In the summer of 1991, the 82-year-old ** general suddenly received a letter, and when he saw the signature at the end of the letter, ** a trace of doubt flashed in his heart.
Ma Xing used to be a veteran soldier in his 359th Brigade, but after the end of the war, they were active in their respective posts, and they never crossed paths.
He slowly opened the envelope, put on his glasses and read the letter carefully word by word, but the more he looked at it, the more his hands trembled, especially when he saw the sentence".Remember my family's 1,000 quintals of life-saving food? At that time, ** even couldn't help wiping his tears, and sighed with emotion: ".How so!
Soon, he took up the pen and wrote a letter by hand, handed it to his guard, and instructed: ".Send this letter to Hankou, Hubei as quickly as possible, and hand it over to a person named Liao Fuchu, there must be no mistake!
Be! After receiving the order, the guard immediately left in a hurry.
* His wrinkled face seemed to have a little more vicissitudes, and he sat in his chair, as if he remembered the events of the past, the snowy winter ...... of 1945
Is this the only way we have, chief?
Listening to the worried voices of his subordinates, Li Shi, the commissioner of the Northern Hubei Travel Agency, was quite helpless, he looked at the bad weather outside with heavy snow, and sighed a little helplessly: ".Let's go, so many soldiers are still hungry, we can only try.
After speaking, they wrapped their clothes tightly, lowered the brim of their hats, and walked towards the Liao family, the richest man in Huantan Town.
The fluttering snowflakes fell on them and disappeared in a blink of an eye, but the rickety body told the great responsibility they were carrying at this moment.
Since the end of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, Chiang Kai-shek could no longer hold back his ambition and wanted to wipe out our party in order to complete his "great cause".
Ignoring the miserable situation of the people after the war and the opposition of all sectors of society, he began to actively organize the army and prepare to start a civil war.
Under the leadership of the first brigade, all the supervisors of the 359 Brigade in the spirit of not being afraid of sacrifice successively conquered Zaoyang, Shuanggou, Tanghe and other places in Hubei, giving the Kuomintang a dismount.
This fight will be fought until the end of the year.
In December, as the weather became colder, in order to reduce losses and stabilize the situation, ** decided to return to Luoyang store for a break for the time being, waiting for the next instructions of the organization.
At this time, the situation of our party in the whole country is not optimistic, ** originally planned to reduce losses in this way, but they did not expect that they had just walked to Huantan Town, and it actually snowed rarely, and the heavy snow for several days blocked the road for their backwards, and the 359 Brigade was trapped in Huantan Town.
In the case of heavy snow blocking the mountains, the 359 Brigade soon faced a problem, that is, their food had bottomed out, and seeing that the soldiers would not even be able to eat food immediately, ** also felt a headache for this.
At this time, it was winter, coupled with years of war, the harvest of the local people was not good, ** I really don't want to trouble the local people, but the big towns have been blocked by the Kuomintang troops, so where should so many soldiers go? Brigade Commander Guo Peng and Political Commissar Wang Enmao agreed that in the current situation, they could only turn to local comrades for help, and perhaps they could get through this difficulty.
Therefore, they found Li Shi, the commissioner of the Northern Hubei Branch, and asked him to come forward to help the 359 Brigade.
Although the commissioner of the administrative department has a good reputation today, and Li Shi has been working in northern Hubei for several years, judging from the situation at that time, this task was not easy for Li Shi.
Because the so-called administrative office does not have a fixed location at all, and because of the long-term guerrilla war, only a few members of the so-called administrative office carry leather bags and work everywhere, where will there be funds to buy food?
But at this time, the situation is urgent, Li Shi, as the local administrator, knows that it is incumbent on him, and immediately agreed to find food.
They originally planned to go to the Kuomintang to buy grain, but because of the large demand, it would inevitably arouse the suspicion of the Kuomintang, so Li Shi only had to think that since he had encountered difficulties here, he would try his best to solve them on the spot, avoid going back and forth, and also prevent the Kuomintang from discovering the clues, not to mention, Huantan Town is a foothold of our party and government, and it should not be a difficult thing to solve difficulties here.
But ordinary people don't have so much grain in their homes at all, and I'm afraid that the soldiers won't be able to last a day when they find enough food, Li Shi thought for a long time, and finally thought of a family that could take out so much food, that is, the Liao family of Liao's village, the richest man in Huantan Town.
The Liao family has a large number of mineral resources in the gypsum salt mine in Yingcheng, and has its own "castle village" in the village, with more than 5,000 tenant farmers, and even the Anti-Japanese War has survived under their painstaking management, which shows the size of its industry.
If the Liao family can help, won't the food problem of the 359 Brigade be solved smoothly?
As soon as he and several other people put it together, they immediately made up their minds and went to the Liao family to borrow grain, but after all, the Liao family was a landlord's family, and they didn't know whether they could borrow grain smoothly.
Fortunately, Li Shi still knows a little about the Liao family, he has long heard of the great men of the Liao family, Liao Youxiang and Liao Fuchu, although they did not clearly show a good impression of the Communist Party, but during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, they had generously donated money to fund the anti-Japanese movement of the New Fourth Army, and they were a real patriotic rich peasant.
Thinking of this, Li Shi's confidence is a little stronger, and he believes that Liao Fuchu, the current head of the Liao family, will definitely not sit idly by.
I don't know how long it took, they arrived at Liao's village, Li Shi saw the very conspicuous Liao family building at a glance, they immediately knocked on Liao Fuchu's door, and a servant opened the door to welcome them in, but to their surprise, it was not Liao Fuchu, the contemporary head of the Liao family, who received them, but the old grandmother of the Liao family, Mao.
Looking at the old lady who was already in her 90s, Li Shi and the others couldn't help but beat a drum in their hearts, Liao Fuchu was not there, would this old lady agree to their request?
But the matter has come to this, and they have no other way but to explain their intentions to Mrs. Mao very sincerely.
Mrs., to tell you the truth, now the officers and soldiers of the 359th Brigade of our Eighth Route Army are trapped in Huantan Town, and there is no hot food on a cold day, these soldiers are all coming down from the anti-Japanese battlefield, we really can't bear to let them go down the battlefield and have no stuttering, so we take the liberty to bother and want to borrow some food.
As soon as Mrs. Mao heard the name of the Communist Party, her originally cloudy eyes instantly lit up: ".Are you from the Eighth Route Army?
Li Shi nodded: "Exactly." ”
Mrs. Mao was like meeting a fellow countryman, pulling Li Shi to ask him about the situation of the troops, and ordered someone to make a hot meal for Li Shi and others, the old lady's attitude made Li Shi very moved, and he hurriedly thanked the old lady.
Mrs. Mao said with a smile: ".It's nothing, speaking of which, this Liao family's property also has my share, and I will invest all my dowry to get to this point today, so I can still call the shots, how much food do you need now?
Li Shi immediately said excitedly: ".The old lady understands the righteousness, we only need 1,000 quintals of rice, and nothing else, and when the revolution is over, we will definitely pay back the principal with interest!
After speaking, Li Shi took out a piece of paper and was about to write an IOU in person, but Mrs. Mao suddenly stopped his hand that was about to start writing: ".The IOU is not needed, it is regarded as a part of our Liao family's heart to the Communist Party, and it is because you are fighting on the front line that we can live a stable life
As soon as Mrs. Mao beckoned, she called the housekeeper, and after a few words, the housekeeper hurried to prepare the food.
What moved Li Shi and others was that in addition to the promised 1,000 loads of grain, Mrs. Mao also specially prepared dozens of pigs and a large cart of radish, which moved Li Shi to tears, and when he left, he repeatedly thanked Mrs. Mao: ".Thank you for your deep understanding of righteousness, one day, the Communist Party will definitely repay your kindness!
Coming with apprehension, at this time they finally put their minds at ease and returned to the army with a large amount of food, relying on these 1,000 loads of grain and dozens of pigs, the 359 Brigade successfully survived this difficulty.
Later, the Liao family also rescued three members of our party from the hands of the Kuomintang, and the Liao family's kindness to our party is like a warm charcoal fire in the cold winter of March.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Liao Fuchu also immediately put into production, and he led the workers to resume the production of gypsum salt as quickly as possible, driving local production.
However, the good times did not last long, and later it was reported that the Liao family's Jiading had a dispute with the Red Army in western Hunan and Hubei provinces, and the mine pair led by Liao Fuchu had also had serious conflicts with the workers.
Due to the complicated situation in China at that time, Liao Fuchu was soon imprisoned and became a prisoner, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
It was not until 1990 that Liao Fuchu's life sentence was commuted to fixed-term imprisonment due to Liao's good behavior in prison, and Liao Fuchu was finally released from prison after his family's bail.
It's just that at this time, he was born early, and he has become an old man with a wrinkled face, and he has no hukou, and has become a black household rooted in Wuhan.
After half a lifetime of suffering, Liao Fuchu didn't even have his name, he only felt that the bitterness in his heart had nowhere to tell, so he filed a lawsuit with the county court in Yingcheng, but the matter was never resolved.
Liao Fuchu ran around all day, hoping to find a way to solve his current predicament.
Until one day, he saw a memoir written by Li Shi himself in a book, which talked about the 359 Brigade encountering difficulties and borrowing grain from the Liao family.
He immediately asked his children to look for Li Shi, but after they found the place where Li Shi had worked, they learned that Comrade Li Shi had already passed away.
Liao Fuchu specially asked someone to write for himself, and wrote a letter to Chen Qingyuan, hoping that he could come forward to help, after the letter was sent, Liao Fuchu felt a little bottomless, after all, he didn't know Ma Xing, and the two hadn't even met, would he believe what he said?
But as a veteran soldier in the 359 Brigade, Ma Xing never forgot the kindness of a thousand quintals of rice back then, and after he saw Liao Fuchu's letter, driven by a sense of responsibility, he immediately agreed to help him testify.
At the same time, considering that the situation in Liao Fuchu's family was relatively difficult, he took the initiative to take on the matter of "paying off debts" for the 359 Brigade, and every year during the Chinese New Year, he would rush to Liao Fuchu's house with hundreds of yuan and hand over the money to him in person.
This is the 'civil affairs subsidy' for you, and now the matter has not been implemented, and the money is for you to keep to live. ”
Every time Liao Fuchu took the money with tears in his eyes, he would be so excited, he said excitedly: ".The party hasn't forgotten me.
But in fact, this money was "found" by Ma Xing from the ruins behind the dormitory little by little despite his illnessThe 359 Brigade can't manage the people who don't know, and my old horse knows and knows people, how can I be insensitive?
Later, in order to help Liao Fuchu solve this matter, he personally wrote a letter to ** and explained the reason.
* Although he and Ma Xing have not met for decades, but he still has heard of this heartfelt old comrade, he is also full of emotion after reading the content of the letter, he did not expect that the benefactor of the 359 Brigade would live such a difficult life, ** sighed and hurriedly wrote a letter to Liao Fuchu.
With the letter of **, Liao Fuchu's hanging heart finally let go.
In 1991, the Yingcheng People's Court also revised the verdict against Liao Fuchu that year, allowing Liao Fuchu to proudly restore his hukou.
And the 1,000 quintals of grain that year, ** was also converted and Liao Fuchu was given corresponding compensation.
After many years of wishing to get his wish, Liao Fuchu was speechless with excitement, and he said excitedly: ".I believe in the soldiers of the 359 Brigade and in the Communist Party that my wish will be realized.
Now that his wish has finally come true, Liao Fuchu immediately rushed to Ma Xing's house and expressed his sincere gratitude to him.
During the banquet, Ma Xing gave them a red envelope of 200 yuan, and this kindness of 1,000 quintals of rice was finally completed today.