Page 187 - SELECTED WORKS OF DENG XIAOPING Volume III

IN MEMORY OF LIU BOCHENG

October 21, 1986

After a long illness Bocheng has passed away. I worked with him for
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a long time and knew him very well. I am deeply grieved by his death.
Bocheng joined the army when he was very young and served in it his
whole life. After the Revolution of 1911 he participated in the campaigns to
protect the Republic and uphold the Provisional Constitution, proving
himself a valiant soldier. I still have a photograph of him taken in 1915,
when he was twenty-two years old—just in his prime. In 1916, while leading
his troops in the Fengdu battle in Sichuan Province (part of the expedition
against Yuan Shikai), he was struck by two bullets in the head and lost his
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right eye. Later he commanded countless campaigns and engagements and
was wounded at least nine more times. He performed outstanding military
exploits and became famous as the resourceful one-eyed general.
I became acquainted with Bocheng in 1931 in the Central Soviet Area
in Jiangxi Province. When I saw him for the first time, I was impressed by
his honesty, sincerity and amiability. Beginning in 1938 we worked together
for 13 years, first in the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army, where
he served as commander and I as political commissar, and then in the
Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army, the Central Plains Field Army
and the Second Field Army. Although he was ten years older than I, and we
had different personalities, we got on very well together and cooperated
closely. People always spoke of us together, calling us Liu-Deng. And indeed,
in our hearts we felt we were inseparable. I was very happy to work and fight
alongside him. Bocheng was a man of the greatest virtue and worked well
with other comrades, setting an example for all our leading cadres even today.
Bocheng had strong Party spirit. This was especially evident in the way
he always subordinated his own interests to the general interests. To meet the
needs of the whole, he never hesitated to sacrifice the interest of the part.
He always asked to take on the hardest and most dangerous tasks and carried

An article published in People’s Daily.

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