On the anti-Japanese battlefield more than 70 years ago, many ancestors fought for the survival of the nation. The war of that year has long since left us, but a letter of sealing left on the battlefield has become an eternal witness of history. Today, when you open these dusty family letters again, you can still read about the smoke and suffering, the thoughts and worries, and the resolute determination to die and martyr the country.
"Dear Hexin, Yu was ordered to stick to Tonggu this time, because the above grand plan was undecided, the contact with the rear was too far, the enemy moved quickly, and now he is struggling alone, and he is determined to repay the country with all his sacrifices to repay the country's nourishment, and to die for the country, which is extremely glorious." This is the last family letter written by Dai Anlan, commander of the 200th Division of the National Revolutionary Army, to his wife. In 1942, Dai Anlan led the vanguard of the Chinese Expeditionary Force to Burma to urgently support the British allies, resist Japan, and make great achievements in the defense of Tonggu and the reconquest of Tangji. When he wrote this family letter, he was fighting alone with all the soldiers of the division and holding on to the ancient city. At a critical juncture, he issued the following order to all the soldiers: "The commander of this division will first make a will, and if the division commander dies in battle, the deputy division commander will replace him; the deputy division commander will be replaced by the deputy division commander; the deputy division commander will be replaced by the chief of staff; the regiment commander will be killed in battle, and the battalion commander will be replaced." And so on, at all levels."
The younger son of General Dai Anlan said that his father did not send this letter, and that after his father wrote this letter, he put it in his purse, because after his father sacrificed, the purse was brought back, and then he opened it to find that the letter was a month or two after his father's sacrifice.
At the time of his death, General Dai Anlan was only 38 years old. From his last family letter, posterity can read about the determination of an iron-blooded soldier to martyr the country: "Your mother and son will live more painfully in the future, but the four children of Dong, Jing, Cheng, and Hedge are extremely intelligent and handsome, and they will have great success in the future. ”
"Don't think of me!" But people are not grass and trees, who can be ruthless? Just after writing a few words to his family, Dai Anlan quietly wrote a letter to three relatives and friends, and what was revealed in the letter was an ordinary father, who was reluctant to give up his family: "We have been together for many years, we have taken care of each other, after Yu Ru died in battle, my wife's spiritual life has been extremely painful, material life, more broken sources, and my brother is looking forward to the aftermath for me." People know each other, you know each other's hearts, and I think that brothers will not fail me. ”
Dong, Jing, Hedge, and Cheng were the four children of General Dai Anlan. The youngest son, Dai Chengdong, told reporters that their names are also related to the anti-Japanese resistance. My father arrived in Jinan in 1928 during the Northern Expedition, and he hated the "Jinan Massacre" created by the Japanese, and at this time, his brother was born, and he was called Fudong and destroyed Dongyang. When the sister was born, it was called a fence, and if the girl could not fight, she would build the fence. The second brother was born with the name of Jingdong, and the younger son was called Chengdong.
Later, the four children of General Dai Anlan co-compiled a book, which put together his father's suicide note and many historical materials and photos to become a permanent memorial. This photograph has always been treasured by Dai Chengdong in the second year of his father's sacrifice, and despite the difficulties in the family's life, his mother Wang Hexin donated all her pension to open a "senior industrial vocational school" named after Dai Anlan in Quanzhou, Guangxi. The school later survived the war and was relocated several times, becoming the predecessor of today's Anlan Middle School in Wuhu, Anhui.
Today, General Dai Anlan's cemetery is placed in a park in Wuhu, anhui province, where he visits the tomb every year during the Qingming Dynasty, which has become an arrangement that Dai Chengdong's family has not been able to move for decades. When his father died, Dai Chengdong had just turned one year old, and all his impressions of his father came from the descriptions of his relatives, which was also his regret all along. In 2011, after retiring, Dai Chengdong traveled to Myanmar to search for many places and found the place where his father fought and died in the tropical rainforest of northern Myanmar. At 5 p.m. on May 26, 1942, General Dai Anlan was martyred here at the age of 38. At that time, he was ordered to lead his troops to break through to return home, and when he crossed the last line of defense, he was ambushed by the Japanese army and shot in the chest and abdomen. At the time of the sacrifice, it was only about thirty or forty miles away from the border of the motherland. The mountains were densely forested, and there were no coffins, so the soldiers took off their uniforms, wrapped them around the general's body, and carried them back to the motherland.