Author: Tong Shugen
Editor-in-charge: Jin Hanzhi
The camping mentioned here is actually the camping training of the troops. In my four years as a soldier, I participated in two camping trainings, one in Tangshan in Nanjing and once in Guangde, Anhui, and the main content of the training was artillery target shooting or shooting. This is an effective way to test the peacetime training of troops, and the ultimate goal is to focus on future wars! Therefore, every time the camping training, the troops up and down attach great importance to all aspects of the expectations, planning and arrangement. Every detail is done very tightly, no less than a real battle! Almost everything we can imagine is covered.
Chiang Kai-shek's hot spring villa in Tangshan
1983 was my second year of enlistment, and Hangzhou, where my troops were located, was the summer of "after all, in the middle of June in the West Lake, the scenery is not the same as the four o'clock", according to the arrangement of the troops, I had to go to Tangshan in Nanjing for annual camping training. As in the past, the troops adopted a motorized march, and the officers and men of our regiment were divided into dozens of military trucks (gaz cars of the former Soviet Union), Beijing jeeps, three-wheeled motorcycles, and other vehicles from the camp to travel more than 200 kilometers along the Hangning Highway to Tangshan Town, which is 35 kilometers away from Nanjing.
Tangshan's first impression on me was shock! It is the main entrance to Nanjing, and it is also the back garden of Nanjing, famous for its hot springs. During the Kuomintang period, many villas for senior generals were built here, and those pale yellow villas we also visited, although the years have passed, it is still difficult to hide the luxury of the life of the upper echelons of the Kuomintang! Through the high door of the mansion, the eerie Chiang Kai-shek Hot Spring Villa seems to show people the back of a passing "dynasty". It is not an exaggeration to say that Tangshan is a strategic place, and when we arrived here, we learned that there were more than 10 units at or above the regimental level alone, including the famous Nanjing Artillery Academy.
The second from the left is Xu Shiyou, former commander of the Nanjing Military Region
Nanjing since ancient times is the "Zhong Fu Dragon Pan, Shicheng Tiger" land, not only Tangshan, how many troops are actually around it, I am afraid that not many people can know, in 1981, the legendary general Xu Shiyou "Jinling Point Soldiers" that imposing, overwhelming scene, let people feel the charm of Nanjing, a heroic city and the mighty majesty of the people's army.
Participate in the phalanx of Jinling Dianbing
Another surprise that Tangshan gave me was regret, that is, on a Sunday of camping training in Tangshan, the regiment headquarters organized everyone to visit the newly opened Jinling Hotel in Nanjing, which refreshed the new height of the national building with a height of 37 floors! At noon, Li Qiuqing, the head of the regiment (who later transferred to the Hangzhou People's Congress as secretary general), saw that I was the only one left behind in the training unit, so I called him to go to the second battalion headquarters with him to eat, and unexpectedly enjoyed a delicious meal. Later, I heard how high-class the comrades-in-arms Haikan Jinling Hotel was, and said that the uniform dress of the employees inside was not counted, and all of them wore white gloves, which looked particularly fashionable. I occasionally encounter foreigners in the elevator, and the most surprising thing is that my boss, Mr. Wang Shusen, can talk to foreigners in English! A trip to the Jinling Hotel was really Chen Yisheng's going to the city for these comrades-in-arms - he had grown up to see. I remember that when my leader was leaving, he also said to me what seemed to be a joke called "Happy to leave, rest assured"! I don't regret not being able to go forward at all, in my life, I will definitely miss something, and I will definitely miss something, as long as I can be happy, life is full of scenery.
Jinling Hotel Nanjing
The second time I participated in camping training was in 1984, also in June, in Guangde, Anhui. To be honest, guangde is as exciting as going to his hometown, after all, it is in Anhui.
The camping in Guangde made me feel much more relaxed than the rhythm of camping in Tangshan. At that time, Guangde's Taiji Cave had just been developed, it had not yet been officially opened to the public, it can be said that we were one of the earliest tourists, Guangde's more famous places in addition to Taiji Cave, there is another place also has a high reputation, that is, Baimaoling Farm, which is Shanghai's prison in Guangde, which holds a lot of Shanghai prisoners. The reason why Baimaoling is famous is precisely this. In Guangde because of the distance from the downtown, the pace of life is relatively slow, which brings everyone a loose feeling, comrades in arms use leisure time to play ball, swimming, but very comfortable, one day I and a few comrades went to the county, the county business atmosphere at that time has been very strong, I also unexpectedly found a local calligraphy enthusiast on-site writing sales, its writing level in the current words is "old cadre body", the content written is also consistent with it, such as "everyone wants to talk about civilization", "" Want to go to the next level" and so on. Shi Tao said that "pen and ink should be contemporary". Maybe this content is a product of that era! In my pen, there are often words such as "learning the women's volleyball team and revitalizing China", "soaring ambition", "young and strong do not work hard, and the old man is sad"!
The author is at the Guangde Ancestral Mountain Tea Farm
In Guangde, there is one thing that I did not expect. One day, I was immersed in my room copying materials, and several comrades in the cooking class rushed to the scene and shouted: "Tong Shugen, your pen letters are on the magazine"! It turned out that the magazine "Chinese Fountain Pen Calligraphy" found in the newsstand when they went to Si'an Town (in Changxing County, Zhejiang Province, adjacent to Guangde) to buy vegetables, published a pair of my pen characters on the "Soldier's Page" in it, writing "Spring Rain Homesickness" by the Taiwanese poet Rong Chuanmei. The plums of the mountains and rivers of the homeland fell, and the countryside was strange and wicker yang... "Speaking of that pair of pen characters, it did have a great impact at that time, so that many years later, people still mentioned it to me. A few days later, I also received a 50 yuan manuscript fee from the magazine, which made me very happy, which was a "huge amount of money" for me, and I knew that my monthly salary at that time was only 10 yuan for poor Baba! It's almost half a year's salary, and it's really a lot of money! However, it is not strange to think calmly, after all, the circulation of the "Chinese Pen Calligraphy" magazine is large, and it is said that it has set an impressive performance of 400,000 copies per month, and it is natural that the remuneration I have received has risen.
New work by the author
In the late afternoon, some soldiers of the regimental guard platoon came to the nearby pond early and began to swim again, only to see the chief of staff riding the "Beijing 213" rushing back from Hangzhou. Insiders told them to bathe in the pond! The chief of staff, who had always been cautious, also lost Sven at this time, and began to scold and grin: "Hurry up and give me back, the troops will soon go to war!" The war that the chief of staff said was exactly what our first army went to Yunnan a week later to participate in the Lao shan self-defense counterattack against Vietnam! At that time, we never expected that the news of joining the war would be during the camping training period, which was the biggest accident of Guangde camping! Of course, in the ensuing self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, my unit won successive victories in successive battles, won the war, and was commended by the Central Military Commission, which cannot but be said to be related to our camping training that we usually start from actual combat, because we are convinced that only by sweating more in peacetime can we shed less blood in wartime! Fighting is like this, I want to do anything else!
I miss those days of camping training very much, although it is a little bitter, but there is sweetness in the bitterness, and I have tasted the beauty of life in the years of burning passion.