Peng Xuefeng, commander of the Fourth Division of the New Fourth Army"
General Peng Xuefeng was praised as a good example for the Communists by Changhuai and Gonggong to the motherland, and served as the commander of the Fourth Division of the New Fourth Army and the commander of the Huaibei Military Region. In 1944, he was martyred in Balizhuang, a battlefield in Xiayi, Henan, and was buried in Sihong County, Suqian, Jiangsu Province, on the shores of Hongze Lake.
Not long ago, the author occasionally got a copy of "General Peng Xuefeng's Family Letter", which I naturally loved, immersed myself in reading, and found that the two books strung together by Zhangtang Village had become a small climax of the book, and it just so happened that in recent years, the Sihong County Party Committee's research on the New Fourth Army would have a task deployment of digging deep into and sorting out the red Zhangtang, so I tried to write this article.
This edition of the "Family Letter" was inscribed by General Chi Haotian and annotated by Mr. Wu Jiyu, and contains a total of 91 family letters from the general. The time from 1941 to 1944 spanned more than 3 years, covering the glorious years when Commander Peng changed to Sihong on the shore of Hongze Lake to lead his troops on the west. There are 7 letters and 8 explicit texts in the book that explicitly write about Zhang Tang, and the letters that are actually related to Zhang Tang are as many as double digits, such as the beginning of the family letter.
On September 4, 1941, Peng Xuefeng sent the first family (love) letter (page number 4) to Lin Ying in the middle of the city, in which he wrote: "Because of the good intentions of Zijiu and Ruilong, we have the opportunity to communicate..." It can be seen that these two are the old men of the month who are matchmakers. In later readings, we also know that Zhou Quan's war marriage was also attended by Deng Zihui, then secretary of the Huaibei Base Military and Political Committee and political commissar of the Fourth Division of the New Fourth Army.
In the letter, Zijiu was liu Zijiu, the secretary of the huaibei district party committee, and Ruilong was Liu Ruilong, deputy secretary of the party committee and director of the bureau. In early 1941, after the "Anhui Incident" that shocked China and foreign countries, the Kuomintang reactionaries accelerated their reactionary plot of fake anti-Japanese resistance and real anti-communism, and set off a bloody storm on the base area behind our enemy lines. The Fourth Division of the New Fourth Army on the base area of the Yuwan-Anhui Soviet Army was forced to rebel, and after carrying out the tasks of defending to the west and blocking the enemy's eastward advance deployed by the Central Plains Bureau of the CPC, the troops were ordered to enter Ludong for recuperation. On August 23, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a telegram ordering the establishment of the Huaibei Anti-Japanese Democratic Base Area on the shore of Hongze Lake, centered on the present-day Sihong of Suqian. The headquarters was in the middle of the city, and Zhangtang Village was the seat of the Huaibei District Party Committee and the Bureau, and the distance between the two places was not too far, and at that time, It was quite frequent for Master Peng to go to Zhangtang for official business, which was also clearly confirmed in the memoirs of veteran soldiers such as Bai Ai, Liu Zhenyan, and Sun Jingfu.
The second letter was a reply letter from Master Peng to Comrade Lin Ying, which was written at 3 p.m. on September 6, and was only 1 day apart from the first letter (page number 9). The letter reads, I will always remember your words: with firm confidence in victory. It can be seen that at this time, the two people have their hearts in touch. In the letter, Master Peng opened his heart and talked about his birth in September, joining the party in September, entering Jiangxi from Changsha to participate in the establishment of the Soviet in September, and looking forward to his marriage event also in September, and said happily: This is called "coincidence", I always thought I was still a child.
Reading this, I don't feel that people are in tears, at this time, Master Peng may never know, it is also because of this "coincidence", three years later, he was martyred in the battlefield of the Western Expedition in September; as he had already foreseen in this letter: September this month has a special meaning for me, is the turning point in my life... In that heart-wrenching September of 1944, he was martyred and loved by all.
In the letter, when the division commander learned that Lin Ying (Lin Ying worked in Huaibao County, and Huaibao belonged to Huainan first and then was assigned to Huaibei) to study in Huainan, he gently advised: "... Huainan, so far away, how inconvenient it is! What a rush! It is best to be in the district party committee, Zijiu and Ruilong can help you study, they are very important and love you..." The words were full of care and deep affection, which instantly melted Lin Ying's heart, and after receiving the letter, he quickly left to report to the Huaibei District Party Committee.
When he arrived at the district party committee, he went to Zhangtang, and Master Peng's letter had its own wonderful finishing touches in his family letter, and inadvertently foreshadowed Comrade Lin Ying's work, study, and life in Zhangtang many times in the years of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in the coming years.
