History of Liu Yuexiang's entry into Xinjiang
Lu Yiping
The preceding words
Liu Yuexiang, a female soldier, entered Xinjiang as a soldier from Hunan in March 1950. She was later assigned to the battalion headquarters of the 1st Battalion of the Cavalry Regiment of the 6th Division of the 2nd Army as a cultural instructor. A year and a half after enlisting, she suddenly disappeared without a trace. The troops organized forces to search and search for ten days, but found nothing. The Cavalry Regiment envisaged five outcomes in the "Report on the Disappearance of Comrade Liu Yuexiang, a female soldier":
First, she may be abducted by the bandit Blackbeard, killed by him, or made a lady of the village;
Second, she got lost in the desert, buried in it, and was buried in quicksand;
Third, she was raped and killed, buried where, and cannot be found;
Fourth, she herself could not bear the hardships of being a soldier, ran away, remained incognito, and lived a different life;
Fifth, he was arrested by Kuomintang agents.
In short, this person has since disappeared and become an unsolved case.
I joined the revolution in 1948 when I was a university student, when I was a security officer in the cavalry regiment and was in charge of investigating the matter. After almost seventy years, I was also in my nineties, and when I felt that I would soon die, I returned from the high-level ward that was as pure as heaven to my home in the dry rest center. Every day, I watched my seventy-year-old son sort out my belongings.
He turned up the information I had to investigate Liu Yuexiang's disappearance.
At that time, in order to solve the case, the director of the Political Department sent me to conduct a detailed investigation of Liu Yuexiang's whereabouts from joining the army to joining the army. It was a long journey. I studied Mandarin in college and always wanted to be a writer. The long journey was bored, so I wrote the "Report on the Disappearance of Comrade Liu Yuexiang, a female soldier" into "The History of Liu Yuexiang's Entry into Xinjiang", and I traveled to many places, but I did not expect that this original manuscript would survive.
The paper turned yellow and brittle, and some places had been bitten by the clothes fish, and when I read it, the scene back then was suddenly like yesterday——
Hengshan
Liu Yuexiang's family lives in Hengshan, Hunan Province, and was born on August 27, 1934. She spent her childhood fighting against Japan. Listening to her mother, when she was four years old, the county was often bombed by Japanese planes, and her grandmother and her second uncle's family were killed; After that, the area around Changsha became the battlefield of the Sino-Japanese War, the family hid in the Middle East during the war, his brother joined the army to ward off the enemy when he was in high school, died in battle in Hengshan, and his younger brother died due to illness and lack of money for medical treatment.
Near the liberation period, large armies often passed by Hengshan, first by the Kuomintang troops, and then by the PLA army that followed closely behind. At the beginning, the troops on both sides ran like the wind. Then, the PLA team marched calmly, and Liu Yuexiang saw many female soldiers in the queue.
For the first time, she learned that women could also become soldiers, and envy died at that time. Once, she followed the team and walked thirty miles at once, without knowing it.
From time to time, you can see simple new graves on the side of the road. Where battles have been fought, there are always mass graves, and from time to time swollen corpses on the water float down, bursting military uniforms. The corpse is always followed by a flock of crows, some of which rest on the corpse, pecking leisurely from time to time. The crows look too fat to fly.
She woke up when the team stopped. Seeing that it was almost dark, she didn't know what to do, so she strengthened her courage, found the most beautiful female soldier, and asked with a red face, I want to be a soldier, is it okay?
The female soldier shook her head with a smile—she smiled even more beautiful—and said, you're still a little girl.
I am not small, I will soon turn fifteen years old, I am in high school, I can read and write, I can do a lot of things, I can carry a gun, I can walk a lot, I followed you for thirty miles today, and now I don't feel tired at all.
You've followed us so far? The female soldier looked at her with wide eyes, but we still have a long way to go.
I'll be fine if I walk another three hundred miles.
We may have to walk three or five thousand miles.
That's nothing.
Well, you come with me. The female soldier said as he led her to an unbeautiful female soldier.
Company commander, I have something to report to you. After standing upright, the female soldier gave a military salute to the unbeautiful female soldier.
Liu Yuexiang knew that it was a female officer. She originally thought that whoever was beautiful was an officer. The company commander looked at her kindly, did this little girl also want to become a soldier?
The beautiful female soldier said, yes, she followed us thirty miles.
Oh, then she can't go home today, let her eat with us, and then ask her fellow villagers to help arrange a place for her to live.
When Liu Yuexiang heard this, he was overjoyed and said, Company commander, do you agree with me to become a soldier?
The company commander touched Liu Yuexiang's head, little girl, have you walked this way? Do you dare to go home by yourself tomorrow?
Liu Yuexiang said, I have walked this road several times, and I dare to go home myself. But if you don't let me become a soldier, I won't go back, and I'll always follow you.
Several other female soldiers also gathered around, and after listening to her words, they all laughed.
The company commander asked her to sit down and said to her with a smile, little girl, now that the battle is almost over, we don't need soldiers, even we soldiers will have to go back to work in the future. Our main task now is to build a country, so in order to build a new country, you should now go back and continue to study and acquire knowledge.
Liu Yuexiang was still making trouble. Finally, the company commander told her, you go eat a little, then sleep well, and tomorrow you will decide on your enlistment.
Liu Yuexiang didn't know what an official the company commander was at that time, and listening to her say this, he had to wait for tomorrow. That night, she was both excited and worried, unable to sleep, and her eyes were always shaking about her after becoming a soldier. In the second half of the night, she fell asleep, sleeping very hard, and when she woke up, the sun had risen a bamboo pole high. Quietly around. She felt bad, rolled over and climbed up, and asked the landlord uncle, what about the team? And the PLA?
The uncle laughed and said, the team started before the chickens crowed. The boss of the team left you two silver dollars, so that you can wake up and quickly take the boat back, so as not to worry about your family, and the rest of the money to pay tuition, so that you must study hard. As he spoke, he gave the silver dollar to Liu Yuexiang.
Liu Yuexiang cried when she heard this, and said very remorsefully, if only I didn't fall asleep, how could I sleep so deadly! After crying for a while, she wanted to leave a silver dollar for her uncle.
The uncle did not accept it, and said, the team asked me to take care of you, and already gave me a piece.
Sitting on the boat home, looking at those floating corpses that no one converged, Liu Yuexiang lay on the side of the ship, vomiting constantly, feeling that all his internal organs were vomited. After disembarking, she felt her body and soul dispersed.
After that, no more teams passed, and she gradually died of the heart to become a soldier.
Liu Yuexiang's family had more than 70 acres of land, and soon after liberation, Liu Aixiang, the eldest sister who was studying in Changsha, wrote to Liu Yuexiang, saying that her father was an exploiting class and asked them to draw a clear line with their father and not treat her father as a dogleg. Liu Yuexiang didn't understand her words at that time, and felt that her eldest sister scolded her father like this, which was too undeserved. The eldest sister soon enlisted as a soldier and went to the Eighteenth Corps; The second sister, Liu Lixiang, worked as a female worker in a textile factory and soon went to a unit in Liaoning. Liu Yuexiang didn't know how to draw a line. However, after reading the news in the newspapers that women had turned over and that men and women were equal, they went to work in the fields after school, despite their father's objections. Girls from landlord families would be looked down upon if they worked in the fields in the past. Her father was a man with feudal thinking deep in his bones. But he didn't expect that as soon as he was liberated, his daughters began to rebel against him, and he couldn't do anything about them, and two daughters had already run away to become soldiers, something he hadn't even thought of. For him, it was incredible. Like most of his contemporaries, he pondered in horror about what was happening around him, and he often sighed. He resolutely refused to let Liu Yuexiang become a soldier on the grounds that she still had to study.
In January 1950, Liu Yuexiang saw in the "New Hunan News" the news that the Xinjiang recruitment group had gone to Xiang to recruit female soldiers, saying that after arriving in Xinjiang, she could enter a Russian school, work as a female textile worker, and also work as a tractor driver... She was so excited that she couldn't put into words, she just felt that the news in the newspaper had captivated her whole body and mind.
Liu Yuexiang immediately told her parents that she was going to Changsha to test for soldiers. Parents didn't agree to anything, my father said that your two sisters have already run away, you can't go anymore, you dare like that, I'll break my leg for you! Mother said, you are so young, how can the troops want you? It's for you, who takes care of your warmth? You have good academic performance, your father and I hope you can get into college, you can't all go to the army, right?
She was more obedient than her two sisters and said, "Mom, I listen to you."
But not long after, Liu Yuexiang saw the news of the enrollment of the Fourth Field Army Military and Political University in the newspaper. At that time, there were as many news about this kind of enrollment as there was news about conscription, and when a message came out, it would be like a gust of wind, blowing away a group of young people.
At that time, the information was not clear, even if it was only a few tens of miles away from the provincial capital, many news could not be transmitted, and even if it could, the news became old news. Hengshan is so far away from Changsha, many things are even more difficult to know. Therefore, Liu Yuexiang didn't know what was going on at the Military and Political University, but she only found it very attractive, and since Siye was a well-known army, she wanted to go even more.
But she was afraid that her parents would be sad and didn't know what to tell them. After thinking about it for a long time, she said to her mother, "Mom, I'm going to Changsha." As soon as my mother heard this, she became nervous, what are you going to Changsha for? I went to college. At that time, you could enter college in your second year of high school. The mother questioned her for a long time, and finally believed her. But my father didn't agree. But Liu Yuexiang was already iron-hearted and determined to go secretly. She told her mother that when school started, she was going to school. The mother knew her daughter's thoughts and told her to wait, she went to the neighbor's house to borrow a few eggs for her to take to school. Her father went to the fields, and her eight-year-old sister and two-year-old sister knew that it was a good time to leave home, and she took a few simple luggage. The eldest sister held the little sister in her arms and cried with a runny nose and sent her out of the house. She hugged her little sister, kissed her eldest sister again, and said, you have to listen to your father's words, my sister will have a chance in the future, and she will buy you a lot of delicious things. After speaking, he flew and ran.
When her mother borrowed the eggs and came back, Liu Yuexiang had already gone away, and her mother quickly boiled the eggs and walked fourteen miles to the school. The mother did not find her daughter at school and quickly ran to the ferry with the eggs. Liu Yuexiang was getting on the ferry, and before she could say a few words to her mother, the boat was about to leave. Her mother stood on the shore like that and looked at her, and Liu Yuexiang saw that her mother's figure was getting smaller and smaller, and finally she couldn't see it.
Changsha
When I arrived in Changsha and found a place to recruit students, I learned that there were many people who went to apply for the exam, thousands of people from all over Hunan, and more than 30 people went to Hengshan alone. At that time, there were strict cultural requirements, and there was special attention to women. After the list was announced, Hengshan was admitted to Liu Yuexiang alone. The excitement in her heart can be imagined.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the Kang University moved from Yan'an to the northeast region and was rebuilt into the Northeast Military and Political University, and then established the Military and Political University in strategic regions such as North China, South China, Southwest China, and Northwest China, adopting short-term training and flexible teaching methods according to the principle of applying what you have learned and learning first in urgent use. Therefore, this kind of university is not a regular university, but only a training school, and when she was admitted to it, she was ready to cancel it. She applied for the military and political university in Shino, but went to Ichino's troops. Liu Yuexiang did not understand these situations. She didn't know at the time, she was only drafted in this way. She didn't expect that she would go to Xinjiang, she didn't expect to go all the way to Hotan, and she didn't expect that she would have to go forward from there, all the way to the depths of the vast Karakoram Mountains. Yes, Hotan, especially Karakorum, are just place names in her geography textbooks, and in her impression, they are just places in textbooks, not only with her, but even with reality.
Liu Yuexiang sent a letter to her parents, proudly saying that she was admitted to the Military and Political University.
When she went out, she wore a small floral shirt given by her cousin-in-law, covered with a large cotton gown made for her by her mother with a sheet, a pair of Lanshi pants on her lower body, and a pair of Lanshlylin embroidered cloth shoes made by her aunt on her feet; The luggage was an umbrella, a cloth bag with small scissors, a pen, a few eggs sent by the mother, and straw paper for the woman. That's all she has.
After arriving in Changsha, when others saw her earthy dress, they laughed at her as a country girl, and they especially laughed at the blue Shilin embroidered shoes on her feet. In a fit of anger, she cut off the flowers on her shoes with small scissors, and then chose the threads one by one.
She was assigned to the Xinjiang Military Region's recruitment regiment, and the recruit brigade, squadron, squadron, and squad. She found that the newly recruited male trainees went to Shino, while the female trainees were assigned to Yino. Before leaving, the recruitment group showed them movies and songs about Xinjiang, full of grapes, fruits, beautiful dances, beautiful songs, intoxicating and yearning. She believes that everyone will go there not only to defend the country and fight the border, but also to build one modern collective farm after another...
Liu Yuexiang had already seen some Soviet movies when he was in school, such as "The Secretary of the District Party Committee", "In the Rear of the Enemy", "The Story of Zoya and Shula", "Happy Life", where there are scenes of collective labor, the joy of harvest, hundreds of acres of large fields, women driving tractors to plow the land under the blue sky... She longed to live on a farm like that. She thought it would be good to go to school in Xinjiang, and she wanted to be a tractor driver.
Liu Yuexiang was sixteen years old at the time, but there were younger than her. That is the female soldier of the Young Literary Troupe. The youngest of them was Chen Xiaomeng, who was only twelve years old at the time, and was still in elementary school before she became a soldier, and even if she wore the smallest military uniform, she was above her knees. The serious military uniform could not hide her childishness.
There are also female soldiers who suddenly decide not to go when they are about to leave. That female soldier was also the secretary of the regiment branch of the second grade of the famous Zhounan Women's High School in Changsha, and her performance improved very well in ordinary times. At the beginning of the conscription, she made a poster, wrote a slogan, spoke again, and agitated, and it was her encouragement that left no one in the class, and all went to sign up for the army. Therefore, her retreat surprised everyone.
The girl just cried and felt very wronged, and finally, she told her classmates in private that her uncle did not let her go, and her uncle told her that it was a hard life to live in Xinjiang, and we must now master cultural knowledge. But the girl was still making a fuss about going, and her uncle was very angry and said to her, do you know what they are going for? They are going to build Xinjiang, but they are also supplementing the shortage of female soldiers there, and maybe they will marry old cadres. You can't imagine the situation over there.
No one believed the words of the female soldier, and they said to her in a contemptuous tone, if you don't go, you won't go, why make such an excuse?
The girl's uncle was working in the province at the time, a cadre of the new society, and knew a lot. In this way, the girl surnamed Gao remained in Changsha as the only classmate who did not join the army.
It was a good spring season in Hunan – including many female soldiers who left their hometowns later.
The stuffy army train stopped at the railway station, and the 1,267 people on the train, except for the recruiters, were almost all female soldiers. They are like a group of hens who have just grown up, wearing a new feather, with three points of shyness, many female soldiers still secretly run out to join the army, so there are very few people to see them off, but fortunately, they are bored in the carriage and do not feel much about the scene outside.
It was dark in the carriage, and everyone sat on their luggage, their backs against the carriage panels, like a small pile of raw coal waiting to be transported to a distant place to heat up. The spring light outside pierced through the gaps in the carriage panels, splitting some people in half.
The train roared a few times and heavy wheels rolled on the tracks. Chunguang's blade stabbed faster and faster, stabbing everyone for an unknown number of times. The female soldiers took this train north. Through the gap in the carriage, Liu Yuexiang constantly saw the ruined cities, poor villages, barren fields, begging homeless, disabled soldiers along the way...
Some people suddenly understood that they were far away from their homeland and began to sob. Others cried as if they were infected. It's all this sound in the carriage.
A man stood up like an iron pile at the joint of the two carriages, waved his only arm, and roared like thunder: "Grandma is a bear, this is to participate in the revolution, what is there to cry, shut up for me!" His other empty sleeve, originally in the pocket of his clothes, was brought out as he waved, fluttered, and then swayed softly.
He was Wang Desheng, the captain of the conscription brigade.
The female soldiers were frightened and silenced. Someone quickly raised his arm to wipe the tears that still had hot air on his face.
Xian
The female soldiers were pulled out like thin by that stuffy tank train in Xi'an. Although their virgin, young bodies exude the breath of youth, they are still covered by the smell of stuffy tankers. Liu Yuexiang did feel that he was paralyzed as if he was about to flow away, and he smelled like. She felt the smell of corpses in the tanker seep into her bones; It felt like her newly developed body—her beautiful face, firm breasts, flat lower abdomen—had become swollen and corrupted like the floating corpse she had seen on the road. As soon as she got off the train, she vomited. She felt that her youth had turned into that disgusting filth that no longer belonged to her. Vomiting clean, everything in front of her spun with the ancient city, feeling that the battlements on the ancient city wall were like the teeth of a giant beast, about to chew her to pieces. After the sky and the earth turned, the sky and the earth were instantly dark, and she couldn't help but fall.
She woke up more than two hours later. When she woke up, she found herself lying in a room with a window frame. The paper pasted on the grid window had turned yellow, and the sky light seeped in through the yellow paper.
Someone in the room spoke, her voice was ethereal and inaudible, and it took her a while to hear clearly.
I don't know who is saying it,...... People are still yellow flower girls, how can they be pregnant with children? You guys guess.
Then came the voice of the captain, who, like a woman who was pregnant with a baby, kept vomiting and fainted, so we brought her to check. Comrade military doctor, her stomach is fine.
Her stomach is so good that stones can digest it. But in recent days, she had better eat some porridge, noodles and the like.
This is easy to do, I will go back and tell the cooking class. After the captain finished speaking, he turned and left.
Liu Yuexiang saw clearly that the gaze of the slightly chubby, bespectacled male military doctor wandered between her lower abdomen and her face. She pulled her clothes down, covering her lower abdomen. Then she saw another short female soldier named Wang Jiahui. She has a round face full of innocence, and a pair of watery round eyes are always full of curiosity. On the train, Wang Jiahui sat across from her, and when they lay down at night, they would put their feet together, but the two did not say much. Wang Jiahui saw that she was awake and smiled at her. Liu Yuexiang felt that Wang Jiahui's smile was also round.
The doctor said that there is nothing wrong with your body, how do you feel yourself?
Much better now.
Then I'll carry you back.
Liu Yuexiang felt that he couldn't carry Wang Jiahui, who was less than one meter five meters long, when he thought that his one-meter-seven person could not carry him.
How can you carry me?
I carried you just now.
Wang Jiahui said to Liu Yuexiang very seriously while helping her up, like a sister.
Liu Yuexiang smiled at her, thank you, I can go by myself.
Then I'll hold you.
Wang Jiahui helped Liu Yuexiang out of the door of the hospital.
There was sunlight everywhere, which made her feel even weaker. She wanted to vomit again, but she held back.
Hexi Corridor
After studying and resting in Xi'an for about 20 days, the team continued to set off. Since the railway only leads to Xi'an, the rest of the journey is changed by car. The convoy of more than thirty old vehicles looks imposing.
At that time, the road into Xinjiang was particularly difficult, and it had not yet had time to repair it after being damaged by the war. In many places, female soldiers had to get out of their cars and repair roads before they could move forward, and the roads were covered with gray-white dust. As soon as the car drove over, the dust rose high, and as soon as it was pressed by the car, it fell into it so deeply, and as soon as the car started, the dust churned up from under the car, and the convoy was dusty everywhere it went. At the end of the day's journey, two or three inches of mud and sand accumulate at the bottom of the carriage. The dust was tens of miles, the brilliant sun was gone, and the blue sky was dim.
It was late spring after Liu Yuexiang left Xi'an, so the hottest months were all on the way. The Dodge cars they were riding on at that time were captured from the Kuomintang army, which was used by the US army in World War II, and after the outbreak of the Kuomintang and Communist Civil War in 1945, the US government used these cars to support the Kuomintang government, and then captured by the People's Liberation Army in the war. Someone made up a slip for it for this - "walk two or three miles in one place, lie down four or five times, repair six or seven times, and push it by eighty or ninety people." The convoy of such broken cars can barely walk more than 100 miles in a day, thank God. But even such cars were few and far between. There are few cars and many people, a car often has to squeeze more than 40 people, and the carriages are still loaded with rice, cement and other materials, and everyone can only sit on those things. Everyone has to hold one in their arms to sit down, and they can't stretch their legs. This vintage truck gang is very low, and in order to prevent female soldiers from falling out of the car, many sticks are inserted into the gang to block it. The road was bumpy, the car swayed, and many people, like Liu Yuexiang, vomited a mess.
It was April, but when I crossed Liupan Mountain, it started snowing. The snow seemed to fall from the sun, and then smeared the sun, and there was only flying snow in the sky. The narrow simple road is just enough for cars to pass, most sections of the road can not be able to car, if there is a car on the opposite side, the whole convoy has to find a slightly wider road surface to stop early, wait for the opposite car to pass, and then continue to move forward. Because of the snow, the road became rotten and slippery, muddy and difficult, and the old-fashioned car "suddenly" sounded, like a clumsy snail, crawling slowly. Many people are riding in a car for the first time, and it is also the first time to climb such a mountain, and they close their eyes in fear. Walking to the most dangerous place, I don't know who drove the head, the female soldiers did not take the car, said that the road was too scary, asked to walk, to cross Liupan Mountain on foot, wait for the car to reach the bottom of the mountain and then sit, the captain rushed over, and there was another fierce roar, before roaring everyone into the car.
Everyone was making a fuss, it was finally dark, and after dark, I couldn't see those dangerous places, so I was not afraid, and the car finally quieted down.
After crossing Liupan Mountain, the scene of poverty was shocking, and where the military vehicles passed, in the rising and diffuse dust, there were always hungry and thin people who were as thin as skeletons stumbling up, stretching out their withered hands, opening their hungry and thirsty black holes, and making begging sounds that shouted out with bated strength, asking everyone for things. The wheat flour cake called "Shaanxi Big Cake" issued by the recruit brigade to female soldiers in Xi'an is indeed worthy of its name, as big as a basin, three fingers thick, and placed under everyone's butts. For Hunan female soldiers who are accustomed to eating rice, it is as difficult to swallow them as it is to swallow stones. They gave most of these breads to the hungry.
The Hexi corridor is full of bandits, especially Usman, who often circulates between Xinjiang and Gansu, so be especially wary. So after arriving in Lanzhou, the Northwest Military Region specially sent a fully armed company to escort the convoy of female soldiers. There were three men in each vehicle, and each had a machine gun mounted on the front. The soldiers looked ahead, concentrated on it, lying behind the machine guns, and waited for the air to suddenly tense.
The captain asked the female soldiers to coil their hair in their hats, dressed up as male soldiers, and taught everyone to take up the umbrella in their hands and bluff whenever there was a situation.
After entering the Hexi corridor, the boundless desolation was unbearable, and the Great Gobi, which could not be completed for several days, surprised Liu Yuexiang even more.
After setting off from Xi'an, the dust behind the car was flying, and Liu Yuexiang felt that it was difficult to settle the dust and would always fly in the sky. The car is wrapped in dust all day, and the dust on the car is accumulating thicker and thicker, no matter how it is cleaned, it cannot be swept clean. Everyone was covered in dirt, ears, nostrils, mouths, wherever they could get into the mud and sand, they were stuffed. That fishy smell of earth makes people breathless and sick. - Everyone is like clay pottery, like it has been carved out of the mud.
Liu Yuexiang felt that the sediment had to bury them once a day. What she was most afraid of was that the car would suddenly slow down when it encountered potholes, because as soon as the car slowed down, the dust would suddenly rise from under the car, burying them tightly, and even breathing was very difficult, so that when she came to Xinjiang, she felt that there was still mud and sand on the road between her teeth, and she felt that they were crushing their teeth, and felt that the dust accumulated in her ears and nostrils had not been cleaned.
Liu Yuexiang also made a song called "On the Road to Xinjiang" at that time——
It's really bitter for female soldiers to enter Xinjiang,
Turn the internal organs and intestines upside down.
The porridge flatbread is not full,
Make up for a pound of Hexi soil.
The female soldiers usually love to be clean, but they can't care so much on the way west. After setting off from Xi'an, she had only taken a bath once while resting in Lanzhou, and Liu Yuexiang, like the other female soldiers, was covered in dirt and dirty. Due to the lack of water on the road, sometimes you can't wash your face once for several days. This is the hardest thing for female soldiers to endure. In their hometown in Hunan, they are like plants in the water, and they can't live without water. And here, they can only cover like this, keep holding, the kind of discomfort and pain can be imagined.
There is no obstruction everywhere, and sometimes it takes four or five days for a large Gobi to come to the end. The sun is roasting against the scalp, and even if the car runs, it is a hot wind blowing; If the car stops, it feels like the whole world has become a big oven. During the day, the body is always smelly and sweaty, rarely dried, sweat and mud stick to the body, the dirt on the body is a large roll, the smell of the body smells smoke, so these female soldiers are embarrassed to go to the male soldiers.
After the convoy is on the road, it cannot be parked casually, so when it is freed, it can only be untied in the basin, and then fall off the car. The basin has become multi-purpose, except for the use of untying hands in the car, camped and washed, and then used as a washbasin and footwasher; When eating, I made it a tool for serving dishes. Everyone felt sick at first, and eventually they had to get used to it. It was in Dingxi, Gansu, and once each detachment was divided into some raw camel meat, and there was no pot to boil, and the leader of the team let it be boiled in a pot. Everyone did nothing, they could only stare at the jerky of camels. It wasn't until the male soldiers cooked the smell of meat that they couldn't bear it, and they didn't care so much, and washed the basin repeatedly and used it as a pot for boiling meat. In the end, everyone ate with relish, and in the future, they used it as a vegetable pot and rice bowl, and no one felt sick anymore.
Because bicycles are vulnerable to bandits, when a car breaks down, the entire convoy has to stop, sometimes several times a day, and rarely arrives at the intended campsite, so it has to spend the night halfway.
There was no fixed place for the team to camp, sometimes in the donkey pen and horse shed of the fellow villagers; Sometimes it's under the car; Sometimes on the Gobi desert; Sometimes in deserted ravines; The best time was to live on the stage in Jiuquan, which was relatively clean and airy. Because I haven't changed my clothes for a long time, everyone is covered with lice, and where it is itchy, it is a head, and there are so many lice that people feel numb when they think about it. During the break, everyone helps each other squeeze the lice on the head and pinch the lice on the body.
Star Gap
It was evening when the troops arrived at Xingxingxia, the junction of Gansu and Xin, and the twilight was sinking, and since she was on the road, Liu Yuexiang did not like nights, she had an inexplicable despair and fear for the nights on the road, she felt that the nights on the road were the most torturous, and felt that those nights had become longer since she was on the road.
Although there were various rumors, Liu Yuexiang was not inexplicably worried and afraid like other female soldiers; Even in the face of this great wasteland, facing this wind, she can only be curious. Because every step she takes forward, she faces something beyond imagination. With the heroic dream that many young people of that era had, she walked forward fearlessly.
The troops were preparing to camp when suddenly the sound of horses' hooves, whistles, and gunfire suddenly sounded. The sentry shouted: The bandits are coming, the bandits are attacking us!
While shouting in a low voice for everyone not to move, the soldiers guarding the female soldiers held their guns and rushed forward like a wind that was engulfed in yellow sand in an instant.
The sharp voice in front became grand and intense. Liu Yuexiang's body was clinging to the warm gravel ground, eager to let her body fall under the ground, and she felt her body trembling with the earth because of fear.
She understood that that sharp sound was gunshots. Countless bullets "whizzed" over the body. Some hit the car glass, making a death-shattering sound.
Liu Yuexiang's car was relatively far ahead, so it was close to the battlefield. She could see the shadows of bandits on horses passing by like sandstorms, and she could see the flash of machetes and the sparks as bullets flew away from the barrel.
A wounded warrior was carried down by someone running away, and the warrior cried out in pain.
About half an hour later, the gunshots faded and faded, and someone shouted, "It's okay, it's okay."
Liu Yuexiang stood up, she felt her legs were soft, her body trembled more than when she was lying on the ground, she suddenly cried loudly, and several female soldiers also cried with her.
A military vehicle walking in the front was attacked. One of the squad leaders died, he was lying on his stomach in the car, not seeing that it was bandits who were running towards him from the side of the car, and he was pulled out of the car by the bandits with a lasso. When he was found, his head had been cut off, and the company escorting the female soldiers sent two platoons the next day, and it took half a day to find his head on the Ganxin Highway, more than sixty miles away. His head was held by an aspen trunk and stood by the side of the road.
The recruit brigade held a memorial service for the squad leader who had died, buried the squad leader's body, and moved on.
On the day Liu Yuexiang arrived in Hami, it was already dark. In order not to disturb the villagers, the recruit brigade found some abandoned houses on the edge of the city to live in. Liu Yuexiang's team lived in a two-story adobe house, with no roof and jagged walls. Rags, old furniture and hay were thrown everywhere, slowly rotting in the dry air. The smell of dust and decay mixed into a fishy, musty, very pungent smell.
The female soldiers have been on the road for three months. I have long wanted to stretch my body and get a good night's sleep, so everyone doesn't care - everyone has long been used to it, so I cleaned it a little, turned my head and went to sleep. Wang Jiahui slept next to Liu Yuexiang, and the two had a conversation before going to sleep. Wang Jiahui said that she likes to ride horses, and it is best to be a cavalry soldier when she arrives in the army. Liu Yuexiang said that he had never heard of female cavalry. Wang Jiahui said she could fight for it. Wang Jiahui is a very sensible girl who is very good at taking care of people along the way. No one expected that when she woke up the next morning, she died.
When she got up the night before to go to the bathroom, she didn't notice that the stairs had no railings, slept in a daze, and fell down the stairs. The next morning, just after dawn, there was a commotion downstairs. Liu Yuexiang heard them shouting Wang Jiahui's name. She then found that Wang Jiahui was no longer with her. She hurried downstairs and saw Wang Jiahui lying on the ground, unable to get up again.
Liu Yuexiang hugged her and called her name again and again, but she could never wake up again. In a hurry, the recruit brigade sent a few soldiers, wrapped her in her quilt, and buried her next to a sand date tree on the edge of the city.
As soon as they entered Hami, they began to stay people, and then Dihua, Yanqi, and Aksu all stayed - and some went to Ili, Kuitun, Shihezi and other places in northern Xinjiang. Many people have never seen each other since breaking up...
Southern Xinjiang Highway
When he arrived in Dihua, Liu Yuexiang had been on the road for nearly four months. She felt that she had completed all the roads in the world. When she started parking and camping, she would also ask how far ahead she was – they would always say, not far away, there are still a hundred and ten miles, just like that, it has always been that hundred and ten miles. Later, she didn't ask, and let the broken Dodge car sway, bumping forward. In fact, they did not tell the female soldiers the specific route, for fear of scaring them. If they had said, oh, there are still five thousand miles left, or there are only three thousand miles left, or it will take three or two months to go, these female soldiers will probably have fled back in fear.
I remember that in Dihua, Liu Yuexiang heard that he still had to go forward, so he asked the captain with a palpitation: May I ask the chief, where are we going ahead?
The captain said, go to the warehouse first.
Chief, where is the Kuche?
He thought for a long time and said that it was in the north of the Taklamakan Desert.
So, where is the Taklamakan Desert?
I can't tell the specific location, anyway, over the Tianshan Mountain.
So how far is it to Kuqa?
It's not far, it's 1,600 miles.
How much do you say? My God, there are still sixteen hundred miles! Liu Yuexiang didn't believe it at all, and thought that he had heard it wrong.
It's only 1,600 miles, but you've already walked from Changsha to Dihua, so that road is nothing at all. Xinjiang is a big place, and the distance of hundreds of miles is considered close. He didn't care.
It's still that far away! Liu Yuexiang was a little desperate, feeling that there was no strength in his body. For some reason, she just wanted to cry. But she knew that she could not shed tears at this time, so she gritted her teeth and endured it. After a while, she felt that she had swallowed tears into her stomach, and continued to ask—she really wanted to hear a word not to go forward, even if not for the time being—report chief, I wanted to ask something.
Just ask.
Report chief, I am admitted to a military and political university, where do we go to school? There is no university where you don't have a class and just walk on the road.
The captain smiled and said, our university is studied on the road, and those who can get to their destination will graduate.
Liu Yuexiang froze. She wanted to say something, but couldn't.
More than half of the people went to southern Xinjiang. The road from Dihua to Kuqa is more difficult than the road from Xi'an to Dihua, and the dust is also bigger, and there are fewer and fewer people, and the long road seems more and more lonely.
On the right has always been the scorched South Tianshan Mountain that accompanies the southern Xinjiang highway; On the left is the vast Taklamakan Desert. Occasionally a humble town or a fragile oasis dotted around, but they seem insignificant in the face of this boundless desolation, like a fluttering, vague dream, fleeting.
After more than twenty days of bumps, finally arrived at the Kucha, Liu Yuexiang felt that she was about to die, along the way, she felt as if her heart was held by something, and it was about to explode at any time. Now, she can finally breathe a sigh of relief. She cried out in her heart, and finally - fucking arrived -
But after entering Xinjiang, only the conscription cadres know which female soldiers are assigned where, and they treat this as a secret and will not tell anyone. So after Liu Yuexiang learned that Kuche was not her destination and she had to go to Kashgar, she couldn't believe her ears. She looked everywhere for maps and wondered where Kashgar was. But back then, finding a map was as hard as finding a treasure map. She didn't dare to ask how far Kashgar still was, but in the end she couldn't help it, so she asked a loyal veteran, comrade, do you know how far it is from here to Kashgar?
It's not far, it's not far, the Kucha is just in the middle of Dihua to Kashgar, the car runs smoothly, and it will arrive in about twenty days. The veteran told him enthusiastically.
Mom, isn't this dead?
In fact, Liu Yuexiang can guess that the road is very bad, but as if she is looking for sustenance and comfort, she said to the veteran, that road is better than Dihua to Kucha, right?
The veteran laughed when he heard this, and said, how can it be called the way! The drivers all said that it was a ghost road, and the ghosts were afraid to walk! In many places, there are no roads at all, and all cars break out of the desert Gobi by themselves. Sometimes the car accidentally gets stuck in the sand nest and can't be cut out for two or three days. Do you want that path to be easy?
Liu Yuexiang thanked the veteran with a smile, but when he turned around, he couldn't help crying. Now, she wasn't afraid of anything else, just the dust. She must take a shower in Kuqa before going on the road, but the bathhouse does not have water until Sunday. And the team said to leave, she had to hurriedly wipe her body with cold water. Even so, I felt that my body and bones were much more relaxed. If you think about it, her newly developed youth body is a real thousand miles of dust.
Then continue on, the car is driven by two drivers in turn, day and night. The remaining hundred or so female soldiers sat in the car, their hair caged in their hats, and with their hands in their sleeves, they lay down on the open car full of provisions, looking at the clouds and the scorching sun yellowed by sand and dust during the day, and the yellow night sky and stars at night, letting the car pull and run forward.
and Tian
When Liu Yuexiang saw the Id Kah Mosque, someone said that Kashgar had arrived.
But time was like a pile of in her consciousness, and she couldn't tell which month and day.
Kashgar is surrounded by a fertile oasis that melancholy flows beside it. Beyond the oasis is the reckless Kunlun and the vast desert. Therefore, Kashgar, like other towns in southern Xinjiang in those days, accumulated more than a foot of dust on the streets and roads, and as soon as people and animals moved, the dust on the ground would fly up and float among the branches of the aspen.
Kashgar is an ancient city, but it is not yet Liu Yuexiang's destination. She rested at the headquarters of the Second Army for three days and told her to continue to Hotan.
She has heard that Kashgar is still more than a thousand miles from Hotan, but she has long been numb to the mileage.
After arriving in Dihua, some of the receiving cadres returned to their respective units one after another, and the captain Wang Desheng returned to the last group of female soldiers after handing over the second army headquarters, and also returned to his reclaimed deserted Suo Wolf wasteland. Now, only Liu Yuexiang and eight other female soldiers walked forward. The Second Army gave them a Dodge car that was in better condition, but it still looked like it was about to fall apart. The car was full of goods. They climbed into the car with great difficulty, sat down on the cargo, and clinging to the gang raised with aspen with both hands, allowing the car to "crunch" in solitude and desolation through the desert on the edge of the oasis, the Gobi and Taklamakan.
The villagers along the way saw the female soldiers for the first time, and they all stood curiously in the dust raised by the Dodge car. Some of the lads were still chasing the car in the dust on horseback, chasing them long distances before stopping. Everyone's mood had been very agitated by the seemingly endless road, and when they saw the situation, they lifted their spirits, even if it was difficult to sit firmly in the car, they tried to straighten their waists, bloomed a sincere smile on their dusty faces, showed their white teeth, and waved to the friendly Uyghur villagers.
As soon as it came out of Ingisha, there was a sudden strong wind. The brilliant sun suddenly disappeared, the blue sky suddenly became dusk, and the howling of the wind was heard in the distance, and then it came closer and closer, and the sound became more and more shrill and sharper. Then the roar turned into a roar—like the roar of thousands of enraged male lions, and like the roar of the Yellow River kettle pouring from above. The dust and sand rumbled towards you, as if a desert had stood up. It was dark between heaven and earth. People watching the bustle on the side of the road heard the whistling sound, shouted loudly, fled in horror, and disappeared in a blink of an eye. Then, a few meters away, nothing can be seen. The car "creaked" and stopped, and the old car soldier who had driven a car in the Kuomintang army for twenty years and drove in the PLA troops after the uprising struggled out of the window of the car and shouted at the overwhelmed female soldiers, get off, get off! Go to the leeward side of the car to hide, this is a black sandstorm, a black sandstorm that can roll people without a shadow!
As soon as he finished shouting, the female soldiers fell into the boundless darkness. Countless grains of sand pierced their faces like sharp arrows, and everyone did not dare to open their eyes, hugged their heads, rolled out of the car, and then hugged each other and hid on the leeward side of the car. Yellow sand poured into their clothes, and the car was swayed back and forth by the wind. More than an hour passed, the sandstorm subsided, everyone looked around, the landscape had completely changed, the ditches had been filled in by the desert, the farmland was covered with a layer of yellow sand, the crops in the field were no longer visible, the sand dunes were piled up in depressions, and the green leaves on the trees had been cleaned, leaving only bare branches. After the wind stopped, the dust in the sky was still falling to the ground.
Then continue on, the car is driven by two drivers in turn, day and night. Three female soldiers were left each in Makati and Shache, leaving only Liu Yuexiang, Fan Zhiqun, and Zeng Kelan. Three female soldiers sat in the car, even more lonely. It was the end of September, and the weather in Xinjiang had become cold. The three put on the felt tubes and coats that had been given to them. The car tossed and turned on the desolate land for nine days and eight nights, and finally reached Hotan. Liu Yuexiang felt that his body and bones had been broken and scattered on the road.
Liu Yuexiang already knew that he was going to the famous 15th Regiment of the 5th Division of the Sixth Army, and knew that it was Staff Officer Li of the regiment's headquarters who sent them with him. In early December 1949, the 15th Regiment set out from Aksu and spent 15 days and nights trekking across the Taklamakan Desert of nearly 800 kilometers to liberate Hotan.
The car did not stop in Hotan City, and after walking for more than a day, they finally stopped, but they did not see the city, nor the barracks, nor even the shadow of the village, only the endless Gobi wasteland, only the brown-yellow sky overhead. Staff Officer Li jumped out of the car and said, "It's here, we're home."
Arrived? Liu Yuexiang looked around and asked stupidly, where is this?
Yes, it arrived. Staff Officer Li said a little woodenly: Comrades have all opened up the land, and you cannot be welcomed.
Three female soldiers sat motionless in the car, like clay sculptures, their hair and eyebrows yellowed with dust. They stared at them with suspicion.
Once here, we don't go any further. Staff Officer Li looked at them.
Fan Zhiqun said, if you don't say where this is, we won't get off the bus.
Staff Officer Li smiled, are you afraid that I brought you here to plot against you?
Zeng Kelan said, there are no ghosts here, what are you bringing us here for?
Staff Officer Li and the driver all grinned, laughing heartily, so that the dust on his body rose and the dust fell. For a long time, Staff Officer Li stopped laughing and said, this is our camp, this is the underground nest camp that you have never seen, our entire regiment organs and direct subordinate teams live underground, look, there is still a flagpole there.
The three of them looked in the direction of his fingers, and there were three poplar trees tied together with a flagpole standing high in the wilderness, and the red flag on top of the flagpole had been torn off by the wind at least two-fifths, and the rest was also torn, the color had been bleached by the desert wind and the scorching sun, and occasionally "whistled" by the strong pull of the wind. Looking underground, there are indeed countless black holes in the ground lined up towards the sky, like tombs.
The wind is the only thing alive, and it will suddenly swirl up the dust on the ground.
When the female soldiers saw this, they seemed to be more frightened, and they squeezed each other tighter.
The driver's eyes were bloodshot and he was too tired to speak. They began to come up and unload. The three female soldiers had to move to the innermost part.
A dark-faced driver said, "Comrade, get out of the car, but no one can pull you back."
Zeng Kelan asked, can we never go back?
No one answered her.
Zeng Kelan held her head and cried "whimpering". Liu Yuexiang and Fan Zhiqun also "whimpered" and cried.
The driver stopped what he was doing. Staff Officer Li was obviously impatient, and ordered in a gambling manner, what is the stop? Keep throwing things down!
The cargo was quickly unloaded at the feet of the female soldiers, and the driver, as if he did not see them, threw their luggage down.
Liu Yuexiang stood up, raised his sleeves, and wanted to wipe his tears, but when he saw that the sleeves were too dirty, he didn't care, let the tears hang on his face, and said, only people who don't want to live, there is no place where people can't live. After that, he stood up and wanted to get out of the car. But she sat in the car for too long, her legs were weak, and she almost fell. She held the car gang, stood for a while, and then shuttled out of the car. Fan Zhiqun and Zeng Kelan also got out of the car one after another.
Staff Officer Li rubbed the dust on his hands, did not look at them, and said, take your luggage and follow me.
Three female soldiers with tears on their faces followed him. He took them to the nest and pointed out, this is your dormitory, it can live in a class, now there are only the three of you, the living is very spacious, let's rest first.
This is actually an underground tunnel less than eight feet wide and about one foot five deep. Entering through the entrance that slopes downwards, you face a two-foot-wide aisle, and on the right side of the aisle is a two-foot-high earthen platform used to make a bed, covered with fresh reeds, which looks like it has just been laid out. Nothing else. Looking at this residence, the three female soldiers were dumbfounded, and they retreated to the entrance in fear, as if they wanted to retreat outside into the afternoon sun.
