At the end of 1955, the founding lieutenant general Yang Xiushan was lightly dressed and simple, and returned to his hometown with his wife to visit his relatives. Yang Xiushan, a native of Wanbao Village, Xiantao, Hubei Province, was born in 1914 when his father rented a few acres of thin land from a landlord's family to make a living as a sharecropper. When it comes to a good year, the family can barely maintain food and clothing. If you encounter a drought or a flood, you will go hungry. When Yang Xiushan was eight years old, his father borrowed a little money from the family and sent him to the academy, hoping that his son could get ahead by studying and improve the family's situation.
Yang Xiushan knew that this opportunity to read was not easy to come by, so he cherished it and learned every lesson well. Unfortunately, he was forced to drop out of school after only two years of study, because the family could not afford the tuition. In order to make a living, Yang Xiushan, who dropped out of school, began to herd cattle for the landlord's family, leaving early and returning late every day, sleeping in the cowshed and eating leftovers. The cowshed was extremely cold in the winter, but in the summer it was bitten by mosquitoes all night, and the hard work of a year was only a bucket of wheat.
In addition to herding cattle, Yang Xiushan is also responsible for cleaning up the cow dung in the cowshed, which is a manual work, and the teenage Yang Xiushan is extremely difficult to do due to malnutrition, thin and small, so he is not less beaten by the landlord. In 1929, the Red Army came to Xiantao, and they beat up the local tycoons to divide the land, and the lives of the poor people were greatly improved. Yang Xiushan's family was also allocated a few acres of land, and his father, who had been a tenant farmer for half a lifetime, was so happy that he couldn't sleep for several nights.
In order to defend the fruits of victory, peasant associations and children's groups were established in many places. The 15-year-old Yang Xiushan joined the local children's regiment, standing guard, sending out sentries and sending intelligence, doing everything very well, and soon became the leader of the children's regiment, and a year later Yang Xiushan officially joined the Red Army. Don't look at the young age, Yang Xiushan is particularly brave in fighting, charging forward in every battle and making meritorious contributions on the battlefield many times. In 1935, Yang Xiushan was promoted to political commissar of the Red 18 regiment by virtue of his military achievements, when he was only 21 years old.
In early August of the same year, the Red Second Army ambushed the enemy 85th Division near chestnut garden in western Hunan Province. Because the firepower was so inferior to that of the opponent, the Red Army, although it surrounded the enemy, could not annihilate it. Reinforcements from the enemy are constantly coming, and if the enemy in the encirclement is not eliminated as soon as possible, the Red Army is in danger of being attacked by the enemy on its back. At the critical moment, Yang Xiushan personally led a commando team to launch an attack on the enemy from the flank and rear, tearing open the breakthrough in one fell swoop and making the first contribution to the total annihilation of the enemy's 85th Division. But Yang Xiushan was also seriously injured in this battle and recovered for several months.
Soon after, the Red Second Army left the Soviet zone to begin the Long March, and due to the frequent transfer of troops and the backward communication at that time, Yang Xiushan did not have contact with his family. The father never got the news of his son, thought he had died, cried a lot, and burned paper money for Yang Xiushan every year. After the Long March arrived in northern Shaanxi, Yang Xiushan participated in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, and was awarded the rank of lieutenant general in 1955. At the end of the same year, General Yang Xiushan had a rare vacation, and he and his wife drove back to their hometown after more than 20 years of absence.
Seeing his son suddenly appear, the father was happy and broken, took his hand and said: I burned paper money for you for 20 years, but I didn't expect you to be alive. That night, neither father nor son slept and spoke all night. Later, Yang Xiushan took his parents to live with him and let them enjoy their old age in peace. In 2002, General Yang Xiushan died of illness at the age of 88.