On December 5, Mr. Wu Peng, who served as the deputy director of the Nanjing Taiwan Affairs Office from 2006 to 2009, called the Yangtze Evening News Purple Cow News reporter**, I have a love letter written by my father to my mother 72 years ago. This love letter has been well preserved to this day, and when I saw the love letter written by my father, who was a witness of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, to his mother on the battlefield when he was 27 years old, I was moved by my father's enthusiasm and revolutionary optimism in serving the motherland! ”
Speaking of excitement, Wu Peng's voice choked up, and he couldn't help himself. He said, "I am 68 years old this year, and I am willing to tell this story to everyone through the Yangtze Evening News and Purple Cow News!" ”
Sorting through his father's belongings found this letter with yellowed paper
Wu Peng, born in 1955, enlisted in the army at the end of 1969, served as a soldier in a certain antiaircraft artillery division of the Nanjing Military Region, successively served as a squad leader, platoon commander, company commander, regimental division as a training staff officer, a staff officer of a certain department of the Nanjing Military Region, and a researcher of the Strategic Research Department of the Academy of Military Sciences. Later, he was transferred to the deputy director of the arms department of the Nanjing Military Region Command and the deputy commander of an infantry division of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. In 2005, he was transferred to the deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of Nanjing, and later transferred to the inspector. He retired at the end of 2015.
Wu Peng's father, Wu Jinfeng, was a veteran of the New Fourth Army. He joined the army in 1942 and joined the 5th Company of the 1st Division, 1st Regiment, 2nd Battalion and 5th Company of the New Fourth Army, and became a Communist Party member in the fierce war. He participated in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the War of Liberation and the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. During the war, he served as a battalion cultural instructor, a company political instructor, a battalion instructor and a propaganda section chief. On the Korean battlefield, he was also awarded the Order of Korean Independence for the second-class meritorious service.
At the end of 2022, Wu Peng's father passed away. When Wu Peng was sorting through his father's belongings, he accidentally found a letter written by his father when he was recuperating after participating in the Battle of Changjin Lake in the Korean War. The letter's letter was yellowed, the edges and creases were almost shattered, and the pen handwriting had faded. The letter did not contain a letterhead or payment, but it is clear from the content that the letter was addressed to his fiancée, Wu Peng's mother. There are several revisions and additions and deletions in the letter, and according to his father's Xi of keeping the manuscript of important materials, it is not difficult to speculate that this should be specially preserved by him for the first time he wrote a letter to his fiancée on the Korean battlefield.
In life, Wu Jinfeng rarely mentions his past experiences to his children. But going to fight in Korea is an unforgettable memory for him, where he brushed shoulders with death three times, and Wu Peng once occasionally heard him briefly talk about going to Korea.
My father once participated in the Battle of Changjin Lake
In 1950, Wu Jinfeng was the deputy instructor of the 2nd Battalion of the 172nd Regiment of the 58th Division of the 20th Army of the Ninth Corps of the People's Liberation Army. At that time, he was transferred to participate in the compilation of the military history of the army, and was once hospitalized due to illness. At this time, the troops received an order and were urgently mobilized to go to Korea to participate in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. When Wu Jinfeng learned the news, the troops had already departed from Ningbo, Zhejiang, and were moving northeast by train, and would quickly enter North Korea, and he had been determined to stay in the camp.
The leader left a message for him at that time: "There will always be sacrifices in the war, and your body has not fully recovered, so don't go to fight in North Korea this time." But Wu Jinfeng ignored the dissuasion and resolutely demanded to go to the battlefield. He left the hospital, bought his own train ticket, traveled day and night, and arrived at the Gangjie in North Korea on the night of November 18, 1950, and then walked for several days to finally catch up with the troops, and immediately threw himself into the Battle of Changjin Lake, which was launched on November 27.
This battle was a direct confrontation between the Chinese People's Volunteers and the world-class 10th Army of the US Army under the extremely cold and difficult conditions of the eastern Korean battlefield, and created the brilliant results of completely annihilating an entire regiment of the US Army in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. Previously, not many people knew about this battle, but in recent years, with the wide publicity of films, television and news**, this tragic battle has become widely known.
After arriving at the battlefield, my father took on the task of doing political work on the battlefield, and this letter was written during the rest of the troops after the Battle of Changjin Lake. It not only describes the arduousness and precipitousness of the combat mission, but also reflects that the volunteer units actively do a good job in mass work during the campaign, and are deeply loved by the local people.
My father's fiancée was a teacher at the primary school affiliated to Nanjing University and served as the school's chief counselor. Because she was born into a family of intellectuals, her father, who was a political cadre in the army, deliberately put forward high political requirements for her in the letter -- "to make contributions to the motherland,......Strive to be an excellent Communist Party member". From the content of the letter, it can be seen that the letter was written in February 1951, when Wu Jinfeng had just turned 27 years old, and it had been more than 72 years since he pinched his fingers.
Yangtze Evening News Purple Cow News reporter Bo Yunfeng.
Wu Jinfeng**.
With the consent of Mr. Wu Peng, the Yangtze Evening News Purple Cow News specially wrote the following letter for the benefit of readers
It's been three months since I left my homeland. On the night of 18 November last year, I crossed the Yalu River by train to the Jiangjie, walked for several days to catch up with the troops, and took part in the Eastern Front campaign, which began on both sides of the Changjin River on 27 November and ended in mid-December, and is now preparing to take part in a new battle.
Since the entry of the Volunteer Army into Korea, three major battles have been successfully concluded, and the fourth battle is being waged on the south bank of the Han River. Three days ago, it was reported that more than 10,000 enemies had been captured and annihilated in Hengcheng. According to all aspects, the US military in Korea has only two prospects, one is to escape and the other is to be annihilated. Perhaps the second one is more likely. Because the US imperialists will never admit defeat and get out of the country automatically. I was hoping to participate in the battle that would be the final annihilation of the Korean army.
Wu Jinfeng (second from right) and his comrades-in-arms.
The battle around Changjin Lake was fought very hard, the weather was freezing and the sky was full of snow, the north wind swept through, and the battle was fought at minus 30 degrees. In addition, we are not fully clothed and we have no food and ammunition, and the difficulties are very great. However, we still defeated the American ** team and annihilated most of the 1st Marine Division, which the Americans were most proud of, and the victory was very great. I believe that this is a complete demonstration of the excellent qualities of our army, which are rare in the world.
In the past half a month, we fought day and night by the stream on the top of the mountain, and it was rare for us to enter the house to take shelter from the wind. The fighters fell asleep in bomb shelters when they were sleepy, and when they woke up, they were covered with thick snow. How pleasing it was to swallow a few saliva when hungry and to be greeted by a comrade cook, who, in the midst of great difficulty, brought a little ripe potato that had already frozen. When they were thirsty, the warriors clung to the snow to eat, or went to the ravine to dig through the ice and scoop clean nectar to drink. It can be said that it is rare to drink a bowl of hot water in half a month. Our regiment commander came out of the air-raid shelter at the division headquarters, full of joy, wiped his mouth and said, "Good news, good news, I drank a bowl of boiling water today." "They were made from seized American cans, which were eaten empty and burned with water and bricks. American planes control the daytime, and it is rare to find no planes on the battlefield for three minutes. Buzzing all day long. But how the US imperialists sighed helplessly in the face of the night, their troops were attacked by us at night, annihilated by us, and tanks and artillery could not save their lives. We, the soldiers, armed with rifles, grenades and light machine guns, burned with boundless love and loyalty to the people of the motherland, went into the circle of struggle to fight.
Wu Jinfeng's wedding photo.
During this campaign, I participated in guiding the political work of the whole regiment on the battlefield. I tried to do a little better to instruct, but in fact I did not do my job well enough compared to the great bravery of the commanders and fighters. After the war, I have done a review and research, and I hope that I will continue to do this work in the next campaign, so that I can better guide after enriching the experience of this campaign. Thank you for your kindness to us.
Since the Eastern Front, we have been resting until now, and we have had a beautiful winter. We live in scattered villages in the valley, with the Korean people. Except that the clothes and words are different from us Chinese, I don't see any difference in them. Their appearance is the same as that of us Chinese, and many of the living customs are the same, and I don't feel that I am in a foreign country. The door is also pasted with couplets written in Chinese characters, and the room is hung with Chinese-style paintings and eulogies that have existed in ancient China, and the windows and doors are pasted with a lot of large and small block paper. The Korean people are very good people, industrious and hardworking, not afraid of the cold. Because cotton is not produced, there are no cotton clothes here, only thin clothes, and they can work in the wind and snow. Chinese people are very afraid of the cold, so they let us live in the hot kang room. I love the little ones in North Korea very much. In our courtyard, the little girls carry ropes to jump ropes, or draw squares, according to strict rules, one foot lifts and one foot jumps, and kicks a brick to the end as they jump. They are not shy, they gather and sing, they want them to dance, they dance, play all day long, and dance, run and laugh lively. The children wore only single clothes or jackets, and the girls wore a cloth skirt and dragged a pair of rubber boat-shaped shoes barefoot, and skated in groups on the frozen river or dragged a sled to ski in the snow. Looking up at the red little face, the red little hands are never empty, either pinching snow or catching ice. Sometimes it gets tangled with us and fights. One day it snowed heavily, and the children couldn't stay idle at home, braved the snow to clean the yard, jumped rope and kicked bricks in the snowflakes, and the shrill laughter was sent into our house closed for warmth.
Wu Jinfeng's ** in his old age.
This time the old calendar and the new year (the Korean custom is also the old calendar), our troops will have fun as usual. According to the old rules, the rabbit meat was cooked on Chinese New Year's Eve, and the people were invited to dinner, and after the meal, they held an entertainment party together. Many units had a warm party with the people, singing, dancing and acting. The headquarters of our 2nd Battalion had dinner that night, turned on the electric lights in the house (there are electric lights in many villages in North Korea), and happily told stories and sang songs. The people of the whole village, the men and the women, all came. We sang a song, they sang a song, very vigorously and in turns. The comrades encouraged the little girls to dance. After dancing a few dances, an old man in his seventies stood up and said, "I have lived to be more than seventy years old, and I have never seen such a good army as yours, how polite and polite we are, for the sake of us leaving our hometown to fight in Korea, I am going to dance a dance to make everyone happy." So saying, he began to dance, sweating profusely. We advised him to rest, and he said, "I'm not tired, I'm going to have to dance a good dance to show our squadron before I die." Another woman in her sixties also ran out of the crowd and danced. She had just finished dancing when a mother with a child on her back danced softly. On this day, the singing was sung until midnight, and we were all very moved. (North Koreans are generally literate and can dance regardless of gender, young and old) but on this day, the family where the communication class lived was crying on the kang. The comrades of the communication class panicked and hurriedly called for an interpreter to ask for the reason. It turned out that they had two sons in the family who were soldiers in the People's Army, and they had not heard from them for a long time, and they missed the New Year very much. The old mother said, seeing you live in my house so good and happy, I don't know how our children are outside. The comrades of the communication class hurriedly tried all kinds of ways to comfort them.
I'm also very stable here. I bought a can of snow-white American granulated sugar, and they gave me half a can of milk powder. I eat milk powder every day, and sometimes I also make coffee to eat. Now that I've run out of milk powder, I'm trying to find a way to buy it again. Thanks to the motherland's love for the volunteers, they overcame great difficulties and sent us fish, meat, vegetables and vegetables, so that our current life is even better than in the motherland. It's also a rich apple producing area, and you can't eat enough apples. One hundred North Korean won (2,000 yuan) can buy more than 20 apples. When we first arrived, it was cheaper, 100 yuan for 50 pieces. There is hardly a single person who has not eaten more than two hundred apples. Moreover, the apples here are fresh, crisp and delicious, not like the apples in Nanjing.
I can find some time to read every day, and I have already read half of the "Mannes Thought Formula" and I feel that I have some understanding. What you know I'm going to write by hand.,It's very ashamed to say that there is not an increase in one word.。 Thoughts are messy, you have to take care of work, and you can't write at all, which is distressing. I'm afraid that I won't be able to write it in North Korea, and I won't have the heart to write it until I return to China. As for when to return home, the superiors said very well, when the North Korean American ** team is annihilated, when will it return to China. As far as I can see, it's not far. Of course, I miss you very much. I haven't been able to get a word for months, I don't know what your situation is, and sometimes I make all kinds of conjectures, of course, in vain. After the resumption of the military post, I received a letter from my father and friends last year, and I knew that because I had told you that you would not write from me, I could not help but hope that one would come by a miracle. I hope that at this time you are physically strong, your spirit is very happy, you work hard, and your mind is improving quickly. Especially in this movement to resist US aggression and aid Korea, I hope you will also contribute to the motherland within your own scope. When will you be able to stand firmly on the stand of the proletariat and strive to be a good Communist Party member?
It was the first time I wrote to you since I entered the court, and it was written so long as soon as I wrote it. Your parents, they will want to hear from me, but I don't want to write another letter, so let's bless them here. Wishing them a long, healthy and happy life! I hope you will greet me. Brother Ping must be very excited and lively, I wish him progress in his Xi!
If you write to me, the envelope can be written like this: Political Office of the 172nd Regiment of the 58th Division of the 20th Army of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army. I don't know when this letter will reach you, may it be as soon as possible.
Salutes. Proofread by Li Haihui.