Author/Tiejiu Division Lu Lipai
The railway soldiers are a special heroic unit, and in the War of Liberation and the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, they made great achievements in maintaining the steel transportation lines that could not be broken down or blown up. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it undertook the construction tasks of Nenlin, Yingxia, Chengkun, Qinghai-Tibet, Shatong, Tonghuo and other railways, laying a railway network of 10,000 miles for the motherland. I am honored and proud to be a member of the Railway Soldiers. Decades have passed, the spirit of the railway soldiers to open roads in the mountains, build bridges in the water, and the spirit of being able to fight tough battles has always inspired me, and the experience of the railway soldiers has left indelible memories in the journey of my life. Here is only a small fragment of my own personal experience, a glimpse of the whole leopard, so that people can always appreciate the spirit of the Iron Army.
(Image source: Internet)
In the late autumn of the 70s, the troops had just completed the construction of the Shatong Line in the Zhaowuda League of Inner Mongolia and were planning to assist in a local highway construction project. The battalion headquarters gave our 14th company the task of opening a mountain and blowing up rocks to prepare flakes for the next project. The company decided that I would lead a dozen soldiers to open the mountain and blow up rocks.
Our task was to select a stone mountain near the road construction site, drill a shaft with a diameter of about two meters from the top of the mountain, and after the shaft was ten meters long, then drill three horizontal shafts on all sides, fill it with explosives and blast it, and open the mountain to extract stones. The task seems simple, the amount of work is not large, and the technical content is not high, but it is also a test for us under the condition that there is no mechanical equipment to cooperate at that time and all rely on manual operation.
After a brief investigation, the technicians and company commanders of the battalion headquarters chose the location of the mining on a rocky hill more than 10 kilometers away from the company. It is surrounded by a hilly wilderness, there are no villages, no farmland, it will not disturb the people, and the transportation is relatively convenient, which is convenient for transportation, and can also reduce the engineering cost of obtaining stone materials.
/Railway Soldier Construction Site Cooking Class (Image Source Network)/
After a little preparation, the team hurried to the construction site, and we chose to settle down at the site of an abandoned forest farm at the back of the col. After leveling the foundation, the tent was erected, the bamboo felt blanket was spread, and the backpack was opened, and more than a dozen people circled the tent one by one, eating, studying, entertaining, and sleeping in this space of more than 20 square meters. A stove was set up outside the tent, a cook was sent by the company, and a donkey water tanker was provided to fetch water from the neighborhood, and this was our temporary camp. The battalion headquarters asked us to complete the task of opening the mountain and taking stones before the winter snow closed the mountain within two months.
In autumn, the sun is very hot during the day, but it is cooler at night. When night fell, the four fields were so vast that they could not see their fingers, and the autumn wind blew, except for the sound of the branches beating against each other, it was as silent as death. Leaving the company's large collective, life is relatively free, there is no need for morning exercises, meetings and studies are reduced, and the requirements for internal hygiene are not so strict. At night, lit by a pony lamp, and when there are no other activities, everyone takes turns telling stories, telling jokes or singing local tunes for fun, and I bring a flute and harmonica to play a "concert" with everyone at any time. The company sent people to deliver grain, vegetables, oil and salt every week. The happiest thing is which comrade-in-arms receives the letter home, and always reads it aloud and shares it with everyone.
Every soldier in the squad is an excellent soldier, hard-working, and highly organized. Xiao Chen, who comes from Huimin in Shandong, can talk about Shandong Kuaishu and often compiles good people and good deeds into Shandong Kuaishu and gives everyone a paragraph in his spare time; Yan San, a young man of the Dai nationality from Simao, Yunnan, can sing many Dai folk songs and often amuse everyone; Xiao Li, the deputy squad leader from Guiping, Guangxi, is honest and honest, and plays the flute well; and the deputy platoon commander (volunteer) is surnamed Ren, a native of Hanzhong in Shaanxi, who has a longer military experience than me, and has been polishing in the construction company for many years, and is a veteran volunteer with relatively rich experience. As soon as I was promoted, according to the regulations at that time, I had to go through the link from the organ to the company training, and then I became the platoon commander of the company. When I was in my early twenties, I had no construction experience in this area, and I didn't know how to lead soldiers, so he helped me like a big brother and cooperated with my work. Each of us led a construction team to take turns on the construction site. Everyone deeply felt that this task was arduous, and they must put all their energy into the progress of the project and safe production, and there should be no sloppiness and carelessness.
The shaft excavation face is very narrow, and it is impossible to use it if there are too many people, so the key is how to arrange the time reasonably. At the top of the mountain, half a meter thick, lies a layer of hard stone. In each round of operation, four blast holes that can be loaded with explosives were drilled, and each blast hole required nearly 200 sledgehammers. One person holds the steel drill, one person wheels the sledgehammer, each hammer is so shocked that the tiger's mouth hurts, and a pair of gloves are worn out almost every day. The calluses on the hands grind out blood blisters, and the blood blisters break and wrap around the gauze, and then form calluses. Stone Mountain is full of rare vegetation, with the occasional camel grass or two shaking in the wind and sand, rare birds, and rare rabbit tracks. It was very quiet everywhere, except for the dull crash of hammers and steel drills when we hit the blast holes, and then the whirring of the wind.
(Image source: Internet)
Initially, we planned to do blasting twice a day to control the speed of one meter of excavation. But the further down the excavation, the more difficult the construction becomes, and the slower the progress. There is little light underground, only a pony lamp to illuminate it. We erect three logs at the head of the well to form a pyramid shape, and a pulley is installed at the top of the tower, and the rope is bound to a basket through the pulley at one end, and the construction personnel use it to go back and forth to the well, and use it to transport the ballast up and down. After the blast hole was drilled, a soldier was dispatched, loaded with explosives and detonators, and the fuse was extended to the wellhead. In order to speed up the progress, after each blasting, a soldier first went down the well, took off his jacket to drive the smoke out of the wellhead and deal with the dangerous rocks, and then began to clean the ballast, and after the ballast was cleared, it was handed over to the next team to continue to shoot the blast hole in depth.
When dealing with explosives and detonators, the biggest concern is safety. Generally, each round of blasting is four cannons, if everyone does not hear four cannons in unison, it means that there are squibs, and it must be confirmed that the squibs are eliminated before a new round of operations can be carried out. In order to speed up the progress, we adjusted one round of blasting in the morning and afternoon to three rounds of blasting per day, disrupting the work and rest time, starting work in the morning, and returning to the station at night when it was dark, and the two teams crossed construction. A month later, the 10-metre-deep shaft was finally completed and the crossshaft was excavated in three more directions. In the event of a rainy day, the rainwater is injected into the well, and the rainwater must be dried before the blasthole operation can be carried out.
Although the conditions are difficult, the work is tiring, day after day, boring, but everyone has only one goal in mind, to complete the task on time, morale is still high, and they are still very optimistic. At night, singing and laughter can often be heard in the tent, and the flute and harmonica waft in the blue sky of the wilderness, wafting the melody of youth without regrets.
"Carrying the gun in that suit,
The majestic team is mighty,
Comrade, where are we going?
We want to go where the motherland needs it most......"
The warriors have no desires, no complaints, no worries, simple and loyal, and they really deserve to be the most lovely people in the new era
(Image source: Internet)
On the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the company sent mutton and Chinese cabbage, and the platoon deputy and I decided to give everyone a half-day holiday and make dumplings together to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. In the evening, facing a round of cold bright moon, we also held a unique "Mid-Autumn Festival Gala", more than a dozen people, everyone is not only an actor, but also an audience. At this moment, on this desolate construction site, everyone misses their hometown and relatives even more, and has an infinite sense of "looking up at the bright moon and bowing their heads to think of their hometown".
After the Mid-Autumn Festival, the weather in Saibei turned cool rapidly. The progress of the work is still slow, and the stone seems to be working against us, getting harder and harder. The most worrying thing is still the safety issue, I have repeatedly emphasized: safety first, followed by speed, each round of operations must be carried out under the condition of ensuring safety, do not confirm safety, you are not allowed to enter the next round of operations, not afraid of 10,000, only afraid of just in case.
But the "what if" thing finally happened. On that day, I was temporarily sent to the Youth League headquarters to take pictures of the party congress, and at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I suddenly received a report of the accident and immediately rushed back to the construction site. The truck was jolting along a rugged mountain road, and I was so anxious that I couldn't wait to fly to the construction site with one throttle. At this moment, the celestial phenomenon is upside down, gloomy, and overwhelming. I don't know when it started, the goose feather snow fell, and all of a sudden, the wilderness was white, my head was also blank, my heart was very uneasy, and he prayed silently, hoping that every comrade-in-arms would be safe. When we arrived at the construction site, the wellhead was in a mess, the comrades-in-arms were cleaning up the scene, and several wounded soldiers had been sent to the Chifeng Tiejiu Division Hospital. In view of the situation at that time, the company decided to immediately stop the construction and withdraw all of them to recuperate, and I immediately rushed to the division hospital with the company commander to visit the wounded soldiers.
(Image source: Internet)
The accident happened very simply, when the second round of detonation at noon that day, four blast holes were loaded, and after the detonation, it was not possible to determine whether there were three or four sounds, and the deputy platoon commander of the team leader asked everyone to wait patiently for the sake of safety, and after about a bag of cigarettes, there was still silence. So everyone gathered around the wellhead to observe, the underground gunpowder smoke was filled, and people had to be sent down the well to drive out the smoke and dust before the next process could be carried out. Shandong soldier Xiao Chen volunteered to sit in the lifting basket, and the three soldiers pulled the rope and slowly let him go down the well. As soon as the basket reached the bottom of the well, a squib exploded, and the gravel sprayed out of the well, and the deputy platoon commander and three other soldiers who were lying on the side of the well to observe were injured in the face of the gravel to varying degrees. Everyone urgently pulled Xiao Chen up from the well, only to see that he was covered in a layer of dust, his clothes were almost blown up, and his face was blurred with blood. After rescue, there was no life-threatening situation, but the right eyeball was blown off, the left eyeball was seriously injured, and the body was damaged in many places, but fortunately, the hands and feet were still intact. Several other comrades-in-arms were slightly injured and returned to the company to recuperate after being treated in the hospital.
Later, because the troops accepted other tasks, they moved to Linyi, Shandong Province, to build the Yuanshi Railway, and the plan to open the mountain and blow up the rocks was abandoned, and our hard work and blood and sweat for more than a month were in vain. The primitive and backward construction conditions, the decision-making without scientific argumentation, and the blasting operation without safety guarantee make people feel very confused. At that time, there were only such conditions, and the railway soldiers grew up under such difficult conditions.
More than 40 years have passed, every time I sing "Ambition in the Quartet", whenever I sing "Song of Comrades-in-Arms", whenever I get together with my comrades-in-arms and look back on the past, whenever I think of my injured comrades-in-arms, I will feel a faint pain in my heart, and tears will not stop rolling in my eyes.
Later, the army rated the injured soldier Xiao Chen as disabled, discharged him back to his hometown, and coordinated with the local civil affairs department to give him appropriate resettlement. Soon after, I was transferred back to work in the agency, and the unit was transferred to Linyi, Shandong Province on a new mission. Later, these comrades-in-arms also returned to their hometowns one after another, since then the mountains and rivers are separated, the sky is on each side, there is little news, and slowly many people have lost contact, whenever the August 1st Army Day arrives, the feelings of missing comrades-in-arms are indescribable. I really hope that I can see my comrades-in-arms who have shared weal and woe again in my lifetime, and I will always remember the extraordinary experience of the Kaishan team in my heart, and I will always miss my good comrades-in-arms who are like brothers.
/Lu Lipai Rong Costume Photo/
Introduction to Lu Lipai
Lu Lipao, a native of Lufeng, Guangdong, is a graduate student and the honorary president of the Chinese Branch of the Foshan Alumni Association of Sun Yat-sen University. At the end of 1974, he joined the Ninth Division of the Railway Corps, engaged in propaganda, culture, and organizational work in the army. He has published novels, essays, poems, miscellaneous talks and other works in "Railway Soldier Daily", "Zhaowuda Daily", "Liaoning Youth", "Jilin Youth", "China City Herald", as well as China Poetry Network, Jinyang Network, Literature Stand and other media.