A Yellowed Order Document — Why Did It Stop Everyone in Their Tracks?

"Either we are the victors, or we are the vanquished."

■ Shi Chenzhou, Chen Dengke

A directive document on display at the Red Army Long March Xiangjiang Battle Memorial Museum. Photo by Zhang Chenfei.

In July, in northern Guangxi, the Xiang River flows quietly. Officers and soldiers of the Quanzhou Detachment of the People's Armed Police Guilin Contingent walked into the Red Army Long March Xiangjiang Battle Memorial Museum, where a yellowed directive document on display in a glass case brought everyone to a halt.

"Either we are the victors, or we are the vanquished." These twelve characters are intimately familiar to every officer and soldier in the detachment. The directive contained in this document has always been the spiritual benchmark passed down from generation to generation in this detachment, which is garrisoned on the land where the Long March's bloody battle was fought.

The directive was issued in the early morning hours of December 1, 1934. That was the most brutal day of the Xiangjiang Battle, and the final pass that would determine the life or death of the Red Army.

At that moment, after breaking through three lines of encirclement, the Central Red Army had reached the Xiang River, with nearly 300,000 enemy troops closing in from all sides. The Red Army had been compressed into a narrow strip of land east of the Xiang River, and a portion of the Military Commission column and the main force had yet to cross. If the blocking line were breached, the entire Central Red Army would face the danger of being split apart and annihilated.

The situation had reached a critical juncture. In the early morning hours, this emergency directive, jointly signed by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the Central Revolutionary Military Commission, and the Red Army General Political Department, was transmitted to every position: "One day of battle concerns our entire field army. Victory in the westward advance can open the path of development going forward; retreat will result in our field army being cut off layer by layer… Either we are the victors, or we are the vanquished. Victory or defeat concerns the overall situation. Every person must summon the highest courage in battle, disregard all sacrifice, overcome fatigue, and with resolute assault, carry out the mission of attacking and annihilating the enemy…"

There was no room to maneuver, no retreat to speak of. Victory and defeat, life and death, were compressed into a single-choice question that could not have been clearer.

When the directive reached the positions of the 34th Division of the Red Army, the enemy forces facing them had already multiplied several times over. Division Commander Chen Shuxiang led his troops in a lone, fight-to-the-death battle in the Guanyang area, buying time for the main force to cross the river. After days of bloody fighting, with ammunition and food exhausted, Chen Shuxiang was shot in the abdomen and captured. During the escort, he refused to yield, tore out his own intestines to show his resolve, and died a heroic death at only 29 years of age. The entire division paid the price of near-total annihilation, pinning the enemy forces firmly in their wake.

"The moment the order reached the position, it meant that one had to answer with one's life." Detachment Political Instructor Mo Jiaquan told the officers and soldiers: "Every single character of this directive is soaked in the resolve to burn one's boats (破釜沉舟) in a desperate situation."

These words do not feel distant to the officers and soldiers. In the Quanzhou Detachment, "either we are the victors, or we are the vanquished" has never been a slogan hung on a wall — it is a battle cry that can be roared out at a critical moment.

Not long ago, the garrison area experienced days of torrential rain and sudden flooding. In the dead of night, an emergency assembly call sounded abruptly. Officers and soldiers moved the instant the order came, racing against the floodwaters to evacuate civilians and reinforce embankments. That night, no one asked "how long will this take," and no one said "I can't hold on."

On another occasion, a wildfire broke out suddenly in the local area. The detachment assembled on an emergency basis, and then-Detachment Commander Zhou Jiafeng stepped in front of the formation and, without a lengthy mobilization speech, said only one sentence: "Comrades, either we are the victors, or we are the vanquished. Before us is the fire; behind us are the people."

"The benchmark our forebears erected in a life-or-death desperate situation has been passed into our hands — and that means not cutting a single corner when faced with a mission," said Mo Jiaquan. This consciousness of "no victory means defeat" has also quietly reshaped the detachment's philosophy of training soldiers.

The detachment once went through a misguided period of seeking quick results: blindly adding time and drills to prepare for evaluations, without differentiating by skill level or accounting for the pressure of guard duties. It looked like increased training loads, but in reality the difficult and key points were not studied in depth, the foundation was not laid solidly, and it even wore away the officers' and soldiers' enthusiasm for independent study and training. "Deviating from the standard of winning in battle means failure. On the training ground there is no middle state — only two answers: victory and defeat," Mo Jiaquan said at a reflection meeting. After that, the detachment resolutely abandoned the approach of brute-force effort, starting from strengthening foundational physical capacity, making up for professional shortcomings, and doing every guard shift well.

The Xiang River surges on, flowing without cease. The detachment has ranked near the top in the contingent's duty-training rotation for four consecutive years, with more than 50 officers and soldiers winning gold and silver medals in competitions at various levels.

"In peacetime, the guard post is the combat position, and standing guard is combat." The words of soldier Huang Lingzhi express the understanding shared by the detachment's officers and soldiers — the test of vowing to fight for victory and never conceding defeat is embodied in every guard shift and every mission. Keeping one side safe and secure, protecting the lights of ten thousand homes — this is the finest consolation to the martyrs, and the victory that our generation must win.