In recent years, our Xiangshui comrades in the "Three Days Cave" have gathered together one after another, and everyone has been drinking wine and talking about the barracks life in those years, recalling the situation of their comrades in the same class in those years. I remember that when we joined the army, the ones we had the most contact with and the longest time spent together were the veterans of the 68 and 69 years who joined the army a year or two earlier, most of them in Wuhe and Fengtai in Anhui, and some in Beijing. At a gathering in the autumn of the past few years, someone proposed: Everyone is old and most of them are idle, can we go to Huainan, Wuhe and other places together to visit our old comrades-in-arms? As soon as this remark came out, it was immediately echoed by most of the comrades present. How hard is that? The distance is not too far, the time does not have to be too long, and the money cannot be spent. Everyone unanimously asked me to get in touch with my comrades there first and meet for a while... After several contacts in the WeChat group of my comrades-in-arms of the old troops, I finally got the mobile phone number of Wu Huaigang, a veteran of Wuhe and the chief I respected. I dialed the phone that night, and Lao Wu showed an unexpected surprise, it was the first time in more than forty years that we had a voice-over-the-air exchange. After exchanging extremely brief reports on the latest situation, I could not wait to ask about the contact methods of my comrades-in-arms Yao Xianbing and Xu Kangyun. After a little silence, Lao Wu told me: "Yao Xianbing is gone, Xu Kangyun is also gone..." I couldn't believe my ears, and asked several times in a row, but I still got a positive answer: "Gone!" ”...... For those two days, my mood has not been calm. The familiar figures of comrades-in-arms Yao Xianbing and Xu Kangyun flashed in front of my eyes from time to time, and the past events with whom I had spent several years and nights also emerged from the depths of my mind. I can no longer meet them and reminisce about the past, and this regret hits the sore spot in my heart.
Yao Xianbing and Xu Kangyun were both six or eight years old soldiers who had joined the army two years earlier, and they were also from Wuhe, Anhui. In 1971, I was transferred from the company headquarters to the third squad, Yao Xianbing was the deputy squad leader, and next to me was the machine gunner Xu Kangyun. Yao Xianbing has a lively and cheerful personality, loves to talk and laugh; the slightly concave upper teeth make the mouth appear slightly deflated, and the eyes are not very large but appear very clever. Xu Kangyun is a "beautiful man", tall, thick eyebrows, big eyes, plus a good voice, selected by the branch propaganda team, played Guo Jianguang in "Sha Jiabang", Li Yuhe in "Red Lantern", often toured the libraries belonging to the branch, so he was not in the class for more than half a time. There was also a Zhao Shoubiao in the class who was from the same village as them, and the third was fat and moundy, and he didn't say much. When I first came to the third class, I was very worried, there were many old comrades in the class, in front of them, no matter what aspect, I was a new soldier, only to learn from them, how to talk about "leading" them? Comrade Yao Xianbing saw through my thoughts, and he confided in me for the first time: "Squad leader, you can rest assured, if you let go of the courage to grasp the work in the class, I will certainly be your assistant; you are a cultured person, you will learn anything faster than us, and I believe that you will soon become familiar with all aspects of work..." He did what he said, whether it was military training or political study, he actively took the lead in the class. Especially in military training, he seriously exerted his own strengths and taught each fighter assassination and shooting skills hand in hand with his own experience. My assassination action is quite clumsy, he helps me decompose and correct one action after another, from the posture of holding the gun to the gun, sideways, to the gun, to the gun, turning... Attentive, patient and tireless. In that year, the test results of our class's military training subjects were quite remarkable, and in the first half of the year, the third class was rated as the "four good" pacesetter class, and then the year-end evaluation was cancelled due to the "9.13" incident. Also on July 1 of that year, I joined the party organization, and Comrade Yao Xianbing was my second introducer to the party. In 1972, our third shift undertook the production task of the whole library, and as the deputy squad leader, he played the "good" of agricultural work. He and Comrade Zhao Shoubiao both grew up in the countryside and were more familiar with the ploughing and targeting, so this heavy job in the class was almost wrapped up by them. The production area in the reservoir area is full of paddy fields, and the ploughing and targeting of paddy fields is dirty and tiring work. The plough is full of water, the target is dragged by mud, and the field is small and fragmented, and the plough is not sharpened much, and it is particularly laborious to cultivate the target. During the planting season, after a busy day, they were so tired that they didn't even bother to speak. Sometimes I want to replace them, and Yao Xianbing will jokingly say, "It's useless for me to talk about this, you go and discuss with the old cow, see if he agrees or not?" "It's really strange, this cow is very small to see people, I support the plough how to shout how to drink it does not even move, not even look at me... In the two years that we have been with Lao Yao, we have also had friction and made comments. They are all hairy boys, who can have no personality, no temper? When I was young, I had a momentary impulse. But once we calm down, we will resolve contradictions and eliminate barriers through heart-to-heart talks and exchanges of hearts. Because at that time we were both real and simple, according to the requirements of the Party members, we could not say anything about "private" sub-participation in work. In the winter of 1972, the army resumed conscription. At the beginning of 1973, in the sound of firecrackers to "welcome the new and send the old", Yao Xianbing, Xu Kangyun, and Zhao Shoubiao reluctantly left the military camp where they had been crawling and living for 5 years, left the three-day cave full of their footprints, and embarked on the road back to their hometown; I also left the third class at that time...
The fall of 1982 was my seventh year of returning home. Suddenly, one day, I heard my fourth brother say that he was going to Go to Wuhe in Anhui to contact business, and I specially asked him to help me inquire about personal information at the Double Temple in Wuhe if it was possible. So I told him Yao Xianbing's name and wrote it down in my notebook. The fourth brother found Yao Xianbing in the farmland, and he was busy picking up potatoes. When he knew that the person looking for him was my brother, he seemed very happy, took my brother back as a VIP, and warmly served wine. My brother came back and told me how I had found Lao Yao, and I was extremely grateful for Lao Yao's hospitality. "A hundred years of cultivation can be crossed by the same boat, and a thousand years of cultivation can sleep together", which probably means that it is not easy for people to meet each other. Indeed, in the vast sea of people, being a soldier makes us meet together sooner or later, which is both an opportunity and a fate! The trials and turns in the barracks have made us forge a lifelong friendship of comradeship. I cherish this friendship among my comrades-in-arms and have seized every opportunity to find it. In the autumn of 1990, I traveled to Tongling on a business trip, and by Wuhu I found Comrade Cheng Longgong, who had served as my platoon leader, and Sun Kaiyuan, the chief of the unit who had strictly taught me about reckless behavior, and I also returned to the "Three Heavenly Cave" military camp with Feng Guorong, who was the old official and then director of the political office of the 404 warehouse; in the Spring Festival of 1996, I went south to Wujiang to meet my comrades-in-arms Jiang Juxing, Xu Rongfang, Zhu Asan, and Zhu Longgen. In recent years, we have all stepped into the ranks of old age, and the heart that misses our comrades has become more and more urgent. But there is always this thing and that thing, so that the desire can not be separated; always think that the coming to Japan is long, but who would have thought that this carelessness will become an indefinite future! No, in the past few years, Du Kuan, the second class leader of Wuhe, Wu Lei, the deputy of the fourth class, Duan Zongyu of Fengtai, Chen Longqi of Wujiang, Qian Xinhe and Wang Huaxiang of Xiangshui, and Zhang Quanfeng, the instructor in Nanjing, "left" one by one... Comrades-in-arms, when we are in good health, walk around between comrades-in-arms, contact and contact, and refresh that friendship often, so that it emits a warm brilliance! Comrades-in-arms, act! There is not much to wait for in the coming day, and the time is not waiting for me. Don't let that pointless tug-of-war cause us a lifetime of regrets!