Text/Kingdom Building
He was the highest-ranking officer in the Chinese Expeditionary Force who was captured by the Japanese. During the more than 3 years of detention by the Japanese army, he repeatedly resisted the persuasion of the Japanese army by hunger strike and suicide, and was known as the contemporary Wen Tianxiang. On the eve of the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, in order to kill people and eliminate their mouths, the Japanese army instigated the traitors to stab him with a dagger and did not give him treatment. The general, under the care of his fellow prisoners, bled and endured 4 days and 4 nights of pain before he died. He was General Qi Xueqi.
01. A scholarly general who is both literate and martial
Qi Xueqi, born in 1900, is a native of Ningxiang, Hunan. His family was wealthy and he entered a private school from an early age.
In 1919, Qi Xueqi was admitted to Tsinghua University, and sun Liren was a classmate of the same window.
In 1923, after graduating from Tsinghua University, Qi Xueqi was selected to be sent to the Norwich Military School in the United States for further study. After graduating in 1929 and returning to China, he was awarded the post of colonel of the gendarmerie of the Nanjing Gendarmerie Command by the Nationalist Government. The starting point can be said to be quite high.
On January 28, 1931, the Japanese army invaded Shanghai. Qi Xueqi's Nanjing Gendarmerie Unit was transferred to Shanghai to participate in the war against Japan, and for the first time in his life, he participated in actual combat. Although the morale of his officers and men was high in the nearly three months of fighting, they suffered heavy losses, which made them deeply appreciate the huge gap between the Chinese army and the Japanese army.
In 1937, Qi Xueqi was favored by Song Ziwen, minister of finance, and was transferred to the chief of staff of the Colonel of the Shanghai Tax police corps. At this time, Sun Liren was the colonel of the 4th Regiment of the Taxation Police Corps. Due to Song Ziwen's preference and strong support for the Taxation Police Corps, the weapons and equipment of the Taxation Police Corps, including the training mode, were all western models, and even had armored vehicles and tanks that most of the officers and men of the Chinese army had never seen. Therefore, in a very short period of time, this private anti-smuggling force of more than 30,000 people has become the most powerful force of the National Government. Unfortunately, Song Ziwen was defeated in the political struggle with his brother-in-law Chiang Kai-shek, and the Taxation Police Corps he created became a victim of the power struggle. Most of the Taxation Police Corps was reorganized into regular troops, and the rest, under the leadership of General Sun Liren, continued to participate in the War of Resistance Against Japan under the banner of the Taxation Police Corps.
In 1942, the Tax police regiment was reorganized into the newly organized 38th Division of the National Revolutionary Army, with the division of Sun Liren. In order to prevent being annexed by the Central Army, Sun Liren recruited his old classmate Qi Xueqi to serve as deputy division commander and director of the political department.
02. Lost contact with the troops, seriously wounded and captured
In the spring of 1942, the Nationalist government organized an expeditionary force to fight in Burma. Qi Xueqi's newly formed 38th Division was subordinate to Du Yuming's 5th Army.
On April 16, 1942, the British 1st Division and the tank battalion were surrounded by the Japanese army for two days and nights in the Ren'anqiang area of northern Burma, running out of ammunition and precarious, and the commander of the British 1st Division, Scott, repeatedly called for help, and the Chinese Expeditionary Force was ordered to rescue the British army. At that time, the new 38th Division of the Expeditionary Force was stationed in Chokbatang, and after receiving the order, the 113th Regiment of the Division rushed to the aid of the stars and launched a fierce attack on a japanese brigade, crushing it and freeing thousands of besieged British troops from danger, which caused a sensation in the British Isles and achieved a major victory since the Chinese Expeditionary Force entered Burma. Division Commander Sun Liren, Deputy Division Commander Qi Xueqi, 113 Regiment Commander Liu Fangwu and battalion commanders were commended by the Chinese and British governments respectively.
After the Battle of Ren'anqiang, Qi Xueqi led his troops to move to Kasa and Wen zhao to fight with the enemy, and the battle was very fierce. Qi Xueqi was ordered by Commander Du Yuming to go to Kasa to command the battle. On 11 May of the same year, the troops withdrew from Casa and moved as planned to the mountains west of the Casa Railway. At this time, Qi Xueqi lost contact with the troops of the new 38th Division because he went to the liaison work of the 5th Army Headquarters, and had to accompany the 5th Army Headquarters. During a transfer, Qi Xueqi encountered dozens of wounded members of the new 38th Division, who had been in motion because of the tight fighting, so there was no one to take care of them. Qi Xueqi could not bear to abandon his soldiers, and slowly moved with these wounded, even drifting from the waterway with a bamboo raft, hoping to return to the construction as soon as possible.
On May 23, 1942, Qi Xueqi's team encountered the Japanese army upstream of Homer forest. Seeing that the enemy was outnumbered and there was no hope of breaking through, Qi Xueqi firmly said to the wounded and sick: "Success in the past, today's success, this is the time." Bullet out, cut separately. "It expresses the determination of the officers and men to resolutely not be prisoners of the enemy." After fierce fighting, more than a dozen wounded officers and men were all heroically martyred, and Qi Xueqi was also shot and wounded, collapsing in a pool of blood, unconscious. When the Japanese army found qi Xueqi in a coma as a senior general of the Chinese army, they immediately wrapped his wounds and sent him to the squadron commander. General Qi Xueqi also became the highest-ranking Chinese officer captured in the entire Burmese campaign.
03. Strong and unyielding, tragically killed the Japanese prisoner of war camp
On May 23, 1942, General Qi Xueqi, deputy commander of the newly organized 38th Division of the 5th Army of the Chinese Expeditionary Force and director of the Political Department, was seriously wounded and captured during the engagement with the Japanese army. Qi Xueqi, who woke up from his coma, knew that he had been captured, refused to accept treatment, and used hunger strikes and other means to achieve the goal of suicide. But the Japanese army managed to capture a Chinese general, how could he let him die easily. The Japanese forcibly treated him, rescued the seriously wounded General Qi Xueqi, and locked him up with other captured British officers.
In order to persuade Qi Xueqi to surrender and demoralize the Chinese Expeditionary Force, the Japanese army transferred the traitor Ye Peng (then the pseudo-Nanjing military minister) from Nanjing, China, and made him a lobbyist. Before the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Ye Peng had been the deputy commander of the Wuhan Garrison of the Nationalist Government, and had also served as a lieutenant general and division commander of the Nationalist Army, or a core member of the Revival Society, and was an old acquaintance with Qi Xueqi. The Japanese army originally thought that Qi Xueqi was born in Tsinghua University, just a student, the bones are not too hard, as long as Ye Peng is lured through the old relationship, it will inevitably be anti-water. However, he did not expect that Qi Xueqi had already embraced the determination to kill Chengren, and he was indifferent to how Ye Peng threatened and seduced. Ye Peng spent more than 40 days in Burma, and was scolded by Qi Xueqi every day, especially in ye Peng's early years because he made japanese guns to shoot soldiers, and was also regarded as an "anti-Japanese hero" at that time, but now he is a lackey of the Japanese, fighting for the Japanese, and he is even more ridiculed by Qi Xueqi.
Ye Peng returned without success, but the Japanese did not lose confidence in Qi Xueqi. They held Qi Xueqi in a prisoner-of-war camp for a long time, and from time to time sent people to persuade him to surrender. In order to prevent his suicide, anti-water expeditionary soldiers were also installed in the prisoner of war camp to monitor his every move. In this way, Qi Xueqi was imprisoned by the Japanese army for a full 3 years.
From 1943 to 1945, the Chinese Expeditionary Force achieved an unprecedented victory in the Second Burma Campaign. The two main divisions of the New First Army (the New 38th Division and the New 22nd Division) under the command of Sun Li and Liao Yaoxiang swept through Burma, hitting the Burmese Japanese army with a wolf crying wolf, with losses of more than 70,000 people. Seeing that Burma could not be saved, the Japanese military command in Burma decided to kill Qi Xueqi.
In April 1945, the officer in charge of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp bribed former Chinese Expeditionary Force soldiers Cai Zongfu and Zhang Jixiang, who had already surrendered to the Japanese army as traitors, and prepared to assassinate General Qi Xueqi to cover up the crimes they had committed in Burma. At first, these traitors planned to poison Qi Xueqi's meals, but Qi Xueqi was very alert and the poisoning did not succeed. On May 9, Zhang Jixiang took advantage of Qi Xueqi's going to the toilet to stab him in the abdomen with a dagger, causing him to be seriously injured. The prisoners carried Qi Xueqi, who was bleeding profusely, to the infirmary and asked the Japanese military doctors to rescue him. However, the Japanese military doctor received an order from his superiors and refused to treat Qi Xueqi. In this way, the Chinese general, who had been in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp for 3 years, bled for 4 days and 4 nights, and died at 10:30 p.m. on May 13, 1945. After the death of General Qi Xueqi, prisoners of war from all over the prison shed tears to confess and asked for his relics to be kept as a memorial.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Kuomintang government issued an edict praising his heroic and indomitable deeds and posthumously awarding him the title of lieutenant general in the army. The remains of General Qi Xueqi's loyalty were flown from Yunnan to Changsha and buried in Yuelu Mountain, and the murderer of General Qi was severely punished. General Feng Yuxiang once praised General Qi in a poem: "The division commander Qi Xueqi would rather die than marvel at the world." The grandeur is enough to call the Soul of China, and the glorious history is ten thousand years. ”