Chapter 2: Reborn from the Flames

  Before the Japanese arrived, Grandfather was the head of Yu's Village and a well-known rural gentry. In the spring of 1939, the Japanese army landed at Ershenggang Port and soon occupied the county seat and the vast countryside on both banks of Guanhe River.

  In the summer of 1940, the Japanese puppet army suddenly besieged Yu's village. The Japanese forced Grandfather to take up the post of deputy head of the county maintenance committee, and if he did not comply, they would burn down the Yu family ancestral temple and burn him, his wife, and their whole family to death.

  At the height of his years, Grandfather did not hesitate. Although he was only a rural gentry, in the face of life and national righteousness, he chose the latter. When the magnificent Yu family ancestral hall and old house were set on fire by the Japanese puppet army, about to become a sea of flames, Grandfather showed no fear at all, but stroked his long beard, facing the enemy's bayonet with a loud laugh towards the sky.

  He leaned on a crutch, wearing a calabaza hat, and supported by his wife, under the gaze of hundreds of villagers in Yu's village, step by step, tremblingly, walked into the flames. The whole family of more than 20 people, young and old, hugged together, along with the Yu family ancestral hall and the old house, were reduced to ashes by the raging fire.

  That year, Grandpa was over fifty years old and Grandma was less than forty years old.

  The elderly said that after the Japanese withdrew, a big fire burned for half the night. The Yu family ancestral hall and old house were reduced to rubble. Hundreds of men, women, and children from the Yu village knelt down in front of the ruins, wailing loudly. At dawn, a torrential rain poured down, with loud thunder and flashes of lightning, lasting for two days and two nights.

  When the Yu family ancestral hall and old house caught fire, Yu Xiner took his younger brother Yu Xinmin and sisters She Wenfang and She Wenshu to hide in a dry well in the backyard of their home school. This dry well had a small brick room at the bottom, which was usually stocked with some water and food. The well mouth was hidden in the wall, relatively concealed.

  After the Japanese came, Grandfather rebuilt the study room in preparation for defense and secretly built this facility as an escape route for his children in case of emergency.

  The Japanese army suddenly entered the village and took away Grandpa and Grandma, sealing off the entire village. Mr. She, the teacher hired by Grandpa to teach at home, quickly pushed the four children into a hidden compartment in the wall and had them hide in a dry well before the Japanese devils searched the house. As for him, he sat calmly in the house, determined to follow Old Master Yu and his wife to the west.

  Mr. She is also from a wealthy family, an old-fashioned literati who fled from Shenyang, and was a Xiucai of the former Qing dynasty. He is well-versed in classics, history, various schools of thought, astronomy, geography, and all other subjects.

  After the Lugou Bridge Incident, he took his two daughters from Beiping along the Longhai Road and fled to northern Jiangsu. At that time, there were many refugees and starving people lying on the ground everywhere. My grandmother specially opened a porridge shed in the village to provide relief to the refugees who had fled their homes.

  It is said that Mr. She brought two ten-year-old twin daughters to Yu's village, and the three of them were all exhausted. Or it was fate, when Grandma saw Mr. She's two muddy monkey-like twin daughters in the rice shed, her bound feet also became immobile.

  Two little sisters with hair as messy as a bundle of straw, bodies dirty like two mud dolls, staring at their grandmother with wide eyes full of fear. Their grandmother took them home, had them take a bath and change clothes, and took in the three of them, father and daughters.

  Grandfather only talked to Mr. She once, and then asked him to be the teacher of the family school, and Grandma adopted the two She sisters as daughters. From then on, Mr. She settled down in Yu's village, serving as a teacher at the family school for over two years, teaching Yu Xinhe, Yu Xinmin brothers and his own two daughters to read books.

  On the night that the Yu family ancestral temple and old residence were burned down, at dawn, Yu Xiner took his younger brother Yu Xinmin and two younger sisters, braving the heavy rain to escape from the ruins and flee the village. They hid and dodged, avoiding villages and passersby, walking east for a day and two nights until they reached a small village in the Qianli Lüwei Marsh by the sea.

  Yu Xinhe's aunt and uncle's home was in a small village called Bànshā Cūn. 14-year-old Yu Xinhe took his three 11-year-old younger siblings to hide at their aunt and uncle's home for two years. After the Spring Festival in 1943, they left their aunt's home and began wandering around until the Japanese surrendered before returning to Yújiā Cūn.

  Although the father and mother, as well as the younger uncles and aunts, were very strict about their experiences during these two years, never revealing anything to outsiders. However, the elderly villagers all swore that during this period, the county seat and various strongholds throughout the county had not had a single day of peace, and that Japanese soldiers and traitors who strayed from their groups would be killed on the spot. By the time Japan surrendered, most of the Japanese soldiers and traitors involved in the Yujiacun massacre had been hunted down and eliminated.

  Yu Songyuan had doubts and found it hard to imagine. His father was only 16 years old at the time, while his mother and younger uncles were only 13 years old, they were just four children, how could this be possible?

  The village of Bansha where my uncle's family lived was only over thirty li away from the Japanese stronghold of Ershenggang. The area was sparsely populated, with grasslands and reed marshes surrounding the village, making it a desolate and isolated place, an ideal location for guerrilla warfare. Less than twenty kilometers away from here, on the south bank of the abandoned Huanghe River and Zhongshan River, was the base of the Eighth Regiment of the New Fourth Army's Third Division.

  My uncle, Zhang Wenbo, was a small landowner and, like Yu Songyuan's grandfather, was a progressive gentry from northern Jiangsu with courage, vision and a strong sense of justice. He had been trained in martial arts since childhood, had a forthright personality, and had served as a battalion commander for two years in the warlord Zhang Bangchang's army.

  After the Second Zhili-Fengtian War, the Fengtian Army retreated to Jiangsu. In October 1925, Sun Chuanfang launched a counterattack against the Fengtian Army, which was defeated, and Yang Yu-tang, the governor of Jiangsu, fled north in disarray. The Zhili clique won a great victory in this battle, and Sun Chuanfang became the commander-in-chief of the Five-Provincial Allied Forces, with all of northern Jiangsu occupied by the Zhili Army. The army advanced to Xuzhou, where it confronted Zhang Zongchang, the governor of Shandong.

  My uncle was seriously injured and had to leave the Northeast Army. He took his whole family to hide in a thousand-mile coastal wilderness of reeds and grass, reclaimed land and planted crops, gradually establishing a household. My uncle was born with a strong temper, never yielding, after several years in the Northeast Army, he absorbed quite a bit of heroic spirit. In my aunt's words, he couldn't tolerate even half a grain of sand in his eyes.

  For two years at Aunt's house, Yu Xinhe and Yu Xinmin brothers followed their uncle to learn martial arts, practice gunplay, strength, martial arts, and gunplay all made great progress, especially Yu Xinhe's long and short gunplay, Yu Xinmin's flying knife skills, almost reached the point of one hundred shots. The Shu sisters, who were determined to avenge their grievances, also followed their brother to learn martial arts and practice their skills.

  On the night of February 6, 1942, in the lunar calendar, the weather was gloomy and overcast with dark clouds. A small team of Japanese troops stationed at Ershenggang, along with more than 150 puppet salt police officers, carried out a sweep operation around the surrounding countryside of Ershenggang.

  The devils came rushing from the direction of the three tombs outside the village, and the villagers in the village and surrounding villages all ran away. My uncle did not run, he took Yu Xinhe, Yu Xinmin brothers, as well as his two sons and five nephews, determined to use the cover of night to attack this group of Japanese puppet troops.

  The Japanese puppet army brought more than 100 small carts, loaded with grain and supplies looted from villages along the way. They quickly surrounded Bansha Village, seeing that all the villagers had already fled, the village was empty and silent, and prepared to enter the village to loot. My uncle led his two sons and a nephew to guard the west end of the village. Yu Xinhe and Yu Xinmin led others to guard the east end of the village.

  The 13-year-old Shi sisters each carried a box gun, with two Japanese-made hand grenades hanging from their waists. They guarded the inner house door, responsible for protecting their aunt's safety. Their aunt also had a pistol tucked into her waistband, and according to her husband's arrangements, she packed two bundles of soft goods, ready to move to the south bank of the Zhongshan River at any time.

  Bang!

  On that day, the puppet army swaggered and approached the village. My uncle's box cannon fired first. More than a dozen long and short guns immediately poured out a burst of bullets, and several Japanese-made hand grenades exploded in the enemy crowd. The enemy was caught off guard and was knocked down by more than ten people. The remaining enemies immediately retreated to the trenches outside the village.

  The Japanese puppet army quickly regrouped and began attacking the village. The two grenade launchers seemed to have eyes, constantly bombarding the firepower points in the village. Two of my uncle's nephews were injured by the explosion, and three family servants were killed. Yu Xinhe had a long and short gun in his hand, and he quickly climbed onto the thatched roof with 13-year-old Yu Xinmin. The two aimed accurately and shot down several Japanese grenade launchers in succession.

  The Japanese machine guns seemed to have eyes, and quickly poured a burst of bullets at them. The two brothers had already quickly moved to the roof of the next house, accurately killing two enemy machine gunners. They kept changing positions, jumping from one rooftop to another, continuously firing precise shots at the exposed heads of the puppet soldiers.

  Yu Xinhe had good eyesight, and vaguely saw a Japanese soldier occasionally raising his command knife. After careful aiming, he shot the Japanese officer's head with one bullet. As it was a sweep of the surrounding villages, the Japanese army only had an infantry squad, without bringing mortars, grenade launchers and machine guns were suppressed, and the firepower was affected. Several rounds of attack were repelled, leaving several corpses behind.

  Under the cover of darkness, for more than two hours, over a hundred Japanese puppet troops were pinned down in trenches outside the village by just a dozen or so villagers and rifles. Just as both sides were at an impasse, a battalion from the 24th Regiment of the 8th Division of the New Fourth Army, stationed in Yangji, Jiebei and other areas along the Zhongshan River, received intelligence about the Japanese army's sweep operation and rushed to the scene, forcing the Japanese puppet troops to retreat in disarray.

  In this battle, my uncle led more than a dozen nephews and nieces to fight against over 150 Japanese puppet troops for two hours. Eleven Japanese puppet soldiers were killed, including Lieutenant Colonel Kemu Shosho, and more than thirty were injured. We captured more than ten long and short guns and one officer's command knife. I only lost three men and six or seven were wounded.

  In early 1942, the Xinyi Fourth Army's "Yanfu Dazhong Bao" newspaper reported on the heroic deeds of the rural gentry Zhang Wenbo in resisting the Japanese invaders.

  During the Japanese occupation of Northern Jiangsu, Yu Xinhe and his brother Yu Xinmin never returned to their hometown. However, the elderly villagers said that they appeared out of nowhere on the coastal land, striking and killing scattered Japanese puppet troops from time to time. Liu Ma Zi, the notorious captain of the county detective team who was infamous for his cruelty, was beheaded by them in a dark night within the old nest of the county town, right under the noses of the Japanese invaders.

  Liu Mazi was nine feet tall, a bandit from the Guanhe River, with high martial arts skills, good at using dual guns, and killed people like hemp. After the Japanese army occupied, he surrendered to the Japanese army and became the head of the detective team. Hundreds of people from the New Fourth Army and progressive civilians died in his hands. He participated in the Japanese army's burning of Yu Jia Village and later claimed that he wanted to capture the Yu brothers alive, uprooting them completely.

  On the night of Dragon Boat Festival in 1943, the detective team's compound within the county town's Japanese military camp was subjected to a bloody nocturnal raid. That evening, not a single shot was fired within the camp, and there were no abnormalities, but all seventeen members of the detective team, from top to bottom, those habitual criminals who followed Liu Ma Zi in kidnapping and murder, accumulating blood debts, were killed at close range with a single knife wound to the throat, extremely accurate.

  These deep and earth-shaking actions of eliminating traitors or killing enemies, although the "perpetrators" did not leave any clues, but the Japanese puppet army and the people in the county seat and surrounding areas all knew that it was the work of the Yu brothers who had a great grudge. In two to three years, the county seat and various strongholds were thrown into turmoil, with everyone on high alert. As soon as "Double Gun Yu Xinhe" and "Little Knife Yu Xinmin" were mentioned, the Japanese puppet army would be terrified, their souls lost.