Born in October 1926, Zhou Shaoying entered the Whampoa Military Academy in 1943 and participated in the “Last Battle between China and Japan” – the Battle of Xixiakou in 1945, serving as a heavy machine gunner.
In the fall of 1947, he graduated from the 21st Cavalry Division of the Whampoa Military Academy and was assigned to the Guards Battalion of the 99th Army of the Kuomintang in Guangzhou, where he served as a second lieutenant platoon leader, lieutenant platoon leader, lieutenant deputy company commander and captain company commander.
In 1949, he left the army and returned home to work as a farmer. During the Cultural Revolution, he was branded as a “counter-revolutionary” and was brutally persecuted, but was rehabilitated in 1981 and joined the Democratic Revolution.
1
Midnight, south bank of Hanshui.
The Republic of China Type 2-4 Maxim heavy machine gun is silent in the night, the black water-cooled barrel is as rugged and cold as a mortar, the bullets have been jammed into the magazine, and the ammunition bag hangs heavily on the side. Zhou Shaoying tense body sitting on the firing seat, set the scale, hold the gun tightly, eyes on the front of the dark and heavy river. The cold gun in his hand came with a burst of chill.
He just completed a seventy-mile march with the team, the road and two comrades took turns carrying the forty-nine kilogram Maxim heavy machine gun, wrapped in a thin cotton jacket body has been sweating wet. At this time, the heat subsided, and the body began to chill.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon when they received the mission to fight in the war. Zhou Shaoying was in the classroom of the cavalry section of the Eighth Branch of the Whampoa Military Academy when the instructor suddenly passed on the military order of the commander of the war zone, Li Zongren: all teachers and students immediately suspended classes and must arrive at the south bank of Hanshui before 12:00 that night, and set up defenses in the area from Qingshan Harbor to Sanguanten to block the Japanese from crossing the river.
Zhou Shaoying Zhou Shaoying
It was March 1945. The waves of the Pacific Ocean had buried the Japanese carrier fleet; American troops landed in the Philippines, broke the capital Manila, and pointed their swords at the Japanese mainland. Like a badly wounded beast, the Japanese army pounced on the northern part of China’s Yuxi-Europe region.
Field cannons and armored fighting vehicles shook the mountains and fields, and the gods of death pushed forward, forty-kilogram shells whistled and lunged, flattening hillocks and filling gullies with debris and flesh. Airplanes swept low, dropping bombs as thick as buckets, and the thick walls of the city were blown to rubble. Chariots drove into Laohekou over the bodies of the people, and Nanyang was also destroyed.
The Twelfth Front Army commander Eitaro Uchiyama led more than 50,000 Japanese and fake troops to continue advancing to the West Gorge, and the tank division fought a duel with the Kuomintang 85th and 78th armies holding the defile of Xiping Town. The Japanese army was unable to attack for a long time, and the dead and wounded, so they divided part of their infantry to attempt to cross the Han River from the left flank and attack the rear of the Nationalist army in a roundabout way. Li Zongren noticed the enemy, but was too late to transfer troops, so he had to order the students and teachers of the Eighth Branch of Huangpu Military Academy in Jun County, Hubei to join the battle.
In this way, Zhou Shaoying saw the first battle of his life.
More than 3,000 students and teachers of the Eighth Branch were organized into 17 squadrons, and Zhou Shaoying belonged to the fifth squadron. After being ordered, they were led by the chief captain Huang Huinan, opened the armory, brought light weapons, and ran all the way to Hanshui. At 11:00 p.m., the team arrived at the position early and dug simple bunkers along the fifteen-kilometer-long front, waiting for the enemy.
Machine gunners were most vulnerable to attack, so machine gun positions were set up behind the infantry, and Zhou Shaoying and two other students took turns on duty, not leaving their guns for a moment.
2
It was late at night, and the wetness was floating around the body. The ammunition soldier and the other two machine gunners crouched and leaned in a bunker only a foot deep to rest, no one talked to each other, only to hear the sound of the river water rushing past.
Zhou Shaoying is still in a state of alert, his body does not move, but his heart is like the water ripples. These days, the war at hand kept him awake all night, more than 100,000 soldiers are bleeding and sacrificing, casualties are huge, many of them are his seniors – he read the desperate books of those who died in the Song-Shanghai and Changsha battles.
At this time, Zhou Shaoying had long been cut off from his family in the fallen areas, and did not know how his mother and wife were doing thousands of miles away. Zhou Shaoying dared not think, when he left home, his mother was bedridden.
Zhou Shaoying’s maternal grandfather was a seventh-ranked member of the Hanlin Academy during the Guangxu period, and his mother was able to attend private school for six years. Enlightened by his mother, Zhou Shaoying was gifted and intelligent and skipped grades in elementary and junior high school.
After the fall of North China, the Japanese stationed in his hometown Changqing County (later incorporated into Linqing City), and the Japanese government took over the school, appointed the principal and reviewed the teaching materials, and Japanese became a compulsory course for them. At this time, the underground branch of the Kuomintang in Changqing also set up an underground middle school based on the elementary school controlled by the pseudo-government, secretly printing lecture notes and organizing secret classes.
The Japanese government often sent people to inspect the school. One day, they were in the middle of a lesson when the principal came to the classroom door and calmly said, “Students, put your handouts away immediately, ‘they’ are coming.
Everyone panicked and gathered the handouts together, and the teacher sent them to a villager’s house near the school and hid them. Ten minutes or so later, a Japanese man wearing glasses accompanied by several Chinese walked unhurriedly into the classroom – they walked everywhere with aplomb – saw that the instructor was energetically teaching Japanese, and nodded in satisfaction as he left.
In 1943, when the Japanese imposed martial law, underground teaching could no longer be maintained and the school had to be disbanded. At that time, the Central Army Academy set up a training course for cadres in Fuyang, Anhui Province (later incorporated into the 8th branch of the Whampoa Military Academy), and Zhou Shaoying wanted to apply for it, but he was hesitant because his mother was sick in bed and he could not travel far.
However, after his mother noticed, she called him to her bed: “Go ahead, learn your skills over there, and I’ll take care of Yi Ying.” Yi Ying was Zhou Shaoying’s wife, and although he was only seventeen at the time, he had been married for five years.
His wife was six years older than him. Before the Japanese came, the village people had heard of their lustful evil and were scared to marry their daughters in a hurry. A dozen pairs of young people in the village were married almost simultaneously.
3
On the way to the military school, Zhou Shaoying encountered Japanese soldiers many times, and the pain of his country’s death was embedded in his heart like a nail.
The Jinan train station, a quaint Germanic building, was crowded with people eager to escape the fallen zone, fear and anxiety written on their faces. The carriages were jam-packed, crammed to the point of deformation, and suffocatingly hot.
Before the doors were closed, two Japanese soldiers carrying guns suddenly appeared at the door and waved for the people in the carriage to get off, translating that three carriages were to be vacated to transport the imperial troops. People stepped off the train helplessly. The brutality of the Japanese soldiers aroused the youthful spirit of Zhou Shaoying, who stood stubbornly in the carriage and refused to obey orders. A Japanese soldier rushed up, grabbed his luggage and threw it onto the platform, raised his hand and gave Zhou Shaoying a slap, and kicked him off the train.
Traveling through Shangqiu, late in the day, the Japanese soldiers are searching the city for people fighting against the war, the streets are empty, a stern atmosphere.
Zhou Shaoying found a hotel to stay. During the night, heavy footsteps sounded in the aisles, and Japanese soldiers called and kicked the door with a “bang”. All the travelers were thrown out of bed and escorted to a square. They were executing “communists” here, and the travellers had been dragged here to show them what happens when you confront the Japanese.
The blinding light of the military vehicle shone on a dozen people tied up and kneeling in the area: men and women, older and younger; their hair was disheveled, but their faces were quiet, not a bit frightened as in the crowd.
A command, the executioner cut their necks one by one, heads tumbling, blood dripping all over the ground.
4
At six o’clock in the morning on the south bank of the Han River, a light rain was falling from the gloomy sky.
Zhou Shaoying suddenly held his breath, his cold body was instantly ignited – a group of Japanese soldiers carrying black kayaks appeared in the shadows on the opposite bank. The captain ordered in a deep voice: “Enemy troops appear, pay attention to observation and wait for the firing signal from the general command.”
The Japanese did not anticipate that the Nationalists had quickly fortified the south bank, and a dozen kayaks full of Japanese soldiers came straight at them with carelessness. Halfway across the river, the signal bomb of the general headquarters whistled into the air, and several thousand soldiers opened fire at the same time, with bullets and mortar shells weaving into a huge firepower net, covering the enemy in the river.
Zhou Shaoying’s hands gripped the gun, his body trembled with the Maxim, and the ammunition soldiers were nervously replacing the cartridge pouches on the side. The Japanese panicked as countless columns of water splashed up in the river, and most of them had time to return fire before their bodies were pierced along with the kayaks and tumbled down the river.
The enemy troops on the other side of the river reacted immediately and fired quickly for cover, but the fire was weak and did not pose a substantial threat to the national troops.
A missed kayak approached the shore, and more than a dozen of the enemy climbed up the river bank and hid in the dead end of the firing. The captain-in-chief immediately decided to send four stabbing instructors to lead twenty students to jump out of cover and rush down the hill to engage the enemy in a white-knuckle battle.
The instructors were all familiar with the art of swords and knives and were skilled in stabbing; the students, after years of hard training, were also well-trained and fierce. They quickly approached the Japanese soldiers and started to kill them. In a few moments, most of the Japanese soldiers were killed, and the remaining four gave up their rifles and surrendered. More than twenty students were safe and sound, only a few of the thin cotton jacket was stabbed out of the hole.
The Japanese suffered heavy losses on their first river crossing and cowered out of range to the opposite bank, letting the bodies in the river drift and sink with the waves.
In view of the lessons learned from this time the enemy washed up on the shore, the captain promptly adjusted the tactics of “half crossing and attack” – “the enemy rushed up easily to cause casualties, can no longer risk. As soon as they show their heads on the other side of the river, immediately suppress the fire and do not give them a chance to cross the river.”
“You are all future generals, fighting bayonets with these devils, loss.”
5
In the autumn of 1947, the national flag on the school’s practice field was waving and flying in the wind, and the Whampoa students who were about to part were in neat formation, singing their parting song in unison. The masculine voices of the men and the heartfelt tunes of the boys were fused together and reverberated for a long time in the practice field.
After singing the graduation song, Zhou Shaoying said goodbye to fellow students, went to Guangzhou to join the Kuomintang Ninety-ninth Army Guard Battalion, as a second lieutenant platoon leader, responsible for the guard work of the army commander Hu Changqing.
At this time, there was a strong war-weariness among the soldiers of the Nationalist Army, who had already experienced eight years of resistance and two years of civil war, and no one wanted to continue fighting with their compatriots. Chatting privately with his close brothers, Zhou Shaoying asserted, “Chiang Kai-shek will certainly lose.”
The following year, the national army was routed in the Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin battles, and whole divisions and regiments defected; Huang Batao committed suicide by raising his gun, Liao Yaoxiang, Huang Wei and Du Yuming were captured, and the famous anti-Japanese generals fell one by one. The PLA then pressed millions of troops along the Yangtze River, and Hu Changqing led the 99th Army in the area from Wuhu Bay site to Qingyi along the river.
Late at night, Zhou Shaoying was awakened by soldiers, “Escort the army commander on his trip immediately!” At this time, Zhou Shaoying had been promoted to captain company commander. Hu Changqing looked grave and drove straight to the riverside defense area.
When Chiang Kai-shek inspected the river defenses, he thought the Yangtze River fortifications were unbreakable and said with great confidence, “Unless the Communists fly over.” However, behind the solid fortifications at this time, the armament was lax, and whole boxes of ammunition were left cold and unopened. Officers and soldiers look wooden, many are not at their posts on standby.
Huangpu veterans: the heavy machine gunner who blocked the Japanese for fifteen days
Hu Changqing, with an iron face, barked at a soldier, “Get your division commander here!” At that moment a group of National Army officers and soldiers not far away suddenly raised a red flag and shouted, “We are the Chinese People’s Liberation Army!” –His subordinates had already defected, so they had shown mercy by not arresting him as a “surrender”. Hu Changqing’s face was ashen, and without a word, he turned around and got into a jeep to avoid Xuancheng.
Several warships were parked alone in Huangpu port in Guangzhou. Two days later, the garrison will board the ship to retreat to Taiwan.
Zhou Shaoying did not want to go to that strange island, he remembered his mother in the north; the war was coming to an end, he had to pay for her old age. He secretly made an escape plan with a fellow Yueyang student. The next morning, they lied about going to Guangzhou to buy daily necessities for use in Taiwan, and as soon as they arrived in Guangzhou, they ran to the train station and squeezed onto the northbound train.
At a time when the situation was difficult and turbulent, the National Army strictly prevented soldiers from leaving their units. To avoid inspection, they tumbled through the windows onto the roof of the train and ambled all the way back to their hometown amidst the whistling wind.
6
Zhou Shaoying carefully disguised his military career, not saying much in front of people, only trying to serve his mother and live a peaceful and stable life. A few years later, the county recruited teaching staff, he won the exam and taught language.
After that, various movements came one after another.
The national campaign to expose, criticize and investigate the “Hu Feng counter-revolutionary group” soon spread to the county, and Zhou Shaoying felt that he would be the first to be exposed, so he went directly to the secretary of the school party committee to “confess” his “historical problems”.
“Please believe that I joined the army to fight the devils and never fired a single shot at my compatriots.” He repeatedly emphasized this point. Then he went to the Public Security Bureau with his bunk. After hearing his words, the public security chief smiled with disinterest, “Confess your problems in no particular order, and all can be exempted from punishment. Go home.”
During the “purge campaign,” Zhou Shaoying also passed, but it was not as easy as the last time. He was detained and examined for thirty-nine days before he received the conclusion that he had “given a true account and was exempt from punishment.
In the end, Zhou did not escape the thunder of the Cultural Revolution and was branded as a “historical counter-revolutionary”. The “Red Guards” listed twenty-one of his sins. The first one was “opposing the posting of Chairman Mao’s portrait”. Because he had seen the statue of the leader on a desk stained with ink, he reminded the students, “It’s dirty, how ugly, remove it.”
On another occasion, he wrote a sentence on the blackboard with the word “true” in it. A student stood up and questioned, “Mr. Wang wrote ‘true’ with two crosses inside.” Zhou Shaoying said, “Three across is correct.” Teacher Wang was a poor peasant, so he got a second charge: attacking a poor peasant teacher.
Zhou Shaoying kneeling on a hard bench, thin wire strangled into the neck, a few pounds of wooden cards hanging in front of the chest, the back of the straight shoulders hunched down. A few teenage children called out to him, “Zhou Shaoying, quickly confess your counter-revolutionary crimes, honestly confess your crimes to the people.”
“I went to school and joined the army to fight against the Japanese and save the country; I never fired a single shot at my compatriots.” He often emphasized these words during countless censorships and criticisms.
“How dare you put gold on your own face! You Kuomintang only oppress the people, where have you ever resisted the Japanese?” As he spoke, his fists and feet struck Zhou Shaoying’s head and body. He staggered on the bench, his arms, which had once handled a Maxim heavy machine gun, were tied behind him, unable to shield him from the young generals’ punches and kicks.
After the criticism session, he was to be paraded through the streets. He was made to walk with his face to the road, bent over, his tall body folded at a right angle of ninety degrees. The street in the county was several kilometers long, and he couldn’t straighten up for a long time after walking this lie.
A math teacher who was beaten at the same time as him was punched in the liver by the Red Guards and fell unconscious on the spot. “After he came back to life, he found Zhou Shaoying and said he wanted to commit suicide. Zhou Shaoying said: “Suicide is a relief, but who will take care of the elderly children ah. We all have to live well, I see them so far, certainly not long, not dead is victory.”
Because of his special experience, Zhou Shaoying was in great demand with the Red Guards, and he was escorted to meetings of the “royalists” and the “rebels”.
He didn’t miss a single criticism meeting at the village, town and county levels.
Epilogue
When I met Zhou Shaoying, in a small courtyard in Shuangjing Village, Kangzhuang, Linqing, the ninety-year-old Zhou Shaoying was sitting at his desk wearing old-fashioned glasses.
On the east wall were paintings of flowers and birds he had created. On another table facing the door, there is a golden plaque sent by the military commission before the parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory in the war, which reads “War veteran, backbone of the nation”.
In 1986, Zhou Shaoying participated in a Whampoa Military Academy classmates’ association meeting, when there were still ninety-three Whampoa classmates from Liaocheng (his city).
Recent Comments