Dawn Blade on the Plains

The Central Hebei plain stretches for a thousand li of fertile land. There are no high mountains or dense forests for cover here, only endless green crop fields and crisscrossing dirt roads.

From 1938 to 1943, Chen Tieshi, the regimental commander of the Independent Regiment under the Jizhong Military District of the Eighth Route Army, led his troops in a five-year desperate struggle against well-equipped Japanese forces on this plain with no natural barriers to defend.

From the "toad squat" to the "underground Great Wall," from sparrow tactics to chain mines, he used peasant wisdom to make up for the gap in weaponry and turned every inch of land into the enemy’s graveyard.

At the Qi Meeting Battle, he cut off reinforcements and cooperated with the main force to annihilate seven hundred enemies; in the defense of Huangyadong, he fought bloody battles for eight days and nights to protect the safe transfer of the munitions factory; during the May First sweep, he broke out of desperate situations several times, each time paving the way with the bones of his comrades.

Yet the price of heroism was heavy. One brother after another fell, his lover died in his arms, and in the end he himself fell on the scorched earth of Liulaozhuang.

But as he said in his dying moments: "To draw the sword and face the enemy is not about winning; it is about drawing it even knowing you will die."

A nation does not perish because there is always a group of people who, in the deepest darkness, choose to burn themselves away.