In 1949, with the successive victories of our army on the battlefield of liberation, the Kuomintang reactionaries also knew that the general trend was gone, and tried to rely on the natural dangers of the Yangtze River to achieve their illusion of "ruling by drawing the river." However, it turned out that this attempt of theirs could only be a dream bubble under the overwhelming offensive of our army.
From the launch of the Battle of Crossing the River in the early morning of April 21 to the liberation of Nanjing, the capital of the Kuomintang, on April 23, it took our army only 3 days to completely destroy the Kuomintang Yangtze River defense line, along with their last luck.
In order to achieve such a victory, the invincible attack of our generals on the frontal battlefield has played a very important role, but at the same time, we should not forget that there are also a group of people fighting silently on the hidden front, and they have also made great contributions to the battle situation through the way of "soldiers without bloodshed"!
On the morning of April 24, a middle-aged woman dressed in fashionable clothes rushed to the "Inspirational Society" where the 35th Army headquarters was stationed. This woman is gentle and elegant, and looks like a "rich lady". And this is exactly the case, this woman's public identity is the boss lady of a commercial house, in the eyes of outsiders is "Mrs. Kuo".
What can a "mrs. Kuo" do when she comes to our military garrison? The soldiers standing guard at the gate of the military headquarters also had such a puzzlement. Because this woman came to the post and said that she wanted to see the head of the unit, He Kexi. He Kexi is the military political commissar of the 35th Army, and now that Nanjing has just been liberated, there are many official affairs that he needs to deal with, and there is no time to meet outsiders.
But this woman was determined to see He Kexi, and she said: My name is Chen Xiuliang, you can just tell Political Commissar He my name. Looking at her determined look, the sentry did not dare to delay, in case she really had something important to see Commissar He, she could not afford to delay, so a sentry soldier immediately ran in to report.
In fact, the real identity of this woman is the red agent of our party, and her direct report of her name is equivalent to revealing her identity as an agent. Although the sentry did not know her true identity, Commissar Hokhi was very clear about the matter.
So when He Kexi heard the sentry's notice, he trotted directly to the door. In the distance, he saw the figure of the woman, and he quickly ran to the front, tightly held the woman's hand, and said, "Comrade Chen Xiuliang, we are looking for you everywhere!" Nanjing is liberated, we are victorious! With that, he welcomed Chen Xiuliang into the military headquarters.
After the meeting, I heard Chen Xiuliang say that she still had some things in her apartment that needed to be retrieved. Considering that Nanjing had just been liberated and there were still many remnants of the enemy, in order to ensure Chen Xiuliang's safety, the commander of the unit immediately ordered that two military vehicles be sent to protect her.
In this way, escorted by several guards, two military jeeps carried Chen Xiuliang back to the apartment.
So what great thing did this Chen Xiuliang do, and even get a military political commissar to personally greet her, and send two military vehicles to protect her? All this must start after the victory of the War of Resistance.
On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its unconditional surrender, and china won a great victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan. At that time, the people of the whole country thought that there would be a long-lost peace, which was also the common demand of the broad masses of the people. However, the Kuomintang reactionaries ignored this demand and deliberately launched a civil war.
Under such circumstances, of course, our Party cannot sit still and must wage a resolute struggle against the Kuomintang reactionaries. On the one hand, our army fought fiercely with the Kuomintang contingent on the frontal battlefield; on the other hand, on the hidden front, our Party also began to lay out and develop the Party's underground organization in the areas ruled by the Kuomintang, which played a role that could not be ignored in promoting the course of the War of Liberation.
In particular, Nanjing, the capital of the Kuomintang, is even more the "hard bone" that our party's underground organization must gnaw down. However, at that time, the situation of our party in Nanjing was very difficult, and who would lead the underground party organization and whether the underground party organization could gain a firm foothold in Nanjing became a difficult problem facing the organization.
After the Kuomintang capital was still in Nanjing, the city became the center of the whirlpool of white terror. At that time, the city's population was close to one million, of which there were 110,000 Kuomintang military and political personnel, and there were tens of thousands of full-time agents affiliated with the "Military Command", "Central Unification" and the Second Department of the Ministry of National Defense. Chiang Kai-shek even boasted that Nanjing was a "city like an iron barrel."
Compared with the Kuomintang, our Party's strength in Nanjing is considered weak. At that time, there were only more than 220 underground party members in Nanjing, only 1/500 of the Kuomintang military and political personnel and 1/50 of the enemy personnel.
Moreover, since our Party established a party organization in Nanjing in 1922, it has been dealt 8 devastating blows by the enemy, and the number of revolutionaries who have sacrificed is countless, and 8 municipal party secretaries have been sacrificed in office.
The most important thing is that among the Kuomintang secret service organs in Nanjing, there are also a number of traitors to our Party. Their main task after the defection was to discover and identify the underground workers of our Party.
Therefore, developing and leading the underground party organization in Nanjing is really a very dangerous and difficult task. After careful consideration in the organization, it was finally decided to entrust this task to Chen Xiuliang, and appointed her as the secretary of the Nanjing Municipal Cpc Committee to carry out underground work in Nanjing.
As for why chen Xiuliang was entrusted with this task, there were two considerations:
On the one hand, during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Chen Xiuliang successively engaged in underground work in Shanghai and Jiangsu, had rich underground work experience, and was a senior "old agent";
On the other hand, Chen Xiuliang previously served as the director of the Nanjing Work Department of the Central China Branch of the COMMUNIST Party of China, and he had a relatively thorough understanding of the nanjing underground party and the situation in all aspects.
Based on these two considerations, it is most appropriate for Chen Xiuliang to lead the nanjing underground party organization to carry out its work.
Chen Xiuliang was not unaware of the danger of this task, but she still resolutely accepted this task.
Chen Xiuliang's husband, Sha Wenhan, was very worried about her, because at that time Chiang Kai-shek's policy toward the underground party was "it is better to kill a hundred by mistake than to spare one person", and many of the traitors of our party in the Nanjing Kuomintang secret service organ knew Chen Xiuliang. Once they recognized Chen Xiuliang, then Chen Xiuliang had no reason to survive.
But for her husband's worries, Chen Xiuliang's answer was: "I am determined to die!" Sha Wenhan and Chen Xiuliang were both husband and wife, but also revolutionary comrades-in-arms, and looking at his wife's bravery and fearlessness, he was deeply touched, and before leaving, he wrote a poem to his wife:
When a boy is rampant, won't there be a whale turning over?
Don't go into the Tiger's Den, now the Tiger's Den is Nanjing!
And this poem has also become a true portrayal of Chen Xiuliang's underground work in Nanjing, a scarf who does not let his eyebrows began his legend of "turning the river over the sea" in the "Dragon Pond Tiger's Den" where the enemy was entrenched.
As soon as Chen Xiuliang arrived in Nanjing, he held a meeting with other comrades of the Nanjing Municipal CPC Committee. At that time, the party organization had a sixteen-character policy for the work in the white areas: "Conceal and be capable, ambush for a long time, accumulate strength, and wait for the opportunity", so at this meeting, everyone's focus was mainly on whether Chen Xiuliang could do a good job of concealment work in Nanjing.
Previously, the underground organization in Nanjing was destroyed because of the arrest of the secretary of the municipal party committee. Whether the Nanjing underground party organization can gain a firm foothold this time depends on whether Chen Xiuliang's covert work is in place.
In the face of the concerns of other comrades, Chen Xiuliang was full of self-confidence, and she said bluntly: "Concealing oneself and waging a struggle are contradictions that are both sharp and antagonistic and not mutually exclusive... I'll master it. ”
And the truth is also just as Chen Xiuliang said, in the past few years of lurking in Nanjing, she has changed her residence identity many times, and has never let the enemy find any clues.
But in the end, concealing identity is only the first step, and carrying out underground activities is the primary task of the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee. In this regard, Chen Xiuliang's arrangement was also orderly.
Before 1947, the focus of the work of the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee focused on intelligence; after 1947, with the victory of our army on the battlefield of liberation, the focus of the work of the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee focused on plotting countermeasures. To this end, Chen Xiuliang successively set up the Nanjing Intelligence System and the Nanjing Underground Countermeasures System, which were respectively responsible for Lu Boming and Sha Wenwei, and both were contacted by Chen Xiuliang alone.
Chen Xiuliang's ability in intelligence work can be evaluated by the words "bold and careful."
Fang Xiu, a member of the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee, publicly identified as a primary school teacher, and Chen Xiuliang had a one-line contact with him. Every once in a while, Chen Xiuliang would visit Fang Xiu's home, which was actually a joint to pass on information.
Once, as usual, Chen Xiuliang went to Visit Fang Xiu's home. But as soon as they met, Fang Xiu told a dangerous situation: his wife's brother came from Chongqing to Nanjing on a business trip and temporarily lived in his own home, and his real identity was a kuomintang military command agent.
The danger of an underground party comrade living in the home of a Kuomintang agent can be imagined, but if there is any clue, it is very likely that it will be exposed. In this case, the first thing most people think of is to evacuate, just like Fang Xiu, he said that he wanted to temporarily move out to avoid it.
However, with the rich experience of underground work, Chen Xiuliang did not agree to Fang Xiu's proposal at the first time, but on the contrary, she also carefully inquired about the specific work situation of Fang Xiu's wife and brother, and wanted to find a breakthrough from it.
Fang Xiu said that his wife and brother seemed to be radio personnel, and this answer also made Chen Xiuliang have a bold idea. Agents working on the radio station, they have a lot of confidential information, once they can learn, can undoubtedly bring great help to the organization.
So Chen Xiuliang asked Fang Xiu to stay at home, on the one hand, suddenly moving out may cause his wife and brother to be alarmed; on the other hand, he could find an opportunity to obtain information from his wife and brother.
A few days later, Chen Xiuliang visited Fang Xiu's home again. This time, Fang Xiu also brought a good news: his wife and brother went on a business trip, but left a bag containing a military code.
At that time, both our army and the Kuomintang army could often intercept the telegrams of the other side, but these telegrams were often encrypted, and there was no corresponding translation method, so it was very difficult to decipher the contents of the telegrams. But if we have this military codebook, then our army will intercept the Kuomintang secret telegrams again, and it will be easy to decipher them.
Therefore, Chen Xiuliang immediately submitted a request to Fang Xiu to take away the transcription of the military code. From the fact that his wife and brother are about to move out when they live at home, it is not difficult for us to see that Fang Xiu's personality is very cautious. Once this password is taken away by Chen Xiuliang, Fang Xiu will bear a huge risk.
But this time, Fang Xiu did not have any prevarication, and happily agreed to Chen Xiuliang's request, and reminded her that her wife and brother would return that afternoon, and the time to copy the military code was only half a day. It can be said that being cautious is Fang Xiu's character, but loyalty to the revolution is the background of his life!
Chen Xiuliang immediately left Fang Xiu's house with the military password, found Lu Boming, who was in charge of intelligence work, and under their efforts, after 3 hours of non-stop transcription, the military code was finally copied. When Chen Xiuliang returned the codebook to Fang Xiu, Lu Boming had already embarked on a trip to the Shanghai party organization with the copied codebook.
This military code did provide great help to our army, and in the subsequent battles, our army relied on this military code to gain insight into the movement of the Kuomintang army many times. To this end, the party organization also specially sent a commendation order to Chen Xiuliang, and spoke highly of the work achievements of the Nanjing Municipal CPC Committee.
Later, Chen Xiuliang also found an "old party member" named Wang Weiheng through an old roster. Wang Weiheng lost contact with the party organization for many years, and by the time Chen Xiuliang found him, he had become a major general in the Kuomintang.
After testing, Chen Xiuliang found that Wang Weiheng's revolutionary position had not changed, so through Wang Weiheng's line, many top-secret intelligence of the Kuomintang troops was continuously transmitted to Yan'an, including: the number of Kuomintang troops, the number of soldiers, and the movement of troops.
Later, the situation on the battlefield also proved the accuracy of these top-secret intelligence.
If Chen Xiuliang is "bold and careful" in intelligence work, then she can be described as "drawing salaries from the bottom of the pot" in the work of plotting rebellion.
On the battlefield of liberation, there has always been no shortage of Kuomintang generals who have rebelled and surrendered, but before they were limited to the army. However, under the activities of the anti-rebellion system led by Chen Xiuliang, the Kuomintang Air Force and the Navy also successively rebelled and surrendered.
When Chen Xiuliang and Sha Wenwei began to plot rebellion, the choice of the target of the rebellion became a problem in front of them. Counterinsurgency work is different from intelligence work, intelligence work is carried out in secret, and identity is also confidential; but the counterinsurgency work requires direct contact with Kuomintang officers with their real identities, and if they do not have full certainty, they rush to contact each other, which is likely to be "self-casting nets."
Fortunately, at that time, the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee had already installed and developed a large number of comrades in the Kuomintang army. Lin Cheng, a comrade who served as a military doctor in the Kuomintang Air Force unit, said that a pilot of the Eighth Bomber Brigade of the Kuomintang Air Force, Guo Bo, was a patriotic young man who was very dissatisfied with all kinds of corrupt phenomena within the Kuomintang and could become the target of rebellion.
After Chen Xiuliang and Sha Wenwei discussed, they felt that the goal was feasible, so they asked Lin Cheng to try to contact and plot rebellion. After several contacts, Lin Cheng also had a deeper understanding of Yue Bo's ideological trends, and tentatively launched counter-offensive work.
Yue Bo had long been disappointed in the Kuomintang, and in the face of the new choice given by Lin Cheng, he agreed without much hesitation. Not only that, but he also bluntly said that the other members of his crew thought about something like him and could fight for an uprising.
Such a good thing was naturally something lin cheng was happy to see, but a request made by Yue Bo made him difficult. Yu Bo hoped that the organization would approve several of them to join the Chinese Communist Party before the uprising.
It must be known that every Communist Party member can join the Party only after undergoing many organizational tests. At present, a few people in Yue bo have not undergone any substantive tests and are about to join the party, which does not seem to be in line with the regulations. So Lin Cheng reported the matter to Chen Xiuliang.
With regard to this incident, Chen Xiuliang proceeded from the overall situation and saw very clearly: Yue Bo and several other comrades risked their lives in the uprising, which in itself is the best proof and declaration.
With Chen Xiuliang's words, the concerns of Several comrades, including Yue Bo, were completely dispelled. So on the evening of December 16, 1948, Yu Bo and others flew from Nanjing straight into the sky and all the way to the Liberated Area.
Before the uprising, Chen Xiuliang specifically instructed Sha Wenwei: "The Kuomintang Air Force has not yet piloted the uprising, and the political value of this bomber uprising is worth one or two divisions..." From these remarks, it is not difficult for us to feel Chen Xiuliang's foresight.
The success of the Air Force's rebellion did not make Chen Xiuliang and others complacent, but on the contrary, they hit the idea on the Most Advanced Cruiser of the Kuomintang Navy, the Chongqing. Under their clandestine activities, the Chongqing also sailed to the Liberated Areas on February 25, 1949.
Soon after, they set the target of the rebellion on Wang Yanqing. Wang Yanqing was a Kuomintang lieutenant general, the commander of the capital guard division, equivalent to the leader of the "Royal Forest Army" of the old Chiang Kai-shek.
In the process of plotting the rebellion, Wang Yanqing also struggled, after all, for him, Old Jiang had the grace of knowing him. When Wang Yanqing hesitated, Chen Xiuliang made a decision to "break the kettle and sink the boat" and personally met with Wang Yanqing for detailed discussions. After Chen Xiuliang's generous statement, Wang Yanqing also made up his mind to revolt, and on March 24, 1949, he led two regiments to cross the river.
After that, Chen Xiuliang led the comrades of the Nanjing underground party and successively instigated uprisings such as Jiangning Fortress, Nanjing University Airport Tower, and Radio 431. This series of uprisings was like a sharp knife, poking directly at the heart of the Kuomintang reactionaries.
On the eve of the Battle of the Crossing River, the Kuomintang reactionaries wanted to make a final struggle through what they regarded as the "impregnable" Yangtze River defense line. As everyone knows, the underground party comrades led by Chen Xiuliang have long ago thoroughly explored all aspects of the Kuomintang's jiangsu defense deployment, and this information has left the kuomintang Yangtze River defense line with no secrets to speak of in front of our army.
Not only that, Chen Xiuliang also organized various patriotic forces to prevent the Kuomintang reactionaries who "jumped the wall" from sabotage activities in Nanjing on the one hand, and on the other hand, actively provided help and support for our army to cross the river.
Finally, after the Battle of Crossing the River began, our army crossed the Yangtze River like a bamboo and liberated Nanjing.
Nanjing was finally liberated, and Chen Xiuliang's latent work was also declared over. This brings us to the scene at the beginning of this article.
When He Kexi welcomed Chen Xiuliang into the garrison of the 35th Army and introduced her to Chen Shiyu, commander of the Eighth Corps, Commander Chen did not expect that this mild-mannered and elegant "weak woman" in front of him was actually the person in charge of the underground party who helped our army cross the river to liberate Nanjing.
Not only did Commander Chen not expect it, but also Chen Xiuliang's neighbors in Nanjing. When Chen Xiuliang was escorted to his apartment by two military vehicles, the neighbors learned that the "Mrs. Zhang", who was dressed fashionably and liked to play mahjong with people, was actually the secretary of the nanjing municipal party committee underground.
After the founding of New China, Chen Xiuliang's work also shifted from underground to aboveground, and he successively served as deputy director of the Organization Department of the Shanghai Municipal CPC Committee and director of the Propaganda Department of the Zhejiang Provincial CPC Committee, and continued to contribute to the construction of New China.
Until November 6, 1998, Chen Xiuliang died of illness at the age of 91. She told us with her magnificent life that she really didn't let her eyebrows be shaved!
With this article, I would like to commemorate Ms. Chen Xiuliang and the countless ancestors who fought on the hidden front, this prosperous world, as you wish!