Beidahuang refers to the vast barren plain area in the Songhua River basin of the Nenjiang River in Heilongjiang, with a total area of 5.5 million yuan. 530,000 square kilometers, known as "pinching the black soil to produce oil flowers, inserting a pair of chopsticks also sprouted", is very suitable for agricultural development. Since ancient times, the Northern Wilderness has been a barbaric land, where thorns are overgrown, swamps are everywhere, wind and snow are raging, wild beasts are flocked, people are rare, cold, remote, wild, and dangerous are synonymous with it.
In April 1950, the Liberation Regiment of the Political Department of the Northeast Military Region of the Chinese People's Liberation Army marched into the northern wilderness and established the first mechanized farm in New China, Baoquanling Farm. The army includes about 1,700 active-duty soldiers, and 3,258 Kuomintang soldiers who revolted, surrendered, and captured in the Northeast Liberation War. My grandfather is among them, and they are still in the army establishment, and according to the standard of the supply system for active-duty soldiers, they are called "classmates" to each other.
In 1951, the Liberation Regiment harvested 363 tons of wheat, 3,119 tons of soybeans, 64 tons of sorghum, and 75 tons of corn; in less than two years, the liberation regiment opened a group of more than 114,000 mu of land. By 1956, the soldiers of the Liberation Regiment had opened up to 30,000 hectares of land, and they had gloriously completed the task of building the field.
The story of this wolf pack attacking the tractor unit was told to me by my uncle, which occurred in the late 1950s, when Baoquanling Farm introduced a large number of agricultural machinery, and took the lead in realizing mechanized land reclamation in New China. Uncle used to be the captain of the tractor unit, he said the story happened in the autumn, the production team will organize the reclamation every spring and autumn, the wasteland is far from the team headquarters, there is no road, the tractor if the daily round trip waste of fuel waste time is not worth it, so at night the tractor will stop in the field and not come back. At that time, people could bear hardships and their motivation was still high, and the crew got up early and ploughed the land in the morning and greedily, and at night, the crew members slept next to the tractor when they built a horse frame on the spot.
The process of opening up the wasteland is roughly like this, first the staff of the production team set fire to the wasteland, burned a large piece of wasteland, and then the tractor drove over to push down the stump that could not be burned, filled in the boiled puddle, and sorted out the land, so that the land could be ploughed and opened.
The Great Northern Wilderness has been a barbaric land since ancient times, where there are thorny swamps everywhere, and some of the blisters (ponds) are fish, shrimp and toads, and even the big fish in the shallow blisters can be caught with bare hands; the bushes in the wilderness are full of birds and beasts, pheasants and wild ducks, geese, swans, and white cranes are everywhere, and these large water birds make nests and lay eggs in the reeds of the swamp, and veterans can often pick up all kinds of bird eggs when they open the wilderness. In the summer, the northern wilderness snakes and beasts are flocked, wild wolves, leopards, black bears, wild boars and even tigers, sticks and roe deer scoops, pheasants fly into the rice pot, is the real portrayal of the northern wilderness at that time. After the autumn fire, these wild animals have nowhere to hide, so they are scared to run around, many small animals are burned to death by the fire, and many birds are burned or fallen to death in the wildfires. Due to the large number of lands, wild animals have lost their habitat and fled, steppenwolves have also lost a stable source of food, and wolves often attack humans.
Chen Changsheng is the captain of the tractor, and the maintenance team he leads has been in the wilderness for three days, and the crew members sleep in the horse rack next to the tractor at night. Chen Changsheng got up at three o'clock in the morning, he added some dry wood to the bonfire in front of the horse rack, and then burned a pot of boiling water and roasted some steamed buns on the campfire, Chen Changsheng beckoned his companions to get up, everyone drank boiling water, nibbled on pickles, and ate roasted steamed buns, at five o'clock Chen Changsheng took his apprentice to drive a tractor and began to plow the ground, and when the production team canteen delivered breakfast at eight o'clock, Chen Changsheng had already reclaimed a large wasteland with a tractor. There were a total of six members of the crew, everyone changed shifts to drive, people did not stop, and at the end of the day, they reclaimed nearly 100 acres of wasteland until it was dark. After everyone had dinner, Chen Changsheng took the crew members to the distant blisters to fetch water to scrub the tractor and carefully maintain it to ensure that the machine could work heavily tomorrow.
After maintaining the machine it was already eight o'clock, everyone was tired, there were still many wild beasts in BaoquanLing in the late fifties, and the wild camping did not dare to be careless, Chen Changsheng arranged for the crew members to take turns on duty, and then everyone went into the horse rack to rest. In the autumn wasteland, mosquitoes bite a lot, and at night they fly in the air one by one, and flashlights shine like black clouds flying in mid-air. In the past, the most cruel punishment in the northeast was to feed mosquitoes, strip people and hang them outside, and one night they would be bitten by mosquitoes and sucked dry blood; small bites were the most hateful of the three pests, she could not penetrate the eyes of the screen window, and the bites did not sleep well all night, but when the sun was clear, the small bites hid under the blades of grass and did not dare to come out; there were too many mosquitoes in the northern wilderness, and it was necessary to wear thick clothes to work in the field, so that the mosquitoes could not bite through. But the exposed skin will be nailed out by mosquitoes; there are more blind midges than mosquitoes, and even cattle and horses are bitten by blind midges, and if they are nailed by blind grasshoppers when they are asleep, they will swell up into a big bag. In order to repel mosquitoes, the crew collected a lot of mugwort, and at night these wet mugwort were added to the campfire for barbecue, and the mosquitoes blindly bit and smelled the smoke emitted by mugwort and did not dare to come closer. The crew members were all lying in their clothes in the horse rack, and everyone wrapped their heads and faces with clothes, exposing only their nostrils, so that mosquitoes could not bite.
When it was Xiao Liu's turn on duty, it was almost midnight, and when he took over the shift, he said that there were wolves nearby, and Xiao Liu did not take it seriously. In front of the horse rack was a bunch of bonfires, and on one side of the campfire was a tractor, And Xiao Liu was a little hungry, so he touched two potatoes buried under the ash pile and roasted them, and then took a stick of brown rice and carried it with a stick, and slowly burned it on the campfire. "Hmm... A wolf howl aroused Xiao Liu's vigilance, he looked around while roasting corn, and saw a pair of green wolf eyes fluttering in the field, there were more than a dozen pairs, Xiao Liu was a little nervous, and he took some dry wood from nearby and added it to the campfire, and burned the campfire vigorously. The wolves circled around the camp, getting closer and closer, Xiao Liu had already seen a lot of wild wolves looming, he was getting more and more nervous, dropped the corn cob in his hand, picked up a shovel and stood vigilantly by the fire. At this time, there was a wolf howl from Qingyue in the distance, the nearby wild wolves heard the wolf's cry and howled in unison, Xiao Liu became more and more nervous, after a moment he suddenly found that there were many pairs of green wolf eyes in the darkness floating from afar, Xiao Liu initially estimated that there were more than twenty wild wolves nearby, the situation was already very critical, he quickly ran to the horse rack and shouted: "Everyone hurry up, there are wolves, there are wolves..."
Most of the crew members were from the military, and when they heard Xiao Liu's shouting, everyone quickly got up and drilled out of the horse rack. Xiao Liu's shouting seemed to the wolves as a sign of weakness, and the wolves began to gather toward the camp, and the crew members saw that there were twenty or thirty wild wolves around the camp, and everyone immediately tensed up, and quickly grabbed the shovel and pickaxe sticks and vigilantly guarded. "I haven't seen such a big wolf pack in years, and everyone retreated with me to the tractor, and we had our backs against the tractor, and there was a campfire in front of us, so we only needed to guard against the north and south sides!" Chen Changsheng said loudly. Lao Chen added some dry firewood piled up in front of the horse rack into the campfire, and led six crew members with their backs to the tractor, carefully guarding with various tools in hand.
The wolves were getting closer and closer to the camp, and everyone could clearly see the faces of the wild wolves, and these wild wolves could not stop howling, and the wolves near the camp howled in a loud way, and the crew members were afraid. "Xiao Liu, you take the oil drum and put half a barrel of diesel fuel from the fuel tank of the tractor, and in a moment the big guys will light torches!" Chen Changsheng ordered, Xiao Liu quickly took the oil drum to pick up the diesel. At this moment, a terrible wolf howl was heard, and the restless wolves immediately began to attack. The campfire was only four or five meters away from the tractor, the wild wolves were afraid of fire, and only dared to attack from the north and south directions, Chen Changsheng led the crew to wave the tools in their hands and hit hard, forcing more than twenty wild wolves to attack. Da Zhang wielded a shovel and ran to the wolf in front of him, and when he turned around by chance, he found that a wild wolf had actually jumped on the nose of the tractor, and he quickly shouted: "Be careful, the wolf has come from behind!" The wild wolf quickly pounced on the sound, biting Lao Wu's arm and dragging him to the ground, two or three wild wolves quickly pounced on it and bit it, Chen Changsheng saw that his eyes were red, and quickly shouted: "Quickly save people!" He waved the shovel in his hand and rushed desperately, Chen Changsheng swept across the shovel, swept down a wild wolf that tore at Lao Wu, pounced on it and kicked away another wild wolf that just tore Lao Wu, at this time several crew members rushed to it with their tools in their hands, and everyone fought hard, and finally dragged Lao Wu up. Lao Wu was bitten by the wild wolf a few times, and he was sweating in pain, but he didn't dare to rest or even bandage the wound now, the wolves were constantly attacking from two directions, and the crew members were in danger. The tool in Lao Wu's hand was thrown in the distance, and he rushed to the fire to pick up a burning wooden stick, shouting and rushing to the wolves that pounced on him, and the wolves around him retreated in fright. At this time, Xiao Liu ran over with half a barrel of diesel, he used the tea cylinder to scoop half a cylinder of diesel in his mouth, and sprayed the torch in Lao Wu's hand, a fiery flame instantly spewed out, and the wolves retreated in fright. Xiao Liu took the burning wooden stick from Lao Wu's hand and sprayed several mouthfuls of diesel fuel at the wolves in a row, and the burning flames scared the wild wolves out of the way. "Be careful, the wolf jumped on the fut head again" Xiao Liu looked at it and saw that there were two more wild wolves jumping from behind to the nose of the tractor, Xiao Liu waved a burning torch and rushed over, a mouthful of diesel fuel sprayed obliquely at the two wolves, the burning flame heat wave was amazing, and the two wild wolves fled in fright.
Chen Changsheng saw that xiao Liu's flames had scared the wolves away, and quickly shouted, "Let's get a torch to take!" Chen Changsheng tied a grease cloth that wiped the locomotive to a wooden stick, glued it to the diesel fuel and took it to the campfire to ignite. The crew members saw that they had followed suit, and soon each of them had a torch, and the wolves saw that the humans in the camp had a torch, and for a while they did not dare to come up, but just howled around the camp. After about half an hour of confrontation, the wolf king couldn't help it, with a terrible wolf howl the wolf pack pounced again, this time the six crew members waved the torches in their hands, as long as the wild wolves dared to pounce on them, everyone took the torches to fight, frightening the wild wolves to flee in a hurry, and the wolves tentatively attacked several times to see no effect and retreated into the darkness. But the wolves still circled the camp after the darkness, howling incessantly.
At this time, it was already two o'clock in the middle of the night, the bonfire gradually dimmed, the wolves gradually gathered together, Chen Changsheng saw it and asked everyone to tear down the shack, use these firewood and grass to ignite a bunch of bonfires, and each of them tied a longer torch. The horse racks were made of hay and wood, which were extremely flammable, and soon another bonfire was lit, and now the six members of the crew were now preceded by two piles of vigorous bonfires, with their backs against tractors, each holding a torch, and the camp was brightly illuminated, and the wolves no longer dared to rush over and attack. The northern wilderness dawned early, about three o'clock began to brighten the sky, the wild wolves near the camp were busy for half a night and did not have any gains, when they saw the dawn, they retreated, and at four o'clock they could no longer see the figure of the wolves.
The news that the maintenance team was attacked by wolves quickly reached the team headquarters, and there was such a large wolf pack near the production team, which seriously threatened the safety of people and animals. The predecessor of the production team was the company of the Liberation Regiment, and the team headquarters had some weapons, and the captain immediately organized several militiamen to carry weapons and carry hounds to search for wolves, and two days later the hunting group encountered this wolf pack in a ravine, killing seven or eight wild wolves, and the remaining wolves ran into the mountains in fright.