Profile of General Ho Hui Yan

He Huiyan, born on December 8, 1913, is a native of Hejiashangyuan, Longtian Village, Luwang Town, Dawu County, Hubei Province. In March 1929, he joined the Chinese Communist Youth League. In November of the same year, he joined the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. In 1933, he was transferred from the Communist Youth League to the Communist Party of China.

During the Agrarian Revolutionary War, He Huiyan successively served as the company commander, company political instructor, and battalion political commissar of the 31st Regiment of the 11th Division of the 4th Army of the Red Fourth Front Army, the political commissar of the 4th Army Hospital, and the chief of the Communications Section of the 12th Division Headquarters. He participated in the 1st to 4th anti-"encirclement and suppression" struggles in the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Revolutionary Base Area, the Western Expedition and the Sichuan-Shaanxi Revolutionary Base Area against the "three-way siege" and the "six-way siege". In March 1935, in order to welcome the head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Central Red Army, he forcibly crossed the Jialing River and participated in the Long March of the Red Fourth Front Army.

During the Anti-Japanese War, He Huiyan successively served as the captain of the 3rd team of the 1st Brigade of the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University, the captain of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Branch, and the captain of the 1st Brigade of the 7th Branch. Participated in the struggle against the "sweep".

During the Liberation War, He Huiyan served as the chief of staff of the 358th Brigade of the Jinsui Field Army, the commander of the 10th Army Division of the Luliang Military Region, the commander of the 10th Brigade of the 7th Column of the Northwest Field Army, and the commander of the 19th Division of the 7th Army of the 1st Field Army. Participated in the battles of Linfen, Jinzhong, and Fumei.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, He Huiyan successively served as deputy director of the Sino-DPRK Joint New Railway Command Bureau and commander of the 5th Division of the Railway Project, commander of the 1st Army of the Railway Corps, chief of staff of the Railway Corps, commander-in-chief of the Daxinganling Battle Headquarters, commander of the Southwest Command of the Railway Corps, and deputy commander of the Railway Corps.

In 1955, He Huiyan was awarded the rank of Major General, and was awarded the Order of August 1 of the Second Class, the Order of Independence and Freedom of the First Class, and the Order of Liberation of the First Class. He is a member of the 6th and 7th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and a deputy to the 4th and 5th National People's Congress. In July 1988, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Red Star, 1st class.

Who erected the steel Changhong between the Bashan Han water?

The Xiangyu Railway was personally approved by Chairman Mao and personally deployed and built by Premier Zhou, and is an important military and transportation artery. Fifty years ago, one night in December 1969, Premier Zhou Enlai met with Major General He Huiyan, deputy commander of the Railway Corps, in his office in Zhongnanhai. Holding a red and blue pencil in his hand, Premier Zhou pointed to a topographical map of China on the table and said that Chairman Mao personally determined the direction of the Xiangyu Railway. Premier Zhou said that the chairman of the railway said that it would be repaired quickly. After repairing this railway, Sichuan will have a situation that extends in all directions, and the transportation of the country of abundance will be revitalized. The premier approved the design plan, and held Major General He Huiyan's hand and repeatedly instructed him. This task has been entrusted to us railway soldiers, and we must lead and unite the broad masses of the people to build the railways as soon as possible.

Opening the topographic map of the motherland, there is a city of Xiangyang on the bank of the Hanshui River in the north of Hubei Province, and from there to the west, it gradually enters the second step of the continental terrain. The steep Wudang Mountain here, the mountains and mountains of Bashan are stacked on top of each other, and the majestic Bashan Mountains are ten thousand. The surging Han River and the meandering canal river are all known for their many beaches and rapids, and have been regarded as a daunting path by people since ancient times.

Today, this mountain and gorge pass is no longer a natural barrier for the people of the motherland. The heroic people's railway soldiers and the vast number of migrant workers built a steel road between thousands of rivers and mountains, which is an important trunk line in the national transportation network, the Xiangyu Railway.

The Xiangyu Railway runs from Xiangfan, Hubei Province in the east to Chongqing in the west, with a total length of 916 kilometers. The area through which it passes is the adjacent area of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Hubei provinces, which is of great significance for connecting the vast areas of southwest, central and northwest. Its completion once again illustrates the new historical conditions. As long as the glorious traditions of the party are carried forward. If we permeate the spirit of the Red Army's Long March into the cause of socialist modernization, we will certainly be able to overcome all difficulties and obstacles and create miracles on earth.

Inspired by the spirit of the Red Army's Long March, a magnificent epic was written

Let us look back 50 years ago, how the heroic road construction army used the spirit of the Red Army's Long March to compose this magnificent epic among thousands of rivers and mountains. Every year on August 1st Army Day, the gathering of comrades-in-arms has become a topic that we must talk about, the common feeling of special forces serving for at least five years, a strong sense of nostalgia, followed by anticipation, I really want to go back to the old barracks to see. In late October this year, the old comrades-in-arms will meet to re-walk the Xiangyu line, and my heart has already returned to the years of burning passion.

The Xiangyu Railway is a national defense project for preparing for war, preparing for famine, and building three lines. The railway passes through Wudang Mountain and Baiyun Mountain, passes through Huaying Mountain and Zhongliang Mountain, crosses the Hanjiang River three times in Xianrendu, Xunyang and Ziyang, crosses the Donghe River nine times, crosses the Jiangjun River seven times, crosses the Houhe River thirty-three times, and crosses the Jialing River to Chongqing in Beibei. The mountains and valleys along the line are high and deep, the water flow is turbulent, the terrain is steep, and the geology is complex. There are 716 bridges and 405 tunnels on the whole line, and many bridges and tunnels are connected, with the highest pier being 76 meters.

At that time, the Xiangyu railway project was arduous, the conditions were extremely poor, especially in Shaanxi, the traffic was blocked, the population was sparse, the materials were lacking, there was no highway along the 300 kilometers, there was no electricity, and in the early stage of construction, the project and construction materials had to be carried on the shoulders.

The railway corps participating in the construction of the Xiangyu Railway includes eight divisions, two independent regiments, as well as the Railway Engineering Bureau and migrant workers from Hubei, Shaanxi, and Sichuan provinces, with a maximum construction force of 850,000 people. It was delivered in batches from November 1975 to December 1979. Xiangyu railway double line is one of the key projects of the country's western development, started in August 2005, officially opened to traffic in October 2009, take the train to take the Xiangyu railway, you can appreciate the wonder of "dangerous and even thousands of miles, Qinsai road is difficult to travel".

The revolutionaries of the older generation were concerned with planning an important railway

The Xiangyu Railway was personally approved by Chairman Mao, and Premier Zhou personally deployed and built an important military and transportation artery. Fifty years ago, one night in December 1969, Premier Zhou Enlai met with Major General He Huiyan, deputy commander of the Railway Corps, in his office in Zhongnanhai. Holding a red and blue pencil in his hand, Premier Zhou pointed to a topographical map of China on the table and said that Chairman Mao personally determined the direction of the Xiangyu Railway. Premier Zhou said that the chairman of the railway said that it would be repaired quickly. After repairing this railway, Sichuan will have a situation that extends in all directions, and the transportation of the country of abundance will be revitalized. The premier approved the design plan, and held Major General He Huiyan's hand and repeatedly instructed him. This task has been entrusted to us railway soldiers, and we must lead and unite the broad masses of the people to build the railways as soon as possible.

Chairman Mao's great call and Premier Zhou's ardent hope inspired the road construction army to march forward. A number of railway troops arrived from the Linhai Snow Plain and from the coast of the East China Sea day and night. A group of railway soldiers who had just completed the construction of the Kunming Railway did not bother to listen to the honking of the train, and washed the sweat stains on their robes from the banks of the Jinsha River and the Daliang Mountains. The three provinces of Shaanxi, Sichuan and Hubei also gathered a huge number of road construction workers and militia in a very short period of time to participate in the construction battle.

When they first arrived at the construction site, the conditions were difficult and there were no houses to live in, so the heroes slept on the cliffs and river beaches in the blue sky and the earth. When grain and vegetables can't be brought in, they use batter as rice and brine as vegetables. Everyone said that we did not catch up with the hard life of the Red Army in climbing snow-capped mountains and living in grasslands, and that today we are participating in the construction of the motherland's railways and enduring a little hardship, but this is nothing. The mountain was high and the road was dangerous, and the road was impassable, so the soldiers used their shoulders to carry all kinds of machines up the mountain. In the towering Daba Mountains. A team of fighters carried a 2,000-pound generator and climbed the ladder several hundred meters high step by step.

Ahead, there is a dangerous road that can only be crossed by climbing the cliff by hand. What should I do if the mountain road is too narrow to be transported? The squad leader picked up a wooden pole, then jumped onto a rock under the roadbed and shouted, "Let me make the roadbed!" Several fighters also jumped down with wooden poles. They put one end of the pole on the curb and the other end on their shoulders, and then put a plank on it to widen the road. The soldiers stepped onto the bridge, triumphantly passed the hand-cut rock, and transported the heavy machinery and equipment to the construction site.

The sound of the cannon sounded all over the mountains. The battle to repair the highway was non-stop day and night, and the soldiers blasted through the stubborn rocks to fill in the ravines, and opened a flat road on the cliffs and cliffs where "good riders dismounted and explored, and walkers paused and sighed". Telephone poles to ensure communication are erected at high altitudes. Electricians erect towers between mountains and valleys to deliver powerful electricity to the construction site. Many surveying and mapping soldiers carried instruments and drawings on their backs to climb mountains and mountains to review the route. In order to complete the tasks assigned by Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou, on the construction site of the Xiangyu Railway, which stretches for thousands of miles, thousands of troops and horses are galloping and fighting.

Southwest occlusion becomes a thoroughfare

The Xiangyu line is from northwest Hubei to southern Shaanxi, with overlapping peaks and mountains, and traffic has been blocked since ancient times. According to historical records, this area is "steep and steep, with hundreds of miles of twists and turns", "the peak has the danger of a thousand plates, and the road is not flat with a hundred steps". Li Bai, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, wrote such a poem: "Erlai is 48,000 years old, and he is not populated with Qinsai." However, our revolutionary predecessors left their fighting footprints in it. The Wudang Mountains in the eastern section of the Xiangyu Line were the battlefields where Marshal He Long led the Red Army to bravely kill the enemy. Some places in the western section were the places where Marshal Xu Xiangqian founded the Sichuan-Shaanxi Revolutionary Base Area.

To this day, on the cliffs, the stone tablets on the walls of the houses still have revolutionary slogans carved by the Red Army, such as "Long live Lenin" and "The sickle cuts the old world, and the axe splits the new world". Today, the combat deeds of our revolutionary predecessors have become a powerful spiritual force that inspires the road-building army to forge ahead courageously, and inspires them to dig through the hundreds of mountains and overcome unimaginable difficulties with the heroic spirit of penetrating thousands of mountains and bringing in a long dragon of steel.

There are 405 tunnels on the whole line. There are 12 that are more than 3,000 meters long. An underground corridor with a total length of 11 miles, the Dabashan Tunnel, is the throat project of the whole line. The tunnel construction site is located in a deep mountain valley, the road is impassable, the site is narrow, and the troops cannot be expanded. The party committee of the unit decided to send a small detachment into the construction site to open up a working face. The detachment received this arduous task, and the soldiers crossed the mountains and mountains to a deep valley river beach with a radius of less than 30 meters and set up camp. The treacherous mountains and bad waters can be transformed, and the great difficulties can be overcome!"

I arrived at the construction site on the first day and started work the next day. The entrance to the tunnel was on the steep rock of a canyon, and there was no place to stand, so the safety rope was tied to the tree on the mountainside, and the hole was hung on the cliff, and the hole of the tunnel was smashed open with a sledgehammer and steel drill. The tunnel advanced to the belly of the mountain, the geology in the depths of the mountain is very complex, the rock layer is varied, the soldiers first conquered the "iron stone" with iron and steel hardness, subdued the "rubber mud" with special shrinkage ability, defeated the surging groundwater, and encountered a rare "mud and sand flow".

After a row of cannons, a large amount of mud and mortar gushed out from several karst caves in the pit at the same time, and the flow reached more than 100,000 cubic meters in a day and night. The soldiers built walls in waist-deep mud and mud to block the sand, and the mud covered their clothes, and the water boots were sunk and could not be pulled out, so they simply worked barefoot barefoot. Seeing that the wall was about to be capped, a large amount of sediment suddenly erupted from the cave, which washed the wall to the ground, and at this dangerous juncture, the Communist Party members, company commanders, and platoon commanders went up together to hold up the wall with their bodies. Several soldiers also hurriedly rushed over, supporting them with their hands and shoulders, building an impregnable human wall.

After more than 20 hours of fierce fighting, the cave was finally blocked, the sediment flow was cut off, and the Daba Mountain Tunnel was ensured to move forward. During the days and nights of digging holes through the mountains, the commanders and fighters overcame hundreds of large and small landslides in the mountainous Wudang Mountains, where mountains and mountains were stacked, and a 10-mile-long tunnel was opened.

In the Tieshan Tunnel in the Huaying Mountains, the fighters overcame hard rock and a corrosive water containing sulfuric acid to set a record of 700 meters in the Yuecheng Cave. In Baiyun Mountain, the construction troops and militia regiments used inclined shafts, horizontal tunnels, and dividing encirclement and suppression, and dug through a tunnel guide pit of nearly 4,000 meters in just seven months. In the steep Maliu Mountain, the warriors hollowed out the belly of the mountain and built a group of stations that could stop four trains at the same time. It is with this tenacious will, super bravery and collective wisdom that the road construction heroes conquer all difficulties and dangers one after another.

The Iron Maiden from southern Shaanxi was in the middle of tunnel construction and encountered a large landslide. Platoon commander Wang Jinying led everyone to fight the landslide. On the roof of the cave, a large amount of water poured down and drenched them, but they still insisted on fighting. During the construction of a tunnel called Pangjiazui, Wu Guangcai, a young migrant worker, unfortunately died, and his younger brother Wu Guangcan and sister Wu Guangzhen quickly took over the air gun used by his brother before his death and continued to advance into the hinterland of the mountains. They said that in the past, the Red Army conquered snow-capped mountains and meadows on the Long March, and today we must also learn from the old Red Army in the course of building socialism, and we will never leave the line of fire until we complete our tasks.

The Xiangyu Railway crosses the Han River three times, crosses the Jiangjun River seven times, crosses the Houhe River 33 times, crosses the Jialing River, and crosses hundreds of meters of deep ravines and valleys. It takes a lot of hard work to erect hundreds of bridges between these great rivers and high mountains and valleys.

The company where the hero Yang Liandi belonged had just completed the task of repairing the bridge of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway, and immediately came to the Xiangyu line, and accepted the task of building two bridges in one year together with the militia company from the Tongbaishan revolutionary base area. In the middle of winter, the north wind is howling in the mountainous areas of northwest Hubei Province, the weather is cold and the ground is freezing, the soldiers brave the wind and snow, digging the bridge foundation day and night in the knee-deep river, and the temperature of the concrete bridge piers poured into the summer sun is as high as forty or fifty degrees, and the operation in it is like entering a steamer. The soldiers happily wrote poems saying: "No matter how hard the revolution is, the more arduous it is, the happier it is, I will build a rainbow for the motherland, and I am willing to sweat into a river." After completing the task of erecting two bridges ahead of schedule, they continued to fight, setting a new historical record for the construction of three bridges and three middle bridges in one year.

The 76-meter-high piers of the Ziyang Bridge, which spans the rapids of the Han River, are the tallest bridge on the Xiangyu line. Participating in the construction of the bridge were the soldiers and workers of the Bridge Bureau of the Ministry of Railways, who made a steel oath of "uniting and fighting to build the bridge, and making the moat a thoroughfare". They stepped on rapids, built cofferdams, climbed steel pylons more than 20 stories high, and poured concrete piers. After nearly a year of intense day and night labor, the arduous project of seven piers and two stations was finally completed, and then the superiors asked them to erect all the steel beams within 70 days. When hanging a huge steel beam stretched out to the bridge pier in the center of the river, that day suddenly the wind was fierce, and the steel beam that had been put together more than 50 meters long was suspended in the air, constantly swaying, if emergency measures were not taken, the steel beam was in danger of deformation or even breakage.

The battle-tested railroad soldiers braved the strong wind and went up to the bridge. They used four thick ropes to tie the steel girders steadily, and with the joint efforts of the military and civilians, the bridge finally crossed the surging Han River 23 days ahead of schedule.

Loyal bones are buried on the Xiangyu line

There is a martyr's cemetery in Daxian County, Sichuan (now Dazhou City), and over the years, old comrades-in-arms have continued to visit and worship the sacrificed comrades-in-arms. Coming to the cemetery of the railway soldiers, the martyrs of the 70th Regiment and the Brotherhood of the Railway Soldiers are buried here, and the 19 martyrs who died in the overturning accident of a certain bridge erecting machine of the Railway Soldiers are also among them. Sometimes it is too late to buy sacrifices, so the veteran lights three cigarettes in front of the martyr's tomb, bows deeply three times, and pays tribute to his comrades, full of emotion!

Most of these comrades-in-arms are hot-blooded young people under the age of twenty, and they have left their youth and lives here. It is very sad that one of the recruits died a month after he arrived in the army. When the parents and relatives of the martyrs received the pension of more than 200 yuan, how could they bear the pain of losing their children? Who will repay the grace of nurturing? For decades, thousands of miles apart, who will burn a piece of paper and incense for them? Relatives and friends can only look at the stars and worship in the distance! What is more gratifying is that the staff of the cemetery told us that there are often veterans of the railway soldiers from all over the country who come here to pay respects, and every year, no matter which army comes, they will burn some paper money one by one.

With this place, the sacrificed comrades-in-arms can rest in peace, the motherland has not forgotten you, the comrades-in-arms can come and talk to you, the glory of the railway soldiers is engraved on this monument, and these ordinary names will be immortalized.

On the morning of the second day after arriving in Dazhou, the old comrades-in-arms rented a car and went straight to Xingjiagou in Dongyue, Dazhou City, because what the company built was the Xingjiagou Tunnel. At that time, the troops were living in a village near the construction site, which was called Hill Village. A fellow surnamed Xing took the initiative to lead the way for his comrades-in-arms and successfully came to the original Eighth Company station. The picture of nearly 50 years is displayed in front of you, the beautiful countryside, verdant bamboo, gurgling streams, and green seedlings suddenly evoke people's memories. I have taken a photo under that cluster of bamboo, bathed in the spring water in the mountains, and helped the villagers plant seedlings in the seedling field, and the past is vivid.

The martyrs of the 7th Iron Division who died on the Xiangyu line were the most. In the first half of 1971, the tragic scene of more than 10 casualties in the blasting construction of the Tongliang militia led by Qiu Shaoyun's younger brother Qiu Shaohua could not weaken the impact of those pictures even if it was a vicissitude of life for many years.

Although the multi-purpose wooden lofts (kitchens, bedrooms, toilets, and pigsties are all built together) in rural Sichuan are dilapidated and uninhabited, many of them are fortunate to remain, and the houses rented by veterans still exist.

In the compound of the company headquarters that year, a group of veterans had just returned from work, wearing shabby yellow cotton clothes, hard hats, shovels, steel drills, sledgehammers and air guns on their shoulders. The so-called special forces? Some people say that it is not as good as a labor camp, but it can't stop the sense of glory of the railway soldiers.

When I arrived in Xingjiagou, I couldn't wait to go to the old landlord Zhao's house. A few fellow villagers who were working in the fields heard that it was the railway soldiers who revisited the old land, so they put down their farm work, walked from the field to the ridge, and took them to Lao Zhao's house. When he entered the door, he shouted: "Zhao Shicai, come out, the old chief of the railway soldiers is here", and today the veteran has become the "old chief", and the old farmer with the Sichuan voice shouted to make the veteran feel more cordial.

Lao Zhao raised a lot of bees, and the beehives were lined up in two rows in the yard, and the bees were buzzing and flying. Lao Zhao said that his bees are very good, and they are all sold for foreign trade exports, and he said that he was going to fill them with honey, but he couldn't persuade them.

Bidding farewell to Lao Zhao, the fellow led the climb to the mouth of the Xingjiagou tunnel not far from the village. Standing outside the mouth of the tunnel, the scenes of the bloody and sweaty years emerged one after another. Xingyang comrade-in-arms Xiao Zhang was injured in the whole leg, Hunan comrade-in-arms Xiao Guo's teeth were blown off and his face was injured, and two militia brothers were in the tunnel construction, there was a loud noise in the cave, when the two militiamen were carried out, the flesh and blood were blurred, one person's leg was blown away, and the snow-white thigh bone was exposed at the base of his thigh, and he died on the spot, and the other person still had short breathing and died on the way to the hospital......

At this time, a train roared out of the Xingjiagou tunnel, and this steel artery forged by the railway soldiers with their blood and lives is playing an irreplaceable role in the great construction of the motherland.

In the 70s, Xunyang County was one of the few poverty-stricken counties in the country that did not have access to roads, and its transportation relied entirely on the water transportation of the Han River. The whole county can be walked in ten minutes, and there is a section of gravel and cinder roads in the county, and there is hardly an inch of hardened road. At that time, the compound of the county party committee was halfway up the hill and there were dozens of small tiled houses. After the construction of the Xiangyu Railway, the railway troops built a construction road along the Han River, splitting the mountains and opening roads, and Xunyang began to have road traffic. Nowadays there is a tunnel connecting the old and new county seats.

The new city is lined with high-rise buildings, the riverside park along the river in the old town has begun to take shape, a new hydropower station is under construction on the Han River, and bridges connect the two banks. It can be said that the construction of the Xiangyu Railway has brought development opportunities to the mountain city of Xunyang and given Xunyang wings to take off.

In Xunyang, a veteran of the railway soldiers, the elderly over 60 years old are willing to chat with you for a while, revealing a cordial energy. In September 1971, a certain unit bid farewell to Daba Mountain and entered the Qinling Mountains and put into the construction of the Yanling Tunnel. With a total length of 3,731 meters, the Weiling Tunnel has complex geology, soft stone layers, and continuous water permeability and landslide accidents. I remember that the Sixth Company once fought at a landslide for a year. Once, a few wild boars ran down the mountain, and we rounded up and shot at the wild boars in the river beach, and none of the wild boars ran away. The company's house has been improving for many days, and people say that the troops opened meat, and they ate wild boar meat that time.

The railway soldiers were born in the flames of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, made miraculous contributions on the battlefield of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and painted a rainbow in the mountains and rivers of the motherland. More than 8,000 heroes have forged an immortal name with their blood and lives, and she will surely be recorded in the history of the Republic and leave a great mark.

Although the heroic unit of the railway soldiers withdrew from the sequence of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the military flag of the railway soldiers will always fly in the hearts of millions of iron soldiers, and whenever the song of the majestic railway soldiers sounds, it can always make the blood of the veterans boil.

The years have passed, the number is no longer there, the comrades-in-arms have lost contact, and there is nowhere to place their emotions to sustenance. "The railway soldiers are determined in all directions". Re-taking the Xiangyu line has realized the long-cherished wish of veterans for many years. The career of the railway soldier has given us incomparably lofty glory, so that I can proudly tell others that I was a railway soldier, a heroic railway soldier! The smoke of gunpowder here is no less than on the battlefield, the danger here is no less than on the battlefield, and the heroes here are no less than on the battlefield.

Our eighteen- and nineteen-year-old comrades-in-arms have fixed their lives in their youth, sprinkled their blood among the mountains and rivers, and let the song of the railway soldiers always reverberate in Bashu and Qinchuan, and we miss it.