Author Tao Xiaohai
In 2020, my mother left us, and when she left this world, she really got rid of her illness at the age of 96. In the days when she left, her voice and smile often came to my mind, in order to remember and commemorate the life given to us, for our mother who had nurtured us, to commemorate this veteran soldier who had lived a life of horseback and a revolutionary life, and began to collect and sort out historical materials about her. Awaken the long years that have been forgotten...
The old mother's name is Yao Xianyu, born in September 1924 in Quanjiao County, eastern Anhui Province, an ancient housekeeper Baji Town, his father opened a small dyeing workshop, relying on the craft of dyeing cloth, to support the whole family, the old father read books when he was a child, but also a cultural person, earned some money on hand, sent the child to school to study, the mother in the town of Nanguan School, in that era girls can go to school is a very great thing, which also for her to later embark on the revolutionary road, creating very favorable conditions.
After the "July 7" Incident in 1937, the Japanese and Kosovars launched an all-out war against China, when the whole country was full of emotions against the Japanese invaders, young students took to the streets to march and rally, and my mother also participated in these activities, injecting patriotic feelings into her young soul and being influenced by progressive ideas.
In the autumn of 1938, the eighth regiment of the four detachments of the New Fourth Army was stationed in the Guanjiaba area, many young people signed up to join the army, the mother and her sister heard the news came to the army, signed up to join the team, at that time the reception of them was the regiment political director Zhang Kaifan, her sister was 19 years old, eligible, the mother was only 14 years old, the army felt that she was too young, did not agree to accept, had to grind hard bubbles, plus crying and making trouble, fortunately, the army is in need of cultural people like the old mother, and finally agreed to join the team. My mother gloriously became a soldier of the New Fourth Army and embarked on the revolutionary road from then on. A few days later, when the two daughters stood in front of their father and the villagers in a neat gray uniform of the New Fourth Army, a neat short hair, and a heroic posture, they had a great shock, the old father happily closed the door, the villagers cast envious eyes, rushed to the court, into the local news, the sister flowers became a good story at that time.
When they first arrived at the army, the two sisters were divided into a class, and people called their sisters Dayao and their mothers Xiaoyao. They first entered the regimental teaching team for study and training, and after graduation, they were assigned to service groups and theater troupes, mainly doing anti-Japanese propaganda activities, smashing the Sweep of the Japanese puppet army, establishing local party organizations and popular anti-Japanese groups, organizing women and forming children's groups.
In the environment of cruel war, the life of the troops is extremely difficult, always facing the test of life and death, marching and fighting is a common thing, often crossing mountains and mountains, marching hundreds of miles, although the mother is young, never left behind, fighting dozens of times a year, facing the murderous Japanese devils, many comrades around her died on the battlefield, although she did not participate in the battle on the front line, but often braved the rain of bullets and bullets to rescue the wounded, the performance was very brave, many times praised by the leaders and the praise of comrades. In the army, she has become a strong soldier of the New Fourth Army. In 1940, when she was less than 17 years old, she joined the Communist Party of China.
In 1941, the Anhui Incident caused the New Fourth Army to suffer heavy losses, and the central authorities decided to adjust the leadership and organization of the New Fourth Army, form seven divisions and an independent brigade, start training the backbone personnel of the troops, and establish the Eighth Branch School of kang da in Longgang, Tianchang County. In early 1943, my mother was transferred to the branch school for training and study, and received comprehensive training in political, military, and cultural education.
At this time, my mother's sister was transferred to the Supply Department of the Second Division of the New Fourth Army, working with Han Bi, the wife of Deputy Commander Zhang Yunyi. After Zhang Yunyi's wife Han Bi and Luo Binghui's wife Zhang Mingxiu served as "red brides", introduced Huang Yuanqing, chief of staff of the Huainan Road East Military Subdistrict, and later married, Zhang Yunyi and Luo Binghui held a wedding for them. Old Mother's brother-in-law Huang Yuanqing was an old revolutionary who participated in the uprising led by Fang Zhimin in 1926, and then transferred to the First Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, participated in five anti-encirclement and suppression campaigns at Jinggangshan and the 25,000-mile Long March, and then went from Yan'an to the New Fourth Army Headquarters as deputy commander of the 91st Regiment of the Second Division.
After more than a year of study in the Anti-Japanese Eighth Branch School, my mother achieved excellent results in various subjects. After graduation, in May 1944, he was officially assigned to the Confidential Section of the Second Division of the New Fourth Army. I was fortunate to work under General Luo Binghui, and I was both nervous and happy.
When my mother first arrived at the confidential office of the division headquarters, she did not know anything about radio transceiver technology, so she had to learn from scratch and master it as soon as possible, and teaching her this skill was my father. At that time, dad was already a veteran of the confidential front, and he was well-known far and wide on the confidential front of the New Fourth Army, and he had outstanding ability in sending and receiving telegrams and the level of writing; when translating codes, he could directly translate without reading the book. He was deeply trusted by his superiors, so much so that he was later elected as the secretary of Commander Chen Yi and the rotating secretary of the General Front Committee.
With the careful help of my father, coupled with diligent study and hard work, my mother quickly mastered the skills of transceiver, and then, I learned to translate code, which is the most difficult to learn. Since the password is often changed during combat, it is necessary to re-remember those boring numbers. And a group of 4 numbers, corresponding to a Chinese character, and then the received digital signal, translated into text, must be accurate, foolproof, after a period of hard study and training, the mother has become a qualified confidential worker.
In 1945, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was won a comprehensive victory. The civil war broke out, and the war of liberation began. The units under the former New Fourth Army were reorganized into the East China Field Army after many changes, with Chen Yi as commander and political commissar and Su Yu as deputy commander. My mother worked as a confidential officer in the confidential department of Huaye Command, and my father was the chief of the confidential unit at that time. The confidential work of the command is an important part of the command system of leading the campaign, providing services and guarantees for the command decisions of the commanders of the theater. The task is unusually heavy and nothing can go wrong. Confidential personnel guarded the radio station in 24-hour shifts and delivered various telegrams to the head of noji in time. Su Yu is very concerned about confidential work, and often says to us, the confidential workers: Confidential work is the throat and lifeblood of the party and the lifeline of our army, and you must be competent red messengers.
After the East China Field Army won the Victory in the Battle of Laiwu in February 1947, in March Chiang Kai-shek mobilized 24 integrated divisions, 60 brigades, and a total of 450,000 people to form three corps to attack the Shandong base area of our army. Chen Yi and Su Yu led the East China Field Army to maneuver flexibly and seek opportunities to annihilate the enemy, surrounded the reorganized 74th Division at Menglianggu, killed Lieutenant General Zhang Lingfu, and completely annihilated the 74th Division and 30,000 reinforcements. As a confidential staff member of Noji, the old mother personally experienced the whole process of this campaign and witnessed the demeanor of Chen Yi, Su Yu, and other revolutionary generals of the older generation, who commanded the operations of the command team all night in the operation command room, paid attention to the battle situation in the front, and as a staff member, accompanied them, constantly sent out combat instructions, and sent the telegrams from the front to them at the first time. The victory in this battle boosted the morale of all commanders and fighters.
In September 1948, Chen Yi and Su Yu led Huaye to launch the Battle of Jinan, and Lao Ma and other confidential staff members accompanied the leaders of the Noji Division to rush to the forward headquarters, and the forward commanders and fighters fought bloodily for eight days and eight nights, eliminated the 110,000 Kuomintang troops defending the city, captured Wang Yaowu as the commander of the defensive city alive, won a major victory in the campaign, and opened the prelude to the strategic decisive battle of the national liberation war.
In November 1948, the Battle of Huaihai was launched in full swing, and the Kuomintang and the Communists fought a strategic decisive battle. In order to ensure victory in the Huaihai Campaign, the CPC Central Committee and the Central Military Commission decided to set up a five-member organization of Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping, Su Yu, and Tan Zhenlin to unify the command of the Central Plains Field Army and the East China Field Army to better coordinate operations. My father was the secretary of General Manager Chen, who was transferred to the Central Plains Field Army with Chen Yi and concurrently served as the deputy section chief of the secretariat, and also seconded some confidential personnel from Huaye, and my mother was also among them. With Xuzhou as the center and the area north of the Yangtze River, the strategic decisive battle between the two armies was in full swing, and the East China Field Army and the Central Plains Field Army faced 800,000 Kuomintang troops, concentrated their superior forces, divided and encircled, and broke through each of them, which lasted more than a month, and the Huaihai Campaign won a comprehensive victory, eliminating 555,000 people in five regiments of the Kuomintang army, and liberating a large area of land occupied by the Kuomintang north of the Yangtze River. My mother and father personally experienced this battle, and in the more than one month of work of the General Front Committee, they got along day and night with these founding generals of the General Front Committee who came from the smoke of war, and their loyalty to the party's cause and their strong revolutionary will left a deep impression on my mother. The Battle of Huaihai was an extremely tragic battle, and how many soldiers in the front sacrificed their precious lives for the establishment of New China.
At the beginning of the Battle of the Crossing River in April 1949, my mother and father returned to the East China Yedong Field Army with Chen Yi, and successively participated in the Battle of Crossing the River with the army, the liberation of Nanjing and Shanghai, and the liberation of the whole country was just around the corner.
On October 1, 1949, the five-star red flag was raised at Tiananmen Square, the People's Republic of China was founded, the war ended, and New China ushered in an era of peace. In 1951, when his mother's first child was born, Chen Yi and his wife Zhang Qian went to the hospital to congratulate him, and also sent 50 yuan and a crib. The revolution was victorious, and people began to live their own new happy lives.
The smoke of war has dissipated, and the old mother who experienced the baptism of war has become a staunch communist fighter, and she has dedicated her youth to the cause of China's liberation, which is the youth in the fires of war, the style stained with blood, and the years of burning passion.
Decades have passed, my mother is a white-haired old man, four children have grown up, and whenever she talks about her personal experience of the war years, she will always sigh and tell us that it is not easy for people who have experienced the war to survive. Revolution comes at a price, and she likes Chairman Mao's verse "For those who have sacrificed a lot of ambition, dare to teach the sun and the moon for a new heaven." Her mother is a survivor of the war, she will never forget those comrades who fought side by side with her and were born into death, nor will she forget the revolutionary martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the founding of New China and the late revolutionaries of the older generation.
At the time of the arrival of the Qingming Dynasty, I wrote a record of my mother's proud youth years, in order to pin our condolences on our sorrows, to comfort my mother's spirit in heaven, and to pay the most revered salute to my mother and her comrades-in-arms!
Mom in 2015
Mom and Dad and comrades in arms of the New Fourth Army
April 3, 2021