Fu Xinde, known as China’s oldest Anti-Japanese War veteran in many media, passed away in September 2013 at the age of 113. What kind of person is he, and why is he called the living fossil of China's war of resistance?
In 1900, Fu De was born in Xiangcheng, Henan. There were five brothers in the family at that time, and he was the second eldest. His parents had no skills, and the family had been farmers for generations. In that era, when there were so many children at home, parents were generally more frugal. But Fu Xinde's parents were more open-minded. Seeing that their children were smart and eager to learn, they didn't want to delay their children's education. Even though they were poor, they couldn't afford education, so they still tried hard to get Fu Xinde to study in a private school. Fu Xinde also seemed to understand the intentions of his parents at home. He concentrated on studying, studied hard, and passed the exam in his hometown with excellent results.
Fu Xinde
Later he came to Jinan, Shandong Province, and studied in a school run by Christian missionaries. His major was medical courses. Because he was one of the top students in the school, the school exempted him from tuition. This makes parents happy. Just like this, day by day passed, and in the blink of an eye, he had studied for three years. When he started studying, he saw that his compatriots were often very sick, and thought that he had learned the right way to study medicine. It can help them get rid of the disease.
Changed his mind
However, something happened in May 1928 that changed Fu Xinde's mind. On May 3, the Japanese army provoked trouble in Jinan City. More than 3,000 Japanese soldiers massacred in Jinan City. They He killed the people in the city wantonly. Because the missionary school was in the city center of Jinan at that time, the Japanese also rushed into the school, not only killing people but also setting fires, because Fu Xinde was in the classroom at the time, and when the Japanese came, he hid under the desk with his waist crotched. , hearing the gunshots and shouts outside, Fu Xinde was very angry, but he still had some sense. If he went out to fight the Japanese alone, he would definitely die. Not only did they have many people, but they also had weapons in their hands. Weapons, only wait until they leave before going out. However, after the footsteps and gunfire were quiet, Fu Xinde walked out.
When he came out and opened the door, he saw the scene in front of him that almost made Fu Xinde fall down. It turned out that all the former classmates and teachers were lying on the ground, motionless. From then on, Fu Xinde understood that what he was holding was not a gun. So far, he had only held a sickle and a scalpel. If he had a gun, he would not be able to let his compatriots fall beside him like this. Without a gun, even with his superb medical skills, he would not be able to save his compatriots who were persecuted by the war. Then he understood that he could save people only by holding a scalpel in one hand and a gun in the other.
Therefore, with the goal in mind, he joined the army. He also knew that the skills he learned could only play a greater role in the army. In the army, with three years of medical experience, he became an accompanying military doctor. His highest military rank reached the rank of major. After that, Fu Xinde began to treat many soldiers on the battlefield. He also participated in many important battles with the army. Among them, he participated in the "Battle of Songhu", "Battle of Nanjing", "Battle of Wuhan" and " Changsha Battle " and so on.
Songhu Battle
After the " Marco Polo Bridge Incident" in 1937, Fu Xinde had been in the army for 8 years and could be said to be a veteran. After that, he participated in a tragic battle, the Songhu Battle. At that time, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized troops from across the country and assembled a total of 148 divisions and 62 brigades, with about 700,000 people. They fought with Japan's 8 divisions and 4 brigades, about 300,000 people, in a battle. From the information after the incident, we know that the six divisions of Guangxi Bai Chongxi suffered nearly 40,000 casualties in just three days. The battle lasted for nearly three months, and our soldiers suffered casualties as well. More than 300,000 people.
Songhu Battle
Because there were so many casualties at that time, the speed of casualties exceeded the speed of rescue. Often, an operation has not yet been completed, and new wounded people have been brought in. Many wounded people died on the stretcher because there was no time for surgery.Even if they died, there was no place to bury them at that time. The streets and alleys were full of corpses of soldiers. Fu Xinde had no choice but to treat them on the operating table as soon as possible, otherwise the lives of the soldiers on the operating table would not be guaranteed. When Fu Xinde recalled this past event, he said that many soldiers died as soon as they opened their eyes. They were unwilling to do so. They did not sacrifice one by one, but fell down in rows.
Of course, when Fu Xinde was treating soldiers, he would inevitably be injured or bruised by enemy bullets. But as long as he could still work, Fu Xinde never told the people next to him that he had been shot.
Battle of Nanjing
After the "Battle of Songhu", Fu Xinde, who had not rested yet, participated in the "Battle of Nanjing". At the end of 1937, after three months of the Battle of Songhu, Shanghai fell, and Japan prepared to take advantage of the situation to attack Nanjing. Regarding the defense of Nanjing, when Chiang Kai-shek was discussing this topic, the vast majority of military leaders made demands from a military perspective. Abandon Nanjing. Because it is indeed not conducive to defense, but from a political point of view, the capital Nanjing has to defend. Tang Shengzhi, the head of the executive department of the Ministry of Security at the time, proposed that the tomb of the founding father was here and that Nanjing should be defended in the face of a formidable enemy. Upon hearing this, Chiang Kai-shek immediately appointed him as the commander-in-chief of the Nanjing Headquarters. The final result of the discussion was to stick to Nanjing for a short period of time, increase Nanjing's defense strength to 15 divisions, with a total of 150,000 people, and prepare to move the National Government's capital to Chongqing.
However, due to Tang Shengzhi's health and other reasons, Bai Chongxi believed that although he had patriotic enthusiasm, he had not led troops for a long time, seriously lacked actual combat experience, and could not even conduct battlefield inspections. Chiang Kai-shek also understood that the Battle of Songhu had just failed and a lot of soldiers were injured. Now that he came to defend Nanjing, it was only a matter of time before the city was broken. As the capital, Nanjing must be defended, whether it is to the country or to the people, it is impossible to explain.
In the last three days of the battle to defend Nanjing, Chiang Kai-shek left Wuhan by plane. He thought that Nanjing could hold on for at least a few months, or even longer. But what he didn't expect was that six days after he left Nanjing, , this place fell. That is to say, the war started on December 5, and they fought the Japanese invaders for four consecutive days. After paying heavy casualties, the Japanese army asked Tang Shengzhi and others to surrender. Although Tang Shengzhi publicly stated that he wanted to live or die with Nanjing, he was on the bank of the Yangtze River in Nanjing. On the boat, he hid an airship that he used to escape. There are still many generals like Tang Shengzhi who are greedy for life and afraid of death and who neglect their duties. Finally, on the 13th, Nanjing was defeated. In order to defend the Yuhuatai Highlands outside Nanjing, the soldiers of the 88th Division of the 72nd Army lost nearly 6,000 people. On the 12th, Chiang Kai-shek issued an order to retreat, but Tang Shengzhi never thought about how to retreat. He just escaped first with his subordinates.
On December 13, the Japanese army invaded Nanjing in several groups and massacred the fleeing soldiers and civilians along the road. At that time, more than 10,000 of the 150,000 defenders died in the battle, and more than 30,000 successfully broke through. However, almost all of the remaining 100,000 troops were captured and eventually massacred by the Japanese army.
Fu Xinde's 36th Division retreated from Xiaguan to Jiangbei, and then heard that 300,000 Nanjing compatriots were brutally murdered. Fu Xinde blamed himself for this battle. Because he was a military doctor and his superiors ordered him to retreat, he could only retreat with the troops. Whenever he mentioned this past incident, Fu Xinde felt very painful.
A battle that cannot be forgotten: the Battle of Western Yunnan
During the eighteen years since he joined the army, what impressed him most was the Battle of Western Yunnan, which was a hellish battlefield. After the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1942, Japan's maritime routes have been cut off by the US military. So Japan moved to Southeast Asia and invaded Myanmar . In order to ensure the smooth flow of the Yunnan-Burma Highway , our government sent the Chinese Expeditionary Force to Burma to fight against Japan. As the war progressed, Japan took the opportunity to launch an attack on our southwest gate. Facing the enemy's artillery fire, there was a man in the position who launched a desperate struggle with the enemy.
Battle of Western Yunnan
Fu Xinde once compared the dead and wounded on the battlefield to rolling down the trenches like beans, and the blood stained the entire battlefield red. According to his recollection, after the soldiers fired all the bullets, they started hand-to-hand combat, and the sharp weapons on their bodies were a mouth full of teeth. I remember that one of Fu Xinde's friends bit the enemy's ear before he died. Many other warriors also died from the bite.
According to post-war statistics, the number of Japanese troops annihilated was also very astonishing. In four months, more than 1600 enemy troops were wiped out, and the number of casualties suffered by China's expeditionary force in that battle was also astonishing. It was very tragic, with nearly 30,000 people dead or seriously injured.
Although Fu Xinde had to face the painful groans of soldiers every day, he already hated war very much, and he also hated the initiators of this war, the Japanese invaders. Fu Xinde worked hard and ran back and forth on the battlefield, just to seize some time and rescue more wounded people. Fu Xinde was not afraid of the shells whizzing by in front of him. His main task was to save people and save more people. At that time, there were many mountains in the Longling area, and running up and down the mountain all day long was quite expensive on shoes. Therefore, in addition to carrying a medical bag every day, he often also carried hemp and some rags to carry his own shoes at critical moments. . Fu Xinde's military rank at that time was a major, but like the soldiers, he was often hungry. Although the troops were occasionally given some rice, it was still old rice mixed with grains and sand. Of course Fu Xinde didn't care about this. When he was very hungry, he didn't even bother to cook it. He just soaked it in some water and poured it into his stomach.
The expeditionary force crossed the river
After many battles with the enemy, the Japanese army was finally driven out of Yunnan. However, the international traffic on the Burma Highway was still damaged. Many supplies could not pass here. Later, we changed to the " hump route " for transportation through the aviation department of the US military. However, it was not very safe and many supplies still could not be delivered in time.
On June 3, Japan attempted to gather forces again at Huitong Bridge to launch an attack on our Baoshan area. At that time, the 36th Division immediately sent troops to intercept and eventually annihilated them all.
In 1945, about 160,000 of our army launched the plan to cross the river. After that, the expeditionary force regained Kewan Town. In the eight-month battle, we annihilated more than 21,000 Japanese troops and successfully opened up the river again. Yunnan and Myanmar, China-India Highway . Although we won the final victory in the entire battle, there were many casualties. During the entire battle, more than 60,000 of us were injured and died.
After the battle, Fu Xinde prepared to disarm and return home. He stayed in Longling with the 6,000 wounded at the time. The Japanese were driven away and the War of Resistance was over, but the civil war happened again. Fu Xinde was getting older and had seen fierce battlefields. When he heard that there was still a fight between his compatriots, he was even more unwilling to point a gun at his own people. So I took advantage of this battle to simply return to the farmland. In interviews many years later, he also said that we had never shot any of our own people because we were an expeditionary force left over from the anti-Japanese war.
Return to home and find love
In Longling, Fu Xinde accidentally met a local girl Li Zhuzhi. Li Zhuzhi was more than 20 years older than him, and they fell in love at first sight. Li Zhuzhi admired his spirit of resisting the enemy and his patriotism, and the two quickly went from falling in love to getting married. In the eyes of others, the age difference between them was too big and they were not optimistic about this marriage, but Li Zhuzhi still committed to Fu Xinde without hesitation. The two began a normal life in a small mountain village in Yunnan.
Because among the local veterans, Fu Xinde had the highest position and was envied by others. After liberation, because Fu Xinde had the identity of the National Army during the anti-Japanese process, he was arrested and imprisoned 9 times, but it seemed that he was Protection is the same, every time is a brush with death. When recalling the execution scene, he clearly felt that the God of Death was around him, and he was so frightened that he could not speak.
After Fu Xinde and Li Zhuzhi got married, they gave birth to six baby boys and one girl.Because of his father, the fourth child was often ridiculed in school, and the fifth child often got into fights with his classmates, but his father, no matter who was right, always took the fifth child to apologize to others. Among the seven children, only the fifth child completed high school and enlisted in the army to become a soldier. Other children basically dropped out of school after finishing junior high school.
When Li Zhuzhi gave birth to her seventh child, she suffered from malnutrition and paralysis of her lower limbs. As soon as my mother collapsed, life at home suddenly became very difficult. In 1969, Fu Xinde was sent to a labor camp in the place where he had fought. In order to see her husband, his wife, who was paralyzed at home, asked her children to carry her mother on a bed board from Longling to Changlinggang. When they met At that time, my father felt very guilty. Fortunately, in 1973, Fu Xinde was finally released, and the government issued him a medical qualification certificate. At that time, Mr. Fu was already 73 years old.
After that, in order to cure his wife's illness, he went to the mountains every day to look for herbal medicine. He used all his knowledge and finally cured his wife's illness a few months later. He also discovered that the people were very poor at that time and had no money at all. He used the extra money to treat his illness, so Lao Fu prepared to return to his old business. In the process of practicing medicine, Fu Xinde planned not to charge medical fees. If he met someone who was seriously ill, he would also give medicines as a gift. Fu Xinde picked these medicines bit by bit from the mountains every day before dawn. of. Later, people in the village came to know that Fu Xinde could cure diseases, and they all came to see him if they had a minor illness or something.
In the last few years of the old man's life, some media discovered him. In the interview, the old man said that I was much happier than those who died on the battlefield. As for why he lives so long, the old man said it may be related to three things, that is, he never drinks alcohol, eats meat, or attends any banquets. I only drink boiled water my whole life.
Fu Xinde finally passed away in September 2013 at the age of 113. His experience spanned three stages, and he also witnessed the rise and fall of our country. Therefore, everyone calls it the "living fossil" of the Anti-Japanese War.
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