Long March spirit still important to CPC

------ by Xinhua writer Ni Siyi

Source: Xinhuanet

10-22-2006 13:00

BEIJING, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- As China gears up for Sunday's gala in Beijing to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Red Army's successful strategic retreat, the Long March, the few remaining survivors of the odyssey might reflect with sadness rather than with the joy shared by their offspring.

"My father never talked to me about his experiences during the Long March when I was a kid, even when I kept on asking," said Liu Taihang, now in his 70s, whose father was late Marshal Liu Bocheng, one of the founders of the People's Liberation Army.

"He said the mere mention of the Long March reminded him of the great losses of his soldiers, the fathers who lost their sons and the women who became widows," Liu said.

The Communist Red Army was on the brink of complete annihilation by Chiang Kai-Shek's troops in Jiangxi Province in October 1934. Poorly equipped and ill-fed, but with little to lose, the Red Army's 80,000-strong First Division re-grouped after several unsuccessful battles and began its year-long march north in October 1934.

By the time they reached their destination in Shaanxi Province in northwest China, 12,500 kilometers after their first steps, the First Division arrived with just 7,000 members, after suffering tens of thousands of casualties, through starvation, fatigue, sickness and skirmishes.