One day in May 2014, several villagers in Guanyepo, Changping County, Henan Province, while chasing hares, accidentally discovered a corpse under several boulders. In fact, it was already a skeleton, but the posture was different. Something strange.
They reported the crime immediately. When the police arrived, they found that this did not seem to be a shocking criminal case, but might be related to the martyrs during the war.
The matter was quickly reported, and the government attached great importance to it. After an investigation, it made a request to all insiders: the matter must be kept strictly confidential!
So, what kind of past is involved in this corpse? And why do city leaders require everyone to keep it secret?
What happened was an accident
One day, several villagers in Guanyepo were working in the fields. Suddenly, they saw something rushing past in front of their eyes, and then stopped not far away. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a hare!
Several people suddenly became energetic. As soon as their eyes made contact, they understood each other and walked slowly towards the hare together. The free dinner just around the corner made them very excited.
But as the distance got closer, the hare sensed the danger and began to run away.
Several people started to chase, and when they reached a place with some rugged terrain, the hare disappeared. There are many large and small holes there. As the saying goes, a cunning rabbit has three burrows. This cute little rabbit must have hidden in a certain hole.
Several people did not want to give up, so they began to search separately. But after a while, several people heard the screams of another companion with a changed tone, as if they were greatly frightened.
So they ran over to take a look. The man from before pointed at the gap formed by several boulders shading each other with trembling hands. When several people looked at it, they exclaimed in low voices at the same time, their faces pale.
There is a white skeleton inside, and it looks like human bones!
calmed down for a while, and then they remembered to call the police.
The Qinyang City Police Station quickly dispatched police officers to the scene of the incident. Guanyepo is located in a remote area. To get there from the city, you need to take a detour through Shanxi Province, and the terrain along the way is rugged and difficult to walk.
So while the police were on their way, they asked the reporter for basic information.
However, several villagers were confused about whether they could identify the deceased, whether anyone they knew was missing, or whether they had heard of anyone missing nearby.
Although the corpse can be identified as human-shaped, the flesh and skin on its body has long been gone. Let alone identifying the body, it is difficult for several people who reported the crime to identify the gender.
In this quiet village, no one has been heard of missing in recent decades.
After listening to their descriptions, several criminal policemen who were still on their way began to think that this might be an old case. It was so old and there was so little evidence that even confirming the identity of the victim would be particularly difficult.
But when they rushed to the scene and saw the body, they found that things were not what they had imagined.
Hero’s Remains
Although the corpse was very severely skeletal, it still retained the same posture as at the last moment of his life - his arms were raised in a lifting posture, and his empty eye sockets were staring upward.
Of course the police understand that this is a shooting posture ready for battle at any time.
This area was an important battlefield during the Anti-Japanese War. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, villagers often worked in the fields. When digging the land to build houses, traces of the war were found, including the remains of some martyrs.
Therefore, the police initially speculated that this may not be the remains of the victim in a criminal case, but the remains of the martyrs of the Anti-Japanese War!
As a result, this incident quickly attracted the attention of superior leaders.
Li Jianguo, deputy secretary-general of the Qinyang Old District Construction Promotion Association, also heard about this and was very concerned about it.
Since the 1990s, he accidentally discovered nineteen tombstones of unknown martyrs. Looking at them at close range made him deeply remember and respect the martyrs of the Anti-Japanese War.
Since then, he has been very concerned about the protection of local red culture.
In 1999, villagers in Qinyang City, , discovered nineteen tombstones, which were made of special ancient sheep intestine slabs and were very rare.
There are still text scratches on it, but it has been very blurred and unrecognizable due to the erosion of the years.
At that time, the villagers reported the incident to the local government. Li Jianguo, then deputy director of Qinyang Municipal Culture Bureau, followed the villagers to the place where the tombstone was found.
After identification by professional and technical personnel, it was confirmed that these nineteen tombstones are the tombs of the martyrs of the Changping Interdiction War.
should be a simple tombstone made of ancient sheep gut slabs erected by local people for the fallen soldiers after the war.
The handwriting on it is somewhat faintly legible, through which the identity of the owner of the tomb can be confirmed.
But this place is located in a remote place, and the descendants of these tomb owners must not know the whereabouts of their relatives.
After coming back from there, Li Jianguo's mind often thought of the martyrs' tombs standing on the remote hills. Although he had never seen the bloody scene back then, their heroic souls were tall and majestic, and they were still alive despite their death.
Li Jianguo secretly vowed to find their relatives and reunite them.
After that, by reading through the few written materials left behind and the memories of the war that were passed down by local villagers orally, Li Jianguo used various methods to finally find the relatives of these martyrs and build a bridge for them that had been delayed for decades. bridge of reunion.
This comforted him deeply, but it also caused Li Jianguo to suffer for decades.
There used to be a martyrs cemetery in the local area, which was built during the Anti-Japanese War. The souls of more than 300 martyrs rest in it.
But in the 1990s, a villager approached the supply and marketing cooperative at that time to build a house on his homestead, and then the supply and marketing cooperative agreed with him and dug up the martyrs cemetery to build a house.
caused quite a stir in the local area at that time.
At that time, the Anti-Japanese War was still a vivid memory for many elderly people. The years of blood and tears still make their hearts palpitate when they remember it.
For them, the crimes Japan committed against China are not history that exists in textbooks, but the years that are dependent on their own growth.
The Martyrs Cemetery is an extremely holy existence in people's hearts. But they couldn't stop the shovel from swinging down.
However, before the tomb was destroyed, several villagers with a relatively high level of education copied the words on the tombstone one by one.
This gives future generations some comfort when facing this devastation.
later asked the villager who insisted on digging the cemetery why it must be there. He replied: "There is no special reason. It is the only flat place near my home, which is convenient for digging soil."
This has become an indelible regret and pain in Li Jianguo’s heart for more than ten years.
In times of national crisis, martyrs dedicated themselves to the country and died, using their own flesh and blood to resist the enemy's artillery fire. But behind them, there are people who disrespect their heroic souls so much.
In the final analysis, education is still insufficient, and people’s awareness of protecting red culture and paying homage to heroes is insufficient.
Deep in the memory, the unforgettable history
Therefore, when Li Jianguo saw the moving body under the boulder, he was deeply shocked and silent for a long time.
He told the people around him: "This matter must be kept strictly confidential to avoid unnecessary damage to the remains." The reason why
said this is because he does not want things like the destruction of the cemetery to happen again. Whether it is intentional or unintentional, the fewer people who know about it, the better it is for on-site protection.
A few days later, the results of the identification of the remains' tissues came out. Based on the degree of ossification and other on-site laboratory test results, it was confirmed that the remains belonged to the Anti-Japanese War period.
However, due to the passage of time, many details are no longer available, so the specific identity of the deceased cannot be confirmed.
Anti-Japanese War, Guanye Slope, and the remains of martyrs. Taken together, it is basically certain that this is a martyr in the Changping Blockade War. That battle was extremely brutal.
At that time, the Japanese army launched a fierce attack on the south side of the Taihang Mountains in order to open the Shanxi-Henan channel and join up with the Japanese invaders in Shanxi.
The 115th Brigade of the 39th Division of the 40th Army of the Kuomintang and the underground forces of our party in Qinyang County fought bloody battles to defend the position to the death and crush the enemy's plan to join forces.
The 115th Brigade, which is responsible for stationing in this area, received an order to stop the enemy. Its brigade commander Huang Shuxun understood that once the Japanese invaders in northwest Henan and the Japanese troops in Shanxi are allowed to join forces, their power will grow exponentially, which will be a threat to us. The base area and the rear troops formed an encirclement situation.
Tian Shifeng, secretary of the underground party committee of the Seventh District of Qinyang County of our army, met in secret with Brigadier Huang and jointly agreed on the blocking strategy. The
battle was carried out simultaneously on two fronts, the east and west, respectively blocking the Japanese army's access to Shanxi from Jiaotou-Guanyepo and Changping-Mengliangzhai. The main position of the western front was located in Jiaotou, and the main position of the eastern front was located in Changping.
After the battle officially started, the officers and soldiers of a company in Huangshaling, the forward position on the Western Front, defended the position to the death. However, the number of enemies was too large. With their tenacious mental support, they repelled dozens of crazy attacks by the enemy.
When the ammunition finally ran out, they used stones and bayonets to fight the enemy until the last moment.
After the fall of Huangshaling, the enemy came straight towards the head of the cellar. The officers and soldiers here also showed the heroic spirit of ignoring death and coexisting with the position.
With the disparity in strength between the enemy and ourselves, they threw the last stones at the enemy, then rolled down the cliff with the enemy in their arms, and died heroically.
Guanyepo is the last barrier of defense on the western front. Under the cover of crazy bombing by Japanese artillery and planes, it was still impossible to capture it for a long time.
Our soldiers used their own flesh and blood to prevent the enemy's steel spears from advancing even half a step.
The Japanese were so angry that they could not open the Guanyepo defense line and used poison gas bombs inhumanely. This caused a fatal blow to our soldiers who were already very tired after a long battle.
They had no choice but to hide in caves and tunnels, but they still could not escape the death spell brought by the biochemical weapon .
The remains of the martyrs found under the boulder by the villagers chasing the hare this time must have been forced to hide under the boulder by the gas bombs.
But he died of poisoning in the end. Until the last moment of his life, he still maintained a posture ready to fight.
Maybe he understands that this time he will probably walk into darkness forever, but he still wants to use his last strength to fight for a glimmer of light for thousands of compatriots.
On the Changping front line, the battle was also extremely fierce. Taking advantage of the terrain, our soldiers set up an ambush in the highlands, preparing to catch the Japanese by surprise after they entered the encirclement.
But the Japanese are very cunning. They observed that the terrain is dangerous, and even though our army is deeply concealed, they still suspect that there is an ambush here.
So, they launched bombardments around them aimlessly.
Some soldiers were hit, in unbearable pain, and their bodies were on fire. But they remained motionless, enduring the heat and pain with unimaginable perseverance until they died.
In this way, the enemy finally walked into the encirclement of our army.
But here, the tragedy of biological and chemical weapons finally happened again.
This battle lasted for more than two months. Almost all of Huang Shuxun's 115th Brigade were sacrificed. He himself also shouldered a heavy responsibility and broke through the enemy's siege with only a dozen brothers.
The bloody scene more than seventy years ago seemed to appear before Li Jianguo's eyes, and everyone present burst into tears. They bowed deeply to him and paid silent tribute to his sacrifice more than half a century later.
He, and thousands of them, sacrificed their lives for the independence of the motherland and the integrity of the territory, fought with all their strength until the last moment, and sacrificed heroically without even leaving their names.
Never forget, let alone let alone
Later, relevant staff found the descendants of the villagers who demolished the martyrs' tombs. After negotiation, the other party agreed to demolish the house.
Fortunately, the fragments of those stone tablets are still there, and the texts on the tablets have been basically transcribed, making it possible for the next step of restoration work.
In 2010, the government took the lead in building the Changping Interdiction Battle Memorial Hall. Local people's enthusiasm for learning red culture and paying homage to the martyrs' deeds has obviously increased.
Behind this, it was Li Jianguo, and countless people like him, whose continuous efforts and unrepentant efforts allowed the deeds of those revolutionary martyrs to be passed down word of mouth among this generation.
allows us living in the new era to remember history and understand that the phrase "Today's happy life is bought with the blood of countless martyrs" is not just a slogan that stays in books.
is that vivid and true history, which is their once young life and surging blood, their firm belief and their dedicated life.
is like the martyr behind the boulder. He has stood there silently for decades, continuing to protect the land for which he once bled and sacrificed.
We may never know who he is, but we know that he has fought and sacrificed for our present, and we will be in awe.
We live in a beautiful era forged by their flesh and blood, watching them look forward to a glorious future for a lifetime, and why would they choose to forget it. They should never really become a thing of the past.
