigation, drainage, field management, etc., were particularly carefully learned.
After returning from studying in Donggou and busy with the autumn harvest, the Shancheng team began to vigorously carry out the basic construction of farmland, digging up silt and building fields according to local conditions, and asking for grain from mud ponds. Wearing water boots, Sun Jingkun took the lead in wading into the mud pond, building a platform to dig a ditch, separating the mud pond into dry land and paddy fields, and finally returning the silt to the field and becoming the nourishment for rice. In order to be able to irrigate the rice fields when there is a shortage of water, Sun Jingkun also led the villagers to build a water diversion project on the Dasha River.
Sun Jingkun, a veteran soldier in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, is at his home on July 7, 2020. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Yang Qing
After a winter of farmland infrastructure construction, this "ten years and nine harvests" waterlogged depression was successfully transformed. In the spring of the following year, bud rice was sown on the field and rice seedlings were planted under the field. In the spring, the seedlings are strong, the summer growth is gratifying, and in the autumn, there is a harvest scene.
No one expected that Captain Sun would make such a clever move to turn the abandoned land into a cornucopia, and the corn and rice harvest would be double-harvested, killing two birds with one stone. For a time, a slip of the tongue spread in a team in the mountain city, and to this day, the elderly still remember it vividly:
Mountain City a team of Daya Bay,
It was a mudflat.
When it encounters waterlogging, it will not be collected,
Now it has become the Rice River.
The front and back hills of the mountain city team were originally bare, especially the former mountain had built a sulfur factory, which smoked no grass on the mountain. Later, the sulfur factory was shut down and the kiln was closed, but the mountain had been abandoned, and Sun Jingkun saw it in his eyes and hurt in his heart. In the early 1960s, he took the members of the Yamashiro team to pick up the broken kiln and plant larch on the mountain. Over the years, the seedlings gradually grew taller, dyeing the entire mountain green.
Half a century later, these larchs had grown into timber and dressed the village in green clothes, and the trunks were too thick to hold. Think about the years, there is no grass in the mountains, planting every tree needs to improve the soil, you need to carry the water uphill, how difficult it is to plant trees. How much sweat Sun Jingkun paid for it, I'm afraid no one can say.
Houshan is not polluted by the sulfur plant, and the soil quality is very good. Sun Jingkun judged that houshan should be suitable for planting chestnuts based on the planting experience of nearby villagers. He was there again cultivating and grafting, and a few years later, the back mountain was full of chestnut seedlings. When the chestnuts are harvested, they are distributed to the villagers in the team, which can be eaten as food or sold for money. After a few years, the tree grew, the yield went up to a new level, and the chestnut tree became a cash cow for the mountain city team.
Most of the chestnut trees planted by Sun Jingkun are now more than sixty years old. Those delicious fruits still nourish the happy life of the people of Shancheng Village...
After returning to his hometown to work as a farmer for more than sixty years, Sun Jingkun has always been willing to suffer poverty, and he only knows how to bear hardships and does not know how to enjoy. He had never gone to the old chiefs for his own affairs, and his children were all ordinary people living ordinary lives. For decades, Sun Jingkun always set strict demands on himself according to the standards of revolutionary soldiers. Some people don't understand and ask him, you are a person who was born and died on the battlefield, you are not good at enjoying happiness, why are you still working so hard?
He said very seriously, if I only know how to enjoy, how will I face those comrades who sacrificed?
After returning to the village, Sun Jingkun, who had deeply hidden his military merits, not only never mentioned his heroic deeds on the battlefield in the past, but also threw himself down and regarded the land in his hometown as a new "battlefield" and worked hard for decades. He spent his life interpreting what is the original intention and mission of a Communist Party member.
Source: People's Daily News