Chapter 12 7. Fleas

My mother brought me to Fuji to find a safer place in the world to give birth to my younger brother.But my father went to Nanyang ahead of schedule with the school in the provincial capital.My younger brother had only been in the world for eighteen days, and the provincial capital Kaifeng and every county town on the eastern Henan plain had fallen into the hands of the Japanese invaders.The oriole bird saw gunpowder smoke everywhere in the sky, so it hid under the green shade of the village and cried loudly, urging my mother to leave quickly. We left Fuji and started a long escape. At the post station of the fugitives, I often heard people pass the news of my uncle in a mysterious tone.All the news makes me feel uneasy, because I always smell the burnt straw, the burnt smell of chicken feathers and the bloody smell on the severed limbs, and I see a figure that never looks back, reflecting the bloody setting sun and going away .

In the earliest news, a strange name often appeared: sparrow.After hearing a lot, I realized that Sparrow is a young and romantic Communist Party member.In the school where his uncle was the school director, he had been protected by his uncle, and his uncle even specially handed over a mimeograph machine to him for management and use.He used the pseudonym "Sparrow" to publish an article on the mimeographed tabloid of the underground county party committee, asking his comrades to learn from the sparrow, to hold protests and demonstrations in the form of "gathering and dispersing" and to carry out the "Sparrow War".When he learned that the military police and hooligan thugs were coming to disrupt the rally, he left his comrades and flew away like a sparrow. "Sparrow" became his code name.Uncle looked down on sparrows.When Qi Chu just came back, the uncle saw the sparrow shaking hands with Qi Chu warmly, then turned his face and said to his comrades: "Haha, now that the Kuomintang and the Communist Party are cooperating to fight against Japan, maybe the Kuomintang will make Qi Chu a commissioner, and we also want to set up a county. Long dry!"

After my uncle became the deputy commander, in view of the lessons learned by a group of scholars who "cracked" indiscriminately firing guns in the last battle, he suggested that veterans with actual combat experience be appointed as squad and platoon leaders.But he immediately discovered his recklessness, because although the current class and platoon leaders are all scholars with no actual combat experience, they are all members of the Communist Party with strong ambitions; A veteran of Feng's army with unique skills. Hu Zi, the captain of the "Housekeeping Team", also served as the personal bodyguard of a general in the Feng family.Uncle's suggestion was rejected as a matter of course.Only Deputy Commander Wang, whom he called "Brother Red Army", remained silent.

Sparrow, who became a political officer, clung to his uncle's suggestion and said, "Deputy Commander Meng, just tell me clearly whether you want to use your Meng family's 'housekeeping team' to capture the guerrillas from the bottom up." leadership?" As soon as the words came out, everyone in the audience was shocked.The uncle jumped up against the case, and was about to refute, Qi Chu hurriedly stood up, fanning the plantain fan again and again and said: "Calm down, calm down!" Then he blamed the sparrow: "How can you doubt comrades like this? Deputy Commander Meng is just eager to win. I blamed me for not having time to exchange opinions with him on the issue of using old soldiers to change the nature of the guerrillas." Then he slapped his banana fan on my uncle, "Sit down and talk, sit down and talk." Uncle suppressed his anger and said, "Please don't misunderstand Therefore, when I made this suggestion, the first thing I thought of was that I don't understand military affairs. I'm just a scholar, not a qualified deputy commander, or even a qualified guerrilla. But I must explain that the Meng family's "housekeeping team" has already It has become history, and now it is the special service team of our three teams, and I will hand over the command of the special service team now." Sparrow said: "Now it is not a question of who will command the special service team, but whether the special service team should cancel the organizational system and be reorganized into Zero problem." The uncle said: "Okay, I will put the command of the special service team here, as for whether to abolish the establishment, please hold a meeting within the party to decide." After finishing speaking, he walked out of the meeting calmly.Qi Chu and the Red Army brother chased them out together and shouted, "Da Meng, come back!" The uncle said, "Have a meeting, let's have a unified understanding in the party first. I, a member of the Kuomintang who has long been abandoned by the Kuomintang, since I decided to work with you From day one, I learned to respect the rules of the Communist Party.”

The future of the Secret Service is uncertain.But the sparrow got a piece of information: the hardcore traitor Zhang Laowu sent his main force out of the nest for activities, and the inside of the earth enclosure was empty.The Eastern Henan Special Committee decided that the three detachments would take advantage of the situation, destroy Tuweizi, and eliminate Zhang Laowu.The Red Army brother believes that the situation is unclear, and he should not seek a war recklessly.The revolutionary scholars who had an absolute advantage in the command headquarters unanimously rejected his opinion, emphasizing that the fighter opportunity should not be delayed.When the Red Army brothers were bitterly arguing, the sparrows attending the meeting also asked to speak, and threw out a sentence: "The main danger at present is right-wing capitulationism."

The battle began in daylight with excellent visibility.The July sun shines brightly on the endless plains.On the blockhouse in Tuweizi, Zhang Laowu looked down at the unobstructed open land with brighter eyes.The Red Army brother and my uncle led the guerrillas to launch a strong attack on Tuweizi, but encountered unexpected fierce firepower.The guerrillas fought hard on the open ground without any concealment.The two gun towers in the soil fence used machine guns to form crossfire and swept across the open ground.More than a dozen soldiers fell in the fire net, and Brother Hongjun was also seriously injured in the abdomen.Zhang Laowu's troops who went out rushed back to help, and the guerrillas were attacked by the enemy.The Red Army brother and uncle led the soldiers to hide under the wall of the village and could not advance or retreat.At an extremely critical moment, there was a shout of killing from the side and rear, and Hu Zi led a special agent team on standby to rush there, wielding more than forty broadswords, and rushed into the returning bandit soldiers to intercept and kill them. The bandit soldiers left more than a dozen corpses behind. , scattered and fled.The special service team seized two more heavy machine guns and concentrated their firepower to block the blockhouse.Brother Red Army tearfully shouted: "Good kill!" He hurriedly stuffed the protruding intestines back into his stomach, asked my uncle to wrap his stomach tightly with leggings, and led the team to withdraw from the battle.That night, Huzi led the special agent team to sneak back to the battlefield under the cover of night, and brought back more than a dozen bloody corpses under the eyes of the enemy.

The moon rose, and there was a dead silence on the great plain in eastern Henan, only the crickets hid in the grass of the campsite and "squeaked" sawing, gnawing at the sadness in my uncle's heart with their small and sharp sawtooth.Brother Hongjun lying on the stretcher said: "Da Meng, get me some wine." He took a few sips of wine and said, "It doesn't hurt anymore, it doesn't hurt anymore. Wine is an anesthetic." Stretcher, silently shed inexplicable tears.The Red Army brother said: "Da Meng, men don't flick their tears easily, why are you crying?" The uncle said: "I was crying for myself. Although this battle was decided by the special committee, it is also my fault that I don't understand military affairs, so I couldn't do it." Stand up and oppose this decision. You are too lonely and wronged!" Brother Hongjun said: "Da Meng, you can charge forward with me, what else do I have to say! I was just about to whisper a few words to you, You should wake up with your three sisters who defected to Yan'an, and consider your joining the organization." The uncle said: "I am panicked, this is not the time to talk about this issue. I can't figure it out. You, as a guerrilla The only commander who understands military affairs, why does he have no complaints and even take the lead in paying the price of blood for a battle that you do not agree with at all? I, a fellow traveler in your party, must be sent to a military court. As for those who are holding a political hat and screaming to suppress people, just ask him to be a death squad! This may be my bad nature. I will never learn to obey unconditionally. It is one of the reasons why I have never dared to let myself join your party. There is another reason..." Brother Hongjun said: "You talk about it!" Uncle said: "If you don't talk about it, it will be far away." Brother Hongjun Said: "I understand, Dameng, we belong to the cow and you belong to the horse. Those who belong to the horse cannot be put on the bridle!"

Years later, I asked my mother about "another reason."My mother said that my uncle had a classmate and friend who was a member of the Communist Party. He was arrested by the Kuomintang as a suspect.After my grandfather managed to rescue him, he was skinny and wounded. He refused to listen to my uncle's dissuasion, and went to the Soviet area alone, but encountered some "AB regiment" in the Soviet area, and he was inspected for several months. Asked him to dig a hole, he dug a hole very hard, and was buried in that hole by his comrades.Mother said that there was no other reason than this.When my uncle heard the news of his friend's death, he hung his photo in the study room, burned incense and wept bitterly, and asked my grandfather, "Father, what's the matter? You think the Kuomintang didn't kill the Communist Party enough, and they still have to kill the Communist Party in their own den." Kill it?" My grandfather also shed tears and said, "I don't understand either, maybe there are spies in the Communist Party."

I'm not sure if this is another reason why my uncle didn't join the Communist Party.But I know that on that night when the battle was defeated, the bright moon still rose, shining the cold moonlight on his hot tears.But the sparrow sneaked over abruptly, stared at him in surprise and said, "What? Deputy Commander Meng, why are you crying here? The influence is not good! You have to pay a little tuition to learn how to fight, just learn the lesson well." The uncle was ignited like a bundle of dry firewood that was in urgent need of burning. "What tuition fees are you talking about?" He stood up abruptly, trembling all over, pointing to a row of more than a dozen newly erected grave mounds, "Don't you feel sad after paying such tuition fees? Your respectable How can a professional revolutionist say such inhuman nonsense!"

The sparrow jumped up and said, "Deputy Commander Meng, please don't curse!" "I was about to ask you," the uncle grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up, "Where did you get the false information? Tell me!" "That's just information for reference." Sparrow struggled to free himself, "I don't have the power to decide the battle. You are the deputy commander, please don't shirk your responsibility." "My responsibility now is to ask you, where did you go when you set off?" "I'm not a combatant, I'm working on a mimeograph."

"If it wasn't when you were about to go into battle, you would never go to any mimeograph machine; if the mimeograph machine was not in a place where there was a female student you were chasing after, you would never go there!" "Then what's the matter? I was in an arranged marriage, and the revolution gave me the freedom to fall in love!" "You still have the face to say what you are free!" The uncle's face turned pale, he was panting sharply, his facial muscles were twisting and convulsing, and his body began to tremble uncontrollably——grandfather and his family had been in him many times. I have seen these terrible tremors and convulsions when I was aroused, and I have seen a doctor about it, and the doctor said it was a sign of "hysteria".The strengths and weaknesses of his character, his mental agility and stupidity, his eloquence and harshness of language, all came out when he was in a daze, "Today, if there are heroes and beautiful people in the village Romance awaits you, and if you don't expect a tough fight and just go for a low-hanging victory, you can even pretend to be a Death Squad without paying a little tuition out of your own veins. And I You know, just when these good boys in the graveyard paid their tuition fees with their lives, someone saw you sitting on the wooden box of the mimeograph machine in the woods of the West Village very freely, hugging a female student and kissing her. The artillery fire here The sky is full of blood, and you still have the mind to move your hands and feet freely there, even...  even want to take off other people's trousers. How could the wise man who sowed the dragon seed reap you so unfortunately' A flea with lowercase '!" The uncle pulled out his pistol like crazy, "You flea, I'll kill you!" The sparrow ran away.The uncle gave chase with a gun.Lying on the stretcher, the Red Army brother grinned at the pain, while twitching his cheeks and biting a wry smile.Qi Chu, who heard the sound, lost his usual composure, grabbed my uncle, and shouted: "Put it down, put down the gun!" Brother Hongjun lay on the stretcher and said, "Leave him alone. He forgot, he had no bullets in his gun, and the day was over." The incident where the uncle drove the sparrows to the ground with an empty gun cast an ironic atmosphere on a tragic sacrifice, and at the same time it led to two results. It was the sparrow who was warned by the party, and his nickname has since become "flea". The uncle decided to resign from the annoyance, exhaustion and cold thinking after the rage, and at the same time he also put forward the request to study in the military academy.Qi Chu asked alertly: "Which military academy do you want to go to?" The uncle said: "I listen to you, but it must be a military academy that can teach me how to fight guerrillas tomorrow." Qi Chu said in relief: "Okay, I will introduce you to Taiyuan The Eighth Route Army Office, look for our Boss Zhu, there is a branch of the Yan'an Anti-Japanese University. As for whether I can teach you how to fight guerrillas tomorrow, I can't guarantee it. But you must have the qualifications of our deputy commander of the guerrillas before you can join This military academy." The uncle said: "Okay, you gave me a reason to withdraw my resignation request, and I accepted it." The medical conditions in the field could not save the life of the Red Army brother.Due to excessive blood loss, wound infection, his life is going away in a coma, but he seems to have lost something. Returning from the long way, his dilated pupils are trying to focus again, looking at Qi Chu and my uncle and saying: "I forgot Just to clarify...I was originally...an old soldier, a prisoner of the Red Army, and I changed...a small motor in my head, and I joined...the Red Army again." Panting, he said with the last of his strength: "An old soldier like Huzi is better than... a hundred fleas." The next day, my uncle was ordered to go to Zhugou, the base area of ​​the Central Plains, to accept the mission. Before leaving, he saw my uncle with sunken eyes, a livid face, took off his military cap, bowed deeply to a new grave, and then became I met a businessman in a tussah silk gown, and embarked on a long journey.Huzi came to see him off with a few former members of the "housekeeping team".He lost his temper and said, "Don't send me away. You are already revolutionary soldiers, and you have more important things to do. In the future, you must obey the orders of the detachment leaders." The uncle said that it was his farewell to my uncle.