Military History | 太武山忠烈祠 — Who Gets a Tablet

By the winter of 1952 the Republic of China's dead lay scattered across 金門 in new graves and old: men killed at 古寧頭 in 1949, in the raid on 南日島, on 大擔, and others lost to illness or accident on a garrison island a long way from anyone's home village. 胡璉, who commanded there, had a cemetery cut into the western foot of 太武山 with a shrine above it. According to the founding inscription on site, engineer battalions drawn from several divisions built the whole thing in about six months.

The monument in the sunken plaza carries its own date, 中華民國四十二年三月二十九日 — 29 March 1953 — under the signature of 蔣中正. The shrine stands behind it, and behind that the 忠烈殿 where the spirit tablets are kept. Ranked headstones run down the slope in front. Three circular mass graves lie on the high ground at the back.

八二三砲戰 came five years later, and what is worth following here is not the total but who was admitted to it, and when. The shrine opened as a place for service dead. 金門縣政府 records that in 2003, forty-five years after the shelling, thirty-eight members of Kinmen's civil-defence militia (民防隊) were enshrined. The 忠烈殿 now also holds tablets for 自衛隊 members, for Chinese and foreign journalists killed covering the bombardment, and for 抗日 dead from an earlier war.

The grounds were rebuilt from September 2002 and re-dedicated on 23 August 2004, the forty-sixth anniversary. 金門縣政府 and 金防部 hold ceremonies here on 29 March, 23 August and 3 September each year, and the site is open all year without charge. The county's admission rules are still on its books and cases still come up for review, so the roll of the dead at 太武山 is not a closed list.

📸 Cover: the 國民革命軍陣亡將士紀念碑 in the plaza, with 太武忠烈祠 behind. Photo by rheins, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.