Chapter 49 3. Niu Xianming hiding in Buddhism

Niu Xianming, the engineer battalion commander of the teaching corps, was a young officer who came back from France after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident to participate in the great cause of the War of Resistance. After retreating from the Songhu battlefield to Nanjing, he was stationed in the Guanghuamen area.When Nanjing was retreating, he was ordered to cut off the rear, and when he finally led the troops out of Yijiangmen, the team was dispersed by the overcrowded flow of people, and the whole team lost control.Niu Xianming was also pushed into the river, but fortunately he could swim and was able to return to the shore.

Niu Xianming was cold and wet, so he had to go down the river alone. When he arrived at Shangyuan Gate, he looked up and saw a small temple named Yongqing Temple. It covered an area of ​​about six acres and had three huts. There are three monks and two lay people here, two old monks who are over 70 years old, a short apprentice in his early 30s, and the other two are also old people, one is a benefactor, and the other is an old farmer nearby.Niu Xianming was quick to gain wisdom, and immediately explained his situation to the abbot, asking him to change his monk's clothes and hide first. A set of cassocks was brought for Niu Xianming to change, and the changed military uniform and cap were stuffed into the stove and burned clean.

【Nanjing engineer battalion commander Niu Xianming disguised himself as a monk from Yongqing Temple in Shangyuanmen, escaped the catastrophe by chance. He is another witness and witness of the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese invaders. 】 At four or five o'clock in the afternoon, the Japanese army came to Shangyuan Gate. When they saw the Chinese soldiers and civilians by the river, they opened fire. There were forty or fifty refugees hiding in the pomegranate garden next to the temple, all of whom were killed by the Japanese army.Then the Japanese army came to the temple, searched and found a lot of firewood in the temple, so they ordered Niu Xianming and Lao Nong to pick up a load of firewood and send them to Shangyuan Gate.When Niu Xianming was delivering firewood, he saw about 20,000 to 30,000 Chinese captives and civilians sitting on the uneven ground with their heads in their hands.

Three days later, around the full moon in November of the lunar calendar, the wind was bleak, the moon was dim, and the sky was drizzled with snow.After midnight, Niu Xianming, who was lying curled up in the straw pile, was suddenly awakened. He faintly heard the sound of iron military boots on Jiang'an Road 50 meters away, mixed with the sound of people grinding each other. From east to west for a long time, the square gradually went away.Niu Xianming and Monk Erkong felt very strange, thinking, how could there be the sound of marching at such a late hour?Probably the Japanese soldiers changed their defenses. It is better to keep it secret when marching at night... Another hour or two later, Niu Xianming was awakened again. There was the sound of machine guns firing from a distance. Several machine guns fired continuously at the same time. The gunfire was dense and loud.Niu Xianming was even more surprised. Could it be that there was a fight at such a late hour?Could it be that our army counterattacked?After thinking about it, it seemed impossible, until around dawn, the gunfire gradually subsided, and everything fell into dead silence.In the next few days, groups of ghost soldiers still came to the temple from time to time to search. The abbot's more than 100 yuan of silver money was confiscated, and the sweater and woolen vest worn by Niu Xianming were also looted.

A few days later, Monk Erkong was away on business, and finally discovered the secret of that night.More than one kilometer upstream of the temple, there is a place called Dawanzi, which is the curved part of the Yangtze River. On the river beach there, there are countless corpses of Chinese people.It turned out that that night, the Japanese devils massacred all the captured Chinese soldiers and civilians on the river beach of Dawanzi!Monk Erkong told Niu Xianming that he still had the courage to go to the river beach to see that there were tens of thousands of corpses, many of them were dressed in military uniforms, and many of them were dressed as civilians. Together, they all formed into ice cubes, and they made a squeaky sound when they stepped on them, which made people's hair stand on end. What a miserable scene!

After a few months, the weather gradually warmed up in spring.The stench of corpses blown by the river wind from Dawanzi can often be smelled in the temple. Niu Xianming thought that maybe the corpses had not been buried yet and had already begun to rot.Sure enough, one day, a Japanese military officer brought Red Cross personnel to the temple and asked Niu Xianming and Monk Erkong to accompany them to the riverside to dispose of the corpse.Niu Xianming and the others followed the Japanese officers to the river, but saw that the beach was already full of corpses, and many corpses were half-dried and half-wet soaked in the river water.The corpses on the beach were gradually decomposing, and the faces, hands and feet exposed outside the tattered clothes had become half-skeleton shapes, and there was a smell of rotting flesh.The staff of the Red Cross was busy directing the burial team to dig large pits on the beach, and then dragged the corpses from all directions with iron hooks and buried them in the pits.The corpse was rotten. When the iron hook was pulled, the meat fell straight down, and some intestines flowed out, and maggots crawled all over the ground.The sight was terrifying and appalling.Niu Xianming and Monk Erkong followed a Japanese monk, holding ritual instruments, knocking and singing, reciting the scriptures for salvation.The work of burying the corpses was carried out for three days. Niu Xianming spent every day in pain and anger. Looking at the corpses of thousands of soldiers and Nanjing compatriots massacred by the Japanese aggressors, Niu Xianming felt a burst of hatred in his heart. The flames of the flames, wishing to escape from the hell cave immediately, and avenge the death of the compatriots.When the burial of the corpses was over, the staff of the Red Cross told Niu Xianming that a total of more than 20,000 corpses had been buried this time, not including those washed away by the river.

In the blink of an eye, it was summer, and Niu Xianming finally found out that the battalion commander and his deputy battalion commander of the teaching corps had contact with Jiangbei Red Spear, and that they were indeed the ones who led the teaching corps to cross the river to escape danger. , So quickly got in touch with the battalion commander.One day in July, Niu Xianming finally took off his cassock, changed into casual clothes, thanked the abbot for saving his life, and bid farewell to the monk Erkong. , across the Yangtze River.After landing, he was led by members of the Red Spear Club, passing through Hexian County and Hanshan Mountain, and went straight to Wuhan. He finally returned to the army and embarked on the battlefield of resisting Japanese aggression and saving the nation.

After Niu Xianming escaped from danger, he wrote an article "Witnesses of the Nanjing Massacre", which was published in newspapers and periodicals. Later, he published two novels, "Walking in Buddhism" and "Returning to the Vulgar". The crime of massacring our soldiers and civilians in Nanjing.