Foreign invasion requires men to defend,
General, you wrote a heroic page of this.
The enemy boasted of mechanized troops,
Your valor beat down the might of lions and bears.
On the field of battle in the end you perished,
Your lofty ideals have not been lost.
Our source for this poem is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 10, p. 177, which reproduces the version published in Xin wanbao of July 3, 1980.
1. Dai Anlan (1905–1942) was a Guomindang general active in the Burma (now Myanmar) campaign in the spring of 1942. He held Donggua (also known as Tongji), though it ultimately fell to the Japanese, and he recaptured Tanggan in the spring campaign. Dai was killed in an encounter with Japanese troops along the north Burma border on May 26, 1942. The Guomindang government honored Dai in December 1942. See Liu Shaotang, Minguo renwu xiaozhuan (Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue chubanshe, 1981), Vol. 4, pp. 404–6.
2. This poem appears to be from May 1942, when Dai died; however, as the Guomindang government honored Dai in December 1942, it is possible that Mao offered his version at that time.
3. Mao uses the old, pejorative term wo for Japanese.
4. These are classical names: Tang for Tanggan and Ji for Tongji, that is, Donggua.