Who was the first Chinese commander to die in the War of Resistance Against Japan? In the 1938 primary school Chinese textbook, there was a text describing him in the text of "China's First Military Commander". However, today, when information is highly developed, how many people can remember Hao Mengling, the general who was martyred in the "Battle of Xinkou" on October 16, 1937?
Hao Mengling was born in 1898 in Zhuanghe Village, Gaocheng County, Hebei Province, and his family has been farming for generations, and he has only studied private school for three years since he was a child, and he followed his father to do farm work. In 1912, at the age of 14, Hao Mengling was sent by his father to work as an apprentice at a grocery store in Zhengding County. Later, he could not stand the abuse of his boss and decided to defect to the northeast To fengjun Wei Yisanbu as a soldier.
Wei Yisan
Wei Yisan and Hao Mengling were fellow villagers, and they were still somewhat related to the Hao family, and seeing that Hao Mengling was diligent and studious, he sent him to the Army Officers' Primary School and the Baoding Officers' School to study. After graduation, Hao Mengling served as a company commander, battalion commander, and regiment commander under Wei Yi's three subordinates. In 1926, Hao Mengling and Wei Yisan belonged to Feng Yuxiang's Nationalist Army and served as the commander of the 26th Brigade of the Fourth Army. The following year, Hao Mengling followed Feng Yuxiang's Northern Expedition and was promoted to division commander, and after the Central Plains War, he was promoted to deputy commander and commander of the Ninth Army.
Hao Mengling administers the army strictly, attaches great importance to military-civilian relations, and will never condone acts that violate discipline and the people. He stressed: After drinking water, filling the tank, sweeping the ground, and going out again, we must not see the traces of the army's camp as the standard. He also excerpted a military song from a quotation from a soldier and printed the lyrics recited by the whole army: The three armed forces listen carefully, the marching army needs to love the people, carry water and do not pick a fish pond, do not hit the door board to others...
In July 1937, when the Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, Hao Mengling was on his way to study in the general officer class of Sichuan Army University. Since the Central Plains War was absorbed by Chiang Kai-shek, Hao Mengling was reluctant to participate in the civil war and repeatedly requested disarmament and returned to the field, but was not approved. Since 1935, he has led the Ninth Army to build the Sichuan-Qianqian and Sichuan-Yunnan Highways in the southwest, and after opening to traffic, he has been responsible for the task of defending and maintaining the highways. In May 1937, Hao Mengling once again requested to be demobilized and returned to Tian without approval, and was transferred to Lu University to study.
When Hao Mengling learned of the News that the Japanese invaders had sneaked up on the Lugou Bridge, and that his compatriot He Jifeng and others had fought bravely, he immediately returned to his troops and asked to go north to resist japan. He said: "I am a soldier, and I have fought civil war half my life, and I have no interest in the country. When the Japanese invaded and occupied the northeast, the people were filled with indignation. Now that the Japanese are about to destroy China, our country has reached the final juncture of life and death. We should go to the War of Resistance, we should fight with the enemy. ”
After repeated petitions, the Nationalist government approved him to go north from Guiyang alone to Qian Dajun's camp, but only to do staff work there. Hao Mengling was unwilling and insisted on going to the front line to lead the troops. The military authorities saw that he was eager to serve the country, and coupled with the tight war in North China, they approved him to lead his troops north from Guizhou.
Before leaving, Hao Mengling had already made up his mind to repay the country with death. The troops passed through Wuhan, and he used the rest time of the team to go home and say goodbye to his family. Although Hao Mengling became a high-ranking general at an early age, he was very honest and self-disciplined, and his family's residence in Wuhan was rented. His wife once saw a small two-story western-style building on Cai Yi Road, and the owner asked for 10,000 yuan of the current ocean, so she asked her husband for money, but she did not expect to be strongly opposed. Hao Mengling said that soldiers should take the four seas as their home, and if you go to a place and buy a property, I am greedy for a small family, am I not mistaken for the country? In this way, he did not buy a property.
Hao Mengling returned home, did not sleep all night, sat at his desk and wrote tearing, tearing and writing, and went back to the army early the next morning. The wife opened the drawer and found a letter inside, which read, "Leave it to Hui Ying'er, twenty-seven years (that is, 1938) to open." Hui Ying'er refers to Hao Mengling's daughter Hao Huiying, who was 15 years old at the time and did not understand why her father left a letter to herself until the next year. When her father returned in the evening, she asked him with the letter and said that she was going to open it. Hao Mengling did not say a word, snatched the letter away, the father and daughter snatched it up, and finally Hao Mengling tore it off and threw it into the spittoon. Later, Hao Mengling walked out of the door angrily.
Hao Mengling's widow family portrait
After her father went out, Hao Huiying carried the spittoon into the toilet, fished out the pieces of paper and rinsed them with water, and spelled out the contents of the letter:
This time I went north to resist japan, and I have already made up my mind to sacrifice. In case of death, you must listen to your mother's instructions and be filial to your grandmother. Regarding you waiting for school, I personally have no money, in the future the country will be victorious, you can enter the school of the remnants... He was left in Hui Ying, Hui Lan, Yin Huai, Yin Nan and Yin Sen, and his father stayed on September 15, 1937.
It was a will, no more than a hundred words before and after, and General Hao Mengling spent the whole night writing tearing and tearing. It can be imagined that this night, the general's heart could not be calmed. At that time, his five children, the eldest daughter was only 15 years old, the youngest son was still in his infancy, and he had gone north to resist the Japanese, and he was determined to die, and the burden of the family would be on his wife's shoulders.
After Hao Huiying read the spelled letter, tears immediately fell, and then the whole family cried in a mess, not wanting Hao Mengling to leave. But Hao Mengling was determined, and before leaving, he said to his children, "I love you, but I love our country even more." Now that the enemy is slaughtering our compatriots every day, everyone should kill the enemy. If the country dies, you will not have a good life. ”
When Hao Mengling left, Hao Huiying was still asking him if he could not go, and she said: "You are a military commander, and there is a division commander at the bottom, why do you have to go?" Hao Mengling said: "I don't dislike you, I like you, I love you, but I love my country even more, if there is no country, there is no home at all." So, I have to fight this battle. ”
Hao Mengling film and television drama image
That day, Hao Huiying went to the train station to send her father, where all the soldiers were soldiers, and a large piece of black pressure was pressed. Hui Ying took a look at her father and thought that her father was leaving, and she must be very reluctant. But she did not see a trace of nostalgia for the family in her father's face, or a look of reluctance to leave or sadness. She saw that her father was just there in a serious, serious command. What she saw in her father's face was the determination and momentum revealed by the soldiers who were about to go to the battlefield.
After the Ninth Army led by Hao Mengling arrived in Shijiazhuang, it was incorporated into Wei Lihuang's Fourteenth Army. At this time, Pingjin had fallen, and the Japanese army first occupied Chahar and then captured central Hebei and directly approached Shanxi. Yanmen Pass had fallen, and The Jin Dynasty's Xinkou had become Shanxi's first line of defense against the Japanese invaders. In order to defend Taiyuan, Yan Xishan, commander of the Second Theater, decided to organize a battle at Xinkou and repeatedly requested Chiang Kai-shek to send the Central Army into the Jin Dynasty. Chiang Kai-shek agreed to send the Fourteenth Army into Jin, and Yan Xishan appointed Wei Lihuang, commander-in-chief of the Fourteenth Army, as the commander-in-chief of the former enemy in the Second Theater of Operations, with full authority to command the Battle of Xinkou.
In early October, Hao Mengling and his troops arrived at Xinkou to deploy the defense, and was appointed as the commander of the Central Corps, commanding the Ninth Army and the 19th Army, the 35th Army, and the 61st Army of the Jin Sui Army, and holding the main positions of longwangtang, south Huaihua, Dabaishui, and Nanyu lines north of Xinkou. General Hao rushed to the forefront day and night, inspecting positions, deploying troops, guiding the repair of fortifications, and encouraging officers and men to fight bravely. He told the officers and men: "This war is a war for the survival of the nation, and there is only sacrifice. If we retreat again and go to the Yellow River, there will be no soldiers, and where will there be a commander? This means that I live and die. He repeatedly stressed: Everyone should have the determination to be invincible with me, and the determination to fight with the enemy without me. The officers and men were greatly encouraged and vowed to kill the enemy to the death.
In the early morning of October 10, Hao Mengling's forward position had engaged the enemy, and the defenders repelled the Japanese armored vehicles, tanks, and burned the Japanese cars. The 39-year-old Hao Mengling wrote a diary on the front line of Xinkou: Recalling the difficulties of the martyrs in creating the country, north China will now fall into the hands of the sunset, we are too out of breath, too uncontentious.
In the next few days, Hao Mengling had been commanding the forward position, the enemy was the elite Sakayuan Division of the Japanese Army, and Hao Mengling was carrying a temporary assembly of troops, even the Ninth Army of the Yan clan was only Liu Jiaqi's Fifty-fourth Division, and Shangguan Yunxiang's Forty-seventh Division was transferred to the Songhu Battlefield. In those days, the Japanese army carried out indiscriminate bombardment in front of the position, and the officers and men of the Ninth Army stubbornly blocked the enemy, fighting as many as a dozen times a day, and the most intense casualties a day reached thousands.
After repeated rushes and killings, the number of soldiers in the first battalion of the 322nd Regiment was drastically reduced, and the battalion commander Zhai Hongzhang wrote a report requesting reinforcements, and Hao Mengling only approved eight words: "Where is the battle, where is the death." ”
In his diary of those days, Hao Mengling wrote: "Day and night, the artillery battle was fierce, and one regimental commander, five battalion commanders, twenty company commanders, and hundreds of soldiers were wounded. "Today, when supervising the battle, Commander Li Xianzhou was wounded, Commander Dai Muzhen was wounded, officials were injured too much, and in the past we saw how much the wounded soldiers cherished them. Hao Mengling's patriotic feelings, which regard death as a homecoming, jumped on the paper.
In the early morning of October 16, Hao Mengling and Liu Jiaqi, commander of the 54th Division, went to the front line to supervise the battle and commanded the troops to pounce on the Japanese positions. Before that, he wrote the last diary of his life: "At two o'clock in the morning on October 6, the general attack on The Southern Huaihua was launched. ”
Li Wennuma, then chief of Hao Mengling's general staff office, recalled: At this time, the enemy had already discovered the movement of our army, and the machine guns and small cannons were firing in unison, so I invited him to go into the cave of the command post to rest.
The officers and men repeatedly dissuaded Hao Mengling, but Hao Mengling only said: "If the crock pot is not broken from the wellhead, the general will inevitably die before the battle." ”
At five o'clock in the morning, Hao Mengling led Liu Jiaqi, commander of the Fifty-fourth Division, Zheng Tingzhen, commander of the Fifth Independent Brigade, and other generals to continue to lead the troops forward. When the Japanese army retreated, it was covered by fierce fire, at this time Hao Mengling and other generals had penetrated deep into the front of the enemy's scattered troops, and Guanzi Village, which was only 200 meters away from the enemy remnants, was unfortunately strafed by Japanese machine guns while passing through a narrow road. Hao Mengling was shot twice in the waist and fell martyrdom, and his life at the age of 39 was frozen. Fellow division commander Liu Jiaqi and brigade commander Zheng Tingzhen were martyred at the same time.
In the pocket of General Hao Mengling's clothes, the soldier found a letter to a friend that had not yet been sent:
Yu was ordered to go north to resist Japan, and since the country paid heavy responsibilities and regarded me as real, Yu also decided not to hesitate to die to martyr the country in order to survive the nation. In this War of Resistance, we vowed to take the battlefield as our destination.
When the bad news came, the whole country mourned. When the coffin arrived in Hankou on October 24, more than 4,000 representatives from all walks of life in Wuhan went to the station to greet the spirit. On November 15, a memorial meeting was solemnly held in wuhan, the flag was lowered to half-mast throughout the city, and The wuhan camp master He Yingqin represented Chiang Kai-shek as the chief of the festival. Subsequently, the body of General Hao Mengling was buried in Wuchang Hongshan Zhuo Daoquan Fuhu Mountain as a state funeral ceremony, and more than 10,000 people attended the funeral.
Arriving in Wuhan with the coffin, there was also a second suicide note written by Hao Mengling, "Letter with Wife", which was encapsulated in a small box on October 10, the day before the Battle of Xinkou, hao Mengling said to his wife In the suicide note:
"When Yu set out from Wuhan, he left a will and children. This war of resistance was the last moment in the survival of the nation-state. In order to win the final victory and make the Chinese nation exist forever in the world, success does not have to be in me, I will sacrifice first. After my sacrifice, as long as the state exists, the education of the children will certainly not be a problem. Think of nothing else... If I sacrifice myself, I hope that Ru will be filial to my old mother and educate my children, and I will also take care of my brothers and sisters. Therefore, there is also honor in the sacrifice of the rest, and those who are soldiers die for the country, and death can be described as deserved! Book and Sewing QiuXian Inner Help, Humble Fu LingZi. Double Ten Festivals in Xinkou. ”
On December 6, the Nationalist government posthumously awarded Hao Mengling as a general in the army, and Chiang Kai-shek wrote a tribute to the three generals Hao Mengling, Liu Jiaqi and Zheng Tingzhen: Jiaojiao Hao jun, the sole leader of the first army, a pioneer soldier, galloping across the road. God Gao Yu Dian, every inch of land and gold, there is no self, people have the same heart. The battle is sincere, the captive is in my hands, and a proper burial is still enjoyed.
However, Chiang Kai-shek and his government's "concern" for General Hao Mengling came to an end, and no one paid any attention to the family left by General Hao. In fact, this is just the old Chiang's consistent honor, not to mention that Hao Mengling is either his concubine general, or after his Huangpu disciple General Dai Anlan was martyred, the orphans and widows left behind can only rely on pawns to survive.
In the summer of 1939, outside Feng Yuxiang's residence in Gele Mountain, Chongqing, a crisp shout of a boy attracted the attention of Feng Yuxiang, then vice chairman of the Military Commission of the Nationalist Government. He looked up and saw two little boys in tattered clothes carrying pots and selling tea in the street. The two little boys were quite similar in size and appearance, and Feng Yuxiang asked them if they were twins
Under the careful questioning, Feng Yuxiang was greatly surprised, it turned out that these two boys were Hao Mengling's two sons, the older brother Yin Huai was shorter, and the younger brother Yin Nan was a little taller. And their youngest brother, Yin Sen, has unfortunately died. The reason why the brothers sell tea outside is just to save some money to pay for tuition. At this time, her sister Hui Ying was also selling elsewhere.
Feng Yuxiang couldn't believe that General Hao Mengling, a child of a national hero who had just sacrificed less than two years ago, had to sell tea on the street to get the tuition fees for school. It turned out that after the fall of Wuhan, Ju Qiuqiu took a family to Chongqing, and the family's life fell into difficulties. The survivor school mentioned in Hao Mengling's will did not go to school, but entered a private school in Chongqing. I believe that no one would have thought that the family of the anti-Japanese hero would be reduced to the point of half soybean residue and half grain in Chongqing.
Feng Yuxiang
Fortunately, they met Feng Yuxiang, the old commander of General Hao Mengling, who asked the Nationalist government to approve a note, which solved the problem of the children's schooling. After the founding of New China, The bereaved family members of General Hao Mengling received good care and care, and all four of their children went to university and became doctors, professors and engineers after graduation.
On September 13, 1983, the Ministry of Civil Affairs posthumously recognized Hao Mengling as a revolutionary martyr, and the Wuhan Municipal Government repaired the general's mausoleum in Zhuo Daoquan, Hongshan, Wuchang. On September 1, 2014, the Ministry of Civil Affairs announced the first list of 300 famous anti-Japanese heroes, and Hao Mengling was listed among them.