One day in September 1968, the 6950 Unit stationed in Daoxian withdrew overnight without giving even cursory notice to the other members of the revolutionary committee that it had formed. Many explanations circulated in Daoxian regarding the reasons for the unit’s withdrawal, but none was authoritative. One thing for certain was that the withdrawal was related to line struggle at the upper levels, which took precedence over all else.
Upon arriving at work the next morning, Huang Yida was dumbstruck to find the office empty, and an ominous feeling overcame him. He quickly conferred with other members of the revolutionary committee, who agreed that even without the 47th Army, they must hold the fort and continue with the tasks the 6950 Unit had left unfinished, especially reviving production. The peasants didn’t have the benefit of the iron rice bowls that cadres and masses enjoyed in the cities; if they didn’t bring in the harvest, they’d have nothing to eat.
At that time, the original leaders of the Daoxian People’s Armed Forces Department (PAFD) had been replaced with a new batch of leaders. People noticed that the original leaders hadn’t been dismissed for their errors but had been transferred or even promoted. The reorganized Daoxian PAFD took over the 6950 Unit’s leadership of the Support-the-Left work, and the cadres and PAFD officers who had supported the Red Alliance were once again wielding authority over Daoxian’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP), political, military, and financial affairs. The pancake had flipped once again, and the Revolutionary Alliance was once more taking the heat, with a considerable number of its members coming under investigation. Huang Yida nevertheless remained vice chairman of the county revolutionary committee.
At that time, Liang Chunyang ran into trouble back in the provincial capital, Changsha, under allegations of “bombarding the three reds”1 with the intention of “destroying our Great Wall”2 along with another provincial CCP committee leader named Shang Chunren. Big-character posters proclaiming “Down with Huang Yida!” appeared in Daojiang Town, claiming that Huang was the “black hand” of the “Liang-Shang clique” that extended into Daoxian and that he had begun colluding with “Liang-Shang” on “shady dealings” while in the provincial capital. The posters also accused Huang of being “the main behind-the-scenes backer of Daoxian’s class enemies” and “a loyal offspring of black elements.”
While pressured by the ominous implications of these big-character posters, Huang maintained his composure, confident that he’d committed no major errors and had always complied with CCP principles and Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line.
A few days after the posters appeared, PAFD deputy commander Liu Rong and deputy political commissar Fan Shulin came calling at Huang’s home. Military men like to get straight to the point, and after the conventional exchange of greetings, they said, “Recently we held a study session for district and commune PAFD commanders to arrange tasks for the coming period. Morale was high, but everyone felt under great psychological pressure because various parties have been alleging they were involved in the killings. We’ve looked into the issue, and it was nothing to do with them. We’re hoping you’ll come forward and exonerate them so they can cast off this burden and carry on with confidence.”
Huang Yida said, “How can I say that when the recent exposure sessions revealed that certain PAFD commanders were directly involved in the Daoxian killings? My saying otherwise won’t make it true.”
At noon the next day, the county’s revolutionary committee chairman and PAFD political commissar, Liu Kuan, came to see Huang and said, “Yesterday comrades Liu and Fan came to talk with you and asked you to say some words at the study session for district and commune PAFD commanders, but I hear you’re unwilling. I suggest that it would be good for you to go. First, it would take a load off their minds so they can carry on with confidence, and second, it would improve relations and facilitate future work, which would be good for everyone. You’ll be depending on these people for operations in the countryside. You bear the main responsibility for operations in Daoxian from now on. The PAFD’s participation in Support-the-Left work is only temporary, and you’ll be handling it over the long term.”
Huang Yida stood firm, however: “Commissar Liu, even in the short time that the exposure study sessions have been held, countless facts have shown that the killings were in fact related to some of these men, and that some will eventually become targets of investigation. I’d be lying if I went to the meeting and said they had nothing to do with it, and I couldn’t say it in good conscience.” When he saw that he was getting nowhere, Commissar Liu left in a huff.
Huang Yida’s attitude caused deep resentment within the county PAFD and among some cadres in the county CCP committee and government, who didn’t see any problem with killing a few black elements and felt that Huang was an upstart hatching some nefarious plot against them. They recalled errors Huang had committed during the Great Leap Forward that resulted in even more deaths through starvation—and most of those victims had been poor and lower-middle peasants, but now the CCP had put Huang in charge in spite of that. Huang was obsessing over the deaths of a few black elements because he’d been born to a well-off middle peasant family and was really just a rich peasant who’d slipped through the net. That made this conflict a life-and-death class struggle, and Huang wasn’t the only one who could wield his pen to report on others.
In short order, a report on “Huang Yida’s Anti-party, Anti-socialist Errors” was compiled in the name of the Daoxian Revolutionary Committee and Support-the-Left Leadership Office and submitted to the Lingling prefectural and Hunan provincial revolutionary committees.
This report summarized Huang Yida’s four great “errors”: (1) concealing his class status and social relations, (2) reversing the verdict on cadres unseated during the Socialist Education movement and villainous Kuomintang remnants, (3) false and exaggerated reports resulting in starvation, and (4) stirring up controversy and sowing division within the revolutionary committee and turning the spearhead of struggle against the “three Reds.”
Any one of those four accusations was a major issue at that time, and it looked like these people had a tactical advantage over Huang Yida’s cohort: Huang Yida knew what to do, but he was too softhearted, while Liu Xiangxi was ruthless enough, but a poor strategist.
Huang was particularly vulnerable to the third allegation relating to starvation during the Great Leap Famine in the late 1950s and early 1960s. To date there are still no official figures on how many people died of unnatural causes during the Great Famine, but all the authoritative estimates put the death toll in the tens of millions. Hunan Province didn’t suffer the greatest number of fatalities, but Daoxian was one of Hunan’s hardest-hit areas, and Lingling Prefecture was near the top of the list. During our reporting, we obtained official data stating that in Daoxian alone, more than 34,000 people died of unnatural causes, and informed sources said the actual number was much greater. It took nine years for the population to regain its 1959 level.
In winter 1961, the Hunan provincial CCP committee sent a rectification work team to survey the consequences of famine in each county, and Huang Yida admitted to having underreported Daoxian’s deaths under orders from county CCP secretary Shi Xiuhua. In his “Preliminary Self-Criticism and Admission of Error,” dated December 3, 1967, Huang wrote, “I duped the party and the people, and this is extremely despicable and shameful. We committed monstrous crimes against more than 40,000 people who died in our county and truly deserve ten thousand deaths.”
“Did you bear any responsibility for these deaths?” I asked him during our interview. I’d read in some related files that Huang Yida had committed serious errors during the famine. In particular, he’d been complicit in a bogus report of a paddy field producing 55,000 kilos per mu, as well as sweet-potato yields of 100,000 kilos per mu, which led to higher requisition orders from the state and left less food for the farmers. He also led 7,000 villagers in a steel-forging campaign, which like most at that time produced nothing but worthless scrap iron while diverting manpower and resources from agricultural production. Many cadres had committed similar errors at that time, and Huang Yida had been no exception.
“I bear the main responsibility,” Huang admitted frankly.
“How about Xiong Bing’en? Was he more responsible, or you?”
“I was. He was a rather overcautious person.”
“How about Shi Xiuhua?”
“His responsibility was greater. I was his right-hand man. I’m not trying to make him bear all the blame, but he was the top man and bore overall responsibility. Comrade Xiuhua was very high-handed; everything had to be done according to his orders, and anyone who disobeyed would be punished. Besides that, Comrade Xiuhua had promoted me to important positions, and I was grateful to him and followed his directions in all matters, and of course I came up with quite a few bad ideas of my own so he would think well of me.” He added, “In spite of my selfish motivations, in my heart of hearts I genuinely believed in the superiority of the socialist system and that collective economy could liberate productive force and create a man-made miracle.”
Many years later, Huang Yida retired from his position as chairman of the standing committee of the Xintian County People’s Congress and returned to Daoxian to spend his twilight years. Whenever it rained or the seasons changed, his old injuries from being bound and beaten during the Cultural Revolution flared up with a piercing ache, and lying sleepless at night, he recalled the day he visited his home village in Xianglinpu during the famine and found wayside pavilions full of people who had starved to death sitting on the stone benches, and the production brigade’s ancestral hall piled high with unburied corpses. He told me, “I deserved to be sent before the firing squad twice over for the crimes I committed against the people of Daoxian and the disaster I brought down on them. The party has forgiven me and the people have forgiven me, and I’m grateful.”3 Shi Xiuhua, however, was unrepentant to the end.
Those memories of starvation and hardship were still fresh on October 12, 1968, when banners went up in the streets of Daojiang: “The upper levels have authorized the dismissal of Huang Yida as member and vice chairman of the revolutionary committee and from its standing committee!”
The banner created a sensation throughout Daoxian—the Revolutionary Alliance was doomed.
What followed was a series of criticism rallies, which eventually spread to every district and commune. The main slogan of the day was, “We will eliminate the poison wherever Huang Yida spread it.”
Huang Yida recalled, “Those criticism rallies were worse than the ones against the capitalist roaders. You would be taken up and hog-tied and then beaten and kicked until you were half dead.”
Liu Xiangxi was treated just as badly as Huang Yida. The first time they met on the stage of a criticism rally, Liu Xiangxi said to him, “Your softheartedness will kill us!” Huang Yida said nothing but only bowed his head.
On November 14 the weather was turning cold, and Huang Yida had put on a quilted jacket and had just finished his breakfast when several people arrived and took him to the sports field behind the No. 1 High School. The county revolutionary committee was holding a mass rally for all the county’s cadres, workers, and residents to announce the decision of the county’s public-security, procuratorial, and judicial military control group to formally detain Huang Yida and the others. The rally was carried out with great ceremony and under the tightest security, with armed militiamen posted everywhere. After Huang Yida’s name was read off, militiamen tied his arms behind his back, pressed his head down, and pushed him onto the stage. Then amid the thunderous shouting of slogans, Huang was hog-tied and taken to the detention center.
The detention center of the Daoxian public-security bureau was in the county government compound. Back when Huang Yida had been county head, he’d heard the cries of detention center inmates from his office, but he’d never gone there. The detention center’s leaders had repeatedly invited him to inspect their work, but he’d always politely declined, reluctant to set foot in that inauspicious place. Now as Huang was brought in, the old warden, Ou Chunlin, untied him and said, “Huang Yida, this is good. I invited you here several times to make an inspection but you always said you were busy, and now you finally have time to sit here all day. If you’d known you’d be staying here, maybe you’d have allocated more funding to enlarge the cells. Now that you’re here, read the prison rules carefully and be sure not to break them.”
Huang Yida had expected this to be only a brief detention, and the old warden’s words came as a shock. He realized how complicated and serious the situation had become.
Arrested and sent to detention along with Huang Yida were county CCP secretary Shi Xiuhua (for the crime of being an incorrigible capitalist roader and degenerate), public-security bureau chief Song Changxin, chief procurator Yan Weisheng, deputy county head Liu Bao’an, and others (mainly for choosing the wrong side). Liu Xiangxi was also brought in, as anyone would have expected, but surprisingly Zheng Youzhi was also detained, along with He Xia.
Huang Yida heard the heavy metal prison door slam shut behind him, and raising his head, he saw pasted to the wall a paper with the “prison regulation system” printed on it: “Frankness will be treated with lenience and resistance with severity, so make a truthful debriefing of your problems; no whispering in each other’s ears or shouting and creating a disturbance; no matches or hard objects inside the jail cells, and no smoking or drinking; submit to the control of the guards in all things; report everything to the guards,” and so on.
At this moment, Huang Yida’s new life began.
No one had told him why he was here, but it was written clearly in the prison rules: he’d been brought in to “make a truthful debriefing of his problems.”
This outmoded detention center had 12 cells of around 10 square meters each that were originally designed to hold 14 prisoners but now held around 30. Each prison cell had only one barred ventilation window in the outer wall 3 meters off the ground, which was so small that even with the bars removed, it would be difficult for a person to crawl through it. The concrete floor was damp, especially in late spring, when the walls dripped with moisture. Anyone staying in the detention center for a year or more suffered from arthritis.
Among the inmates was the former head of the county broadcast station, Tang Houwen. During the Great Famine in autumn 1959, Tang had risked his life to report on the “excellent situation” at Shouyan Commune’s Xialongdong production brigade, where Huang Yida was stationed, and had been shocked by what he’d seen. He recorded a poem in his notebook: “ … China’s excellent situation is desolate and bleak; there’s little smoke in village chimneys and the landscape weeps. Corpses young and old lie scattered, food for beasts.” This poem was discovered during the 1964 Socialist Education movement, and in 1966, Tang Houwen was labeled a “little Deng Tuo” and repeatedly subjected to public criticism, after which he was sent to the detention center as a major political criminal. Now, after less than a year in detention, he was crippled by arthritis so painful that his groans kept his cellmates up at night. The first time he saw Tang Houwen, Huang Yida felt as if he’d been punched in the face. He’d never guessed that 16 months in prison could reduce a person to such a state, and even less that after personally sending this man to jail, he would join him there. Even stranger was that all he could remember was that Tang was Daoxian’s biggest “little Deng Tuo,” while he hadn’t the slightest recollection of what “anti-party, anti-socialist crimes” Tang had been accused of.4
The prisoners slept on wooden planks, with a large chamber pot in the innermost corner of the cell. Prisoners were allowed out for just five minutes every day, during which they focused all their energy on breathing fresh air and using the outdoor toilets. Tardiness in returning to the cell was punished with kneeling on the ground outside for one or two hours, no matter how broiling or frigid the weather.
Because the air inside the cells was so foul and the sanitary conditions were so poor, there were always several prisoners suffering from diarrhea, and the smell in such confines can only be imagined. During the first few days, the stench made Huang Yida so nauseated that his head spun and he couldn’t eat, and he just stared at the other prisoners wolfing down their food.
The 30-odd prisoners in Huang Yida’s cell included people involved in “factional struggle,” clan heads and grassroots cadres involved in clan feuds, and various petty criminals and the occasional fugitive murderer. Hunger was a constant torment, with the small allotment of rice, turnips, and cabbage having a portion deducted as an extra ration for prisoners engaged in outside labor. Each cell was given one bucket of water per day, enough for a small cupful for each person, resulting in intolerable thirst during the hot summer months. Prisoners were allowed to bathe at most once a month, so part of their daily allotment of water was used for superficial washing. Most hoped to be sent to a labor reform farm, where a harsher sentence would be offset by more food and exercise.
Liu Xiangxi suffered even more than Huang Yida. The moment he landed behind bars, Liu resolved to die: “I can’t think that I’ll get out alive, because if I do, I’ll lock all those killers up!” This attitude inevitably brought him under greater attack.
Eventually “master petitioner” Li Niande was sent to this same detention center but was held in the labor cell for prisoners accused of lesser crimes. As related earlier, Li Niande adapted much better to prison life than Huang Yida or Liu Xiangxi. Conditions were more relaxed in the labor cell, and he was out in the sunlight every day and given more to eat, but even when he wasn’t assigned work, Li Niande managed very well. He was young and strong, capable, clever, and tough. If there had already been a system of trustees or cell bosses back then, he might well have become one.
Among the 30 people in Li Niande’s cell were two key people implicated in the killings: the Red Alliance’s deputy political commissar, He Xia, and Revolutionary Alliance commander Zhang Fushan.
He Xia’s crime was being a “ringleader of the massacre” and an “alien-class element” (a counterfeit poor peasant, capitalist, and traitor to China). The label of “alien-class element” was hardest to bear for someone who had always considered himself to have “red roots and shoots,” an unshakable class standpoint, and the highest consciousness of class struggle. He Xia was like someone punished by castration; although the physical hardship was not severe, his spiritual suffering was worse than death. But even in his jail cell, He Xia resolutely maintained a clear distinction between himself and the others, and in accordance with the strict standards of a Communist Party member, he took the initiative to monitor the activities of the “class enemies” around him. Li Niande recalled, “That man loved ratting on others.”5
Zhang Fushan was accused of being the “evil head of a reactionary organization; a beating, smashing, and looting element; and commander in chief of the tragic September 23 shooting.” Upon entering prison, he suffered extreme anxiety over his future, and his health gradually deteriorated. Li Niande looked on him with pity and used the advantages of his own physical strength to help Zhang whenever he could, and gradually the two became friends. The night before Li Niande was to be released from jail, Zhang Fushan crept over and whispered to him, “Xiao Li, I need you to do something for me. I have some material regarding the killings that I left with my wife. This is very important evidence. I can’t take care of it myself, and it’s not safe to leave it with my wife. After you get out, go to the salt company and find my wife… . Tell her I sent you. You have to put the file in a safe place—sooner or later it’ll be useful.”
After his release, Li Niande kept his word and fetched the file from Zhang’s wife. It was material collected during the “exposure study sessions.” As soon as he saw it, Li Niande knew that his friend had entrusted him with his life, and he immediately found a safe place to hide it. Later, because of his transient existence, he changed the hiding place 10 times before finally taking the file out in 1982. The petition Li wrote to Deng Xiaoping was based on this material.
Regarding Huang Yida’s life in prison, I’d like to quote from something Huang Yida himself wrote:
My detention and investigation were all the more devastating because the jail was run by the [county] PAFD, and they considered me an absolutely irreconcilable enemy. They believed that their killing of black elements was a revolutionary act, and that as a Communist Party member and county head of Daoxian who had run off to the provincial capital and reported on them to the 47th Army and provincial revolutionary committee preparatory group leaders, I had spoken up for the black elements and acted as the main backstage supporter of the “ox demons and snake spirits,” and that made me an “alien-class element.” Accordingly, they requested that Liu Xianxi and I be sentenced to death, and had already obtained permission from the Lingling prefectural Support-the-Left leading small group (i.e., the Lingling military subregion) and had sent their request under seal to the Hunan provincial revolutionary committee; because I was a cadre under provincial management, the prefecture wasn’t authorized to execute me. Comrade Hua Guofeng reportedly heard of this matter and said, “I know this man. When the killings arose in Daoxian, he came to Changsha to see me, and he made a great effort to solve the serious problems in Daoxian. If there’s a problem, have him make a self-criticism. …” The provincial government’s refusal to authorize the death sentence pulled me back from the brink.
But if someone like me, who held the evidence of their murders and was preparing to call them to account for their crimes, wasn’t disposed of, wouldn’t that bring them endless trouble? How could they let me off so easily? They therefore adopted the even-crueler method of locking me up for life.
Huang Yida was cut off from all contact with the outside world, and unlike other prisoners, his family was forbidden to bring him food. His wife and children also suffered hardship due to the loss of most of his income. Huang and Liu Xiangxi were tortured daily. Huang lost his appetite and ability to sleep, and the trauma to his blood vessels and ribs devastated his formerly hale physique to the point where he could no longer use his left hand and began to suffer from heart disease and other ailments. In spring 1969, Huang Yida and Liu Xianxi were taken to the auditorium of the Daoxian No. 1 High School for a “seize-and-push rally” for village militia leaders, where Huang expected to be permanently disabled or even killed.
At eight o’clock that morning, we were taken to the rally and led onto the stage amidst a burst of yelling. … I was surrounded by a dozen or so people pushing my head and pulling my hair, kicking me in my vital parts and tearing off my clothes… . While they were beating me, I no longer felt any pain and only sensed things going black and a great wave of sound rolling back and forth over me. I seemed to be aware of only one thing: I’m still alive, I’m still alive… . At that point someone below the stage stood up and shouted, “You can’t do this! What crime did Huang Yida commit? It would be better for you to take him out and execute him!” People on the stage shouted, “Down with the pro-Huang faction! Protecting Huang is a crime worthy of 10,000 deaths!” But people below the stage shouted, “Fight with words, not violence!” The people in charge of the rally, seeing things devolve into chaos, went to the microphone and shouted, “That’s enough! Don’t do anything unless directed!” But everything was in chaos now, and the masses were protesting the nonsensical policies. The public denunciation rally couldn’t continue, so they declared it adjourned and took Liu Xiangxi and me back to the detention center.
Huang Yida’s wife, seeing him led bloodied from the rally, ran to the county PAFD headquarters and demanded to see the newly appointed political commissar and revolutionary committee chairman, Chen Fengguo. “What crime has Huang Yida committed?” she demanded. “Does he deserve a death sentence? If so, it should be carried out through a court judgment. How can you just persecute someone until he’s half dead?”
Claiming to know nothing about the rally, Chen said he’d look into it, and Huang Yida and Liu Xianxi weren’t taken to criticism rallies for a long time after that. Nevertheless, Huang spent 40 hellish months in prison, and throughout that time no one questioned him or brought him before the court or carried out even the most basic legal procedures. Finally, after the “Lin Biao Anti-party Clique” fell from power, Huang Yida was released from prison on April 1, 1972, and placed under house arrest at the Dongwei coal mine, more than 30 kilometers from the county seat:
By then, Wang Ansheng had become vice chairman of the county revolutionary committee and head of the military control group. He personally ordered that I be sent into the mine to dig for coal. When the head of the mine saw that my health was so fragile, he went to the county seat to see militia commissar and county revolutionary committee chairman Chen Fengguo and said, “On the basis of Huang Yida’s current physical condition, I absolutely cannot allow him into the mine or there’s sure to be an accident.”6 Commissar Chen replied, “Then arrange for work that he can handle. Don’t force him to go to the mine if he can’t do it.” After this they had me tend the pigs and raise vegetables.
After I’d spent a year under house arrest at the Dongwei coal mine, full exposure of the crimes of the Lin Biao Anti-party Clique resulted in many issues being gradually clarified. I was declared a free man and allowed to rejoin my family.
In May 1981, the Daoxian CCP committee’s Commission for Discipline Inspection carried out a review of Huang Yida’s case, and with the authorization of the Lingling prefectural CCP committee and Hunan provincial CCP committee, the commission overturned the false allegations, rehabilitated Huang Yida, and restored his good name.
After public-security chief Song Changxin was ferreted out and sent to jail along with Huang Yida and the others, the public-security bureau was reorganized, and a new director, Wu Guiwen, was moved up from the ranks. Likewise, the education department promoted a young cadre named Zhong Changbin to strengthen its leadership. Zhong Changbin and Wu Guiwen had worked together in Shangguan District, Wu as district head and Zhong as CCP secretary, and they had always gotten along well. After being transferred to the county seat, being in unfamiliar surroundings and temporarily separated from their families, the two of them regularly met up in the public-security bureau office after work to drink and chat. On one such evening, Zhong Changbin noticed a large stack of files piled up along the office wall, and out of curiosity he picked one up to have a look. He was shocked by what he read, and asked Wu what all this was. Wu said, “These are documents the 6950 Unit left behind. They’re useless.”
Zhong Changbin said, “Oh, I don’t think you can call them useless. Sooner or later someone’s going to look into this matter, and in your position you’re sure to be blamed.”
The two of them found a filing cabinet, an old wooden type with two doors, and stuffed the files inside. Then they found several bed boards and nailed them over the cabinet doors, which they sealed with a paper strip for good measure. On the strip they wrote “Save permanently” and then took the precaution of stamping it with the public-security bureau’s seal.
The years passed in a series of political ups and downs, and the incident gradually faded from memory.
In 1982, Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening policy called for the cadre ranks to become “younger and more intellectual, professional and revolutionary.” Zhong Changbin happened to fit all four criteria. When the Daoxian CCP committee and county government were reorganized, Zhong underwent vetting by the prefectural CCP organs and county CCP committee, with the intention of appointing him county deputy CCP secretary and secretary of the commission for discipline inspection. But on the very day that his superiors came to discuss this appointment with Zhong, someone reported to the county CCP committee that Zhong Changbin’s family (still living in the village) had cut down 23 of the production team’s trees to build their house. Although a thorough investigation vindicated Zhong and his family, the case scuppered Zhong’s promotion to deputy CCP secretary.
This was a hard blow to Zhong Changbin, and he felt depressed and discouraged for a very long time. Just then, Daoxian established its task force to deal with the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution massacre, and after lengthy consideration the county CCP committee leaders decided Zhong Changbin was the best choice to lead this work. The first time they approached Zhong, he refused, and he refused the second time as well. The third time they approached him, the county CCP committee leaders said, “This is revolutionary work and the county has already made its decision. It’s inappropriate for you to refuse a third request.” At that, Zhong Changbin finally relented.
Upon taking on this task, Zhong Changbin felt dejected and at a loss; such a large county with a population of more than 400,000, and an incident that had occurred 16 years before under very different circumstances—how could he even begin to deal with it? Then Zhong remembered the filing cabinet. But that had been so long ago—did it even still exist? He rushed over to the county public-security bureau and saw the filing cabinet right where he and Wu Guiwen had left it, nailed shut and with the writing on the seal paper still faintly legible. He opened it up, and apart from being yellowed with age, the documents inside were completely intact. No one had disturbed them in all those 16 years.
Zhong Changbin bowed his head into his hands: “This was heaven’s will. . . .”