Chapter 33 33. March in the Death Zone

Thirty miles of grassland and twenty miles of water, deserted and untouched, birds do not fly. If pedestrians enter by mistake, nine out of ten will never return. This is a folk song that was spread in the grasslands of northwest Sichuan.Grassland is the most difficult journey experienced by the Red Army during the Long March.Mao Zedong said: "We crossed the grassland on the Long March, we didn't have a house at all, so we just slept like that...Our troops had no food, so they ate bark and leaves." In August 1935, under the leadership of the Party Central Committee and Mao Zedong, the Right Army of the Red Army set off from Maoergai and crossed the grassland to the north.The Fourth Regiment of the Second Division of the First Red Army, as the vanguard, first entered the grassland, and then the Party Central Committee and the Right Route Army successively entered the grassland.The Red Army went first, followed by the Central Government, the Red Army University, etc., and then the Thirty Army and the Fourth Army of the Fourth Red Army.

The large grassland is located in the transition zone between the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Sichuan Basin, with a length of more than 500 miles and a width of more than 300 miles, with an area of ​​about 15,200 square kilometers and an altitude of more than 3,500 meters.The grasslands where the Red Army passed were mainly the Ruoergai Plateau in northwest Sichuan.The grassland is actually a plateau wetland, which is a muddy swamp.It is a swamp formed by the stagnation of two rivers (Moqu River and Erqu River).From a distance, it looks like a gray-green ocean, with grass stretching to the sky, the sky connecting grass, no houses, no human habitation, no birds and beasts, no insects, no roads, east, west, north, south, boundless, and the whole land is shrouded in primitive silence.Every year from May to September is the grassland rainy season, which accounts for 90% of the annual precipitation. During this period, a large amount of rainwater is injected into the surface, turning the already stagnant and muddy swamp into a long swamp country.

The vast grassland stretches as far as the eye can see, and there are aquatic plants, swamps and mires everywhere. There is no road at all, and it is impossible to distinguish east, west, south, north.The Red Fourth Regiment invited local Tibetans as guides. When they stepped into the grassland, the 60-year-old Tibetan Tongsi told the Red Fourth Regiment political commissar Yang Chengwu in not-so-fluent Chinese: People must be very careful when walking on this small road. Only where the grass stems and rotting grass are densely connected can your feet step on them, otherwise, you will fall into an unfathomable quagmire.The water on the grass is black, it is soaked from old rotten grass, it is poisonous, if you drink it, your stomach will swell, and you may even die from poisoning.Not to mention drinking, even if the feet are cut by water plants, the wounds will be red, swollen and festered.

Under the guidance of this Tibetan, the Red Fourth Regiment found a winding path from the depths of the aquatic plants. Whenever the road forked, a road sign with an arrow attached to it was inserted to guide the troops behind. grassland.Walking on such a road really makes people feel like "like walking on thin ice".Because the tenacity of the road is limited to the connection of grass roots, there may be a muddy quagmire below.It is said that it is the yak that grows on the grassland that can really identify such a road on the grassland. After the right-hand army entered the grassland, soldiers continued to get stuck in the muddy grassland.Swamps are generally very deep. If you struggle upwards desperately, you will sink deeper and deeper, and you will be swallowed by mud before you can rescue them in time.At first, the Red Army was inexperienced. When a soldier accidentally got stuck in the quagmire, the soldiers beside him hurriedly stretched out their hands to pull them. With a sudden effort, they themselves fell into it, and then the third soldier also... just like that, in the swamp, the quagmire There are octagonal hats with red five stars embedded on them.Later, with experience, they knew that they could no longer use their hands to pull. They stretched out their guns, shoulder poles or untied a few leggings, and threw the lead to the sunken comrades, and let them wrap their waists. Then, everyone worked together to pull up. , to pull it up.

The climate in the grassland belongs to the plateau climate. Spring, summer, autumn and winter are a day, and it is unpredictable: the sky is still clear at noon, and the sun is scorching. In the afternoon, it is suddenly covered with dark clouds, thunderstorms, heavy rain and hail, or foggy and rainy, and the temperature reaches 0 at night. Below ℃, people are shivering with cold, unable to sleep all night.Originally, the Red Army soldiers were on the grassland at an altitude of more than 3,000 meters. The lack of oxygen made it difficult for them to move. Coupled with such bad weather, their lives were seriously threatened.

If the military parade shows the military posture of the soldiers and the high concentration of the army from one aspect, then the military appearance and formation on the grass are another aspect.The soft grass quagmire exhausted the physical strength of the Red Army commanders and fighters, and also formed this bizarre team in the grassland march.The Red Army came to the grassland from the south, and their thin clothes were worn out.In order to resist the wind, rain and cold on the grass, the soldiers had to wear various clothes, shoes and hats.Some wear single clothes, jackets, sweaters or cotton clothes, some are wrapped in blankets, and some are covered with various animal skins; some wear straw or cloth sandals on their feet, some wear leather shoes made of animal skin, some Some were even barefoot; some were wearing bamboo hats and straw hats, some were wearing tarpaulins, some were holding umbrellas, and some were simply bareheaded... However, under the tattered clothes of these soldiers, jumping But it is an extremely strong heart.For the sake of the liberation of the motherland and the happiness of the people, they willingly endured all kinds of suffering in the world, and walked to the depths of the grassland fearlessly.Someone wrote "Feelings on the Grass March" on the spot:

The army marches early, and weeds are everywhere.Ragged clothes cover the wind, snow and cold, and bark and grass roots satisfy hunger.Beishang is a hero. Day and night, the Red Army commanders marched and slept in the endless grass sea.The grassland is cold at night, and there is water everywhere.Soldiers "spread the ground and build the sky".In order to overcome the severe cold of the grassland, they sat back to back in twos and threes on a slightly higher place in the grassland, using each other's body heat to keep warm.As some soldiers said: "The only thing we can use to keep warm is the backs of comrades." The first night when the Red Fourth Regiment first entered the grassland, it was rainy and windy, and the rain was mixed with hail.Oilcloths, tree sheds, and oil-paper umbrellas were useless, and the soldiers could only survive the night in the rain.However, the night is too cold, and every morning when I wake up, I will see the sacrificed comrades.There is a squad in the Red Army, just like this neatly in groups of two, back to back, holding guns in their arms, and left this world in this "sleeping position".

Insufficient food caused the Red Army to pay a heavy price in their lives when crossing the grass.When the Red Army first entered the grassland, they ate highland barley grains or highland barley powder, which were dry food prepared before crossing the grassland.Due to the limited food reserves, the dry food prepared by ordinary soldiers can be eaten up in two or three days.If a soldier accidentally falls down, drops the dry food bag into the poisonous sewage, or sprinkles the dry food in the sludge, then this will be the greatest misfortune he has encountered, because food is as precious as life, and he lost In the future, he can only get a little dry food from other comrades-in-arms to survive this difficult time.Boil water for drinking, it looks "on", but it is warm when you drink it into your mouth.The air pressure on the plateau can't wait for "boiling water" to boil at 100°C, and it becomes boiling water just after 60°C.

When the dry food they brought with them was exhausted, the soldiers had to look for wild vegetables or grass roots in the grass to satisfy their hunger. Some wild vegetables and weeds were poisonous, and they would vomit and diarrhea in mild cases, and died of poisoning in severe cases.According to a Red Army soldier: "At that time, we were all afraid that others would say that we were 'fat', because that was equivalent to receiving a death notice." If they couldn't find wild vegetables, they cooked and ate the belts, leather shoes, and even furs they wore. Waistcoats, and saddles.Some soldiers were so hungry that they had nothing to eat, so they picked out the undigested highland barley from other people's or their own feces, washed them, and boiled them in a teapot.The same is true for eating and the same for drinking.Some soldiers drank human urine and horse urine.Today, in the Museum of the Chinese Revolution, we can still see half of the belt left over from the Long March, with the three characters "Long March" inscribed on it by the Red Army soldiers.When it comes to bathing and shampooing, the rain falls from the top of the head, even if the hair is washed, the bath is also washed.

In this windy and cold grassland, no matter they are old or young, female soldiers or "red ghosts", they all fight tenaciously against difficulties with indomitable perseverance and revolutionary optimism. "Man will conquer nature".Relying on the high awareness and perseverance of the commanders and fighters, after six or seven days, the various units of the Right Route Army walked out of the grassland one after another and arrived in Banyou and Brazil.Due to the crossing of the Red Army, the grassland, which has been sleeping for thousands of years, ended its history of no large army passing through since ancient times.Ji Pengfei, who later served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, was a medical cadre during the Long March. He recalled: "More people are lost by crossing grasslands than by climbing snow-capped mountains. Every morning, we have to count the number of people and see if there are any left. How many people were laid down. Many people were already very weak before reaching the grass, and almost fell ill. Some fell into the mud and could not get up again. We found that some people were not dead, their eyes were still open, But they couldn’t get up. We managed to lift them up, but they collapsed in the swamp and died silently...” Liu Ying, Zhang Wentian’s wife, said in her memoirs: The sacrifice of the Red Army crossing the grassland was the greatest. The seven days and nights were the most difficult days of the Long March.After walking out of the grass, "I feel like I have returned to the human world from the dead world."

Many Red Army commanders and fighters bravely charged in the battle of blood and fire, did not fall, but left the army painfully in the harsh environment of lack of food, medicine, and hypoxia on the plateau, and slept forever on the endless grass. Weeds and weeds in the wilderness have a period of withering and flourishing every year, but the years of the Red Army's grassland are a page that will never fade in the annals of history.