[August 1st Special] Li Hongfeng, a young ‖ that year

That year of youth

Li Hongfeng

These two stories have been sealed in my mind for more than 30 years, and turning these fragmentary memories into a few words is what I have been wanting to do in recent years, for this beautiful era, for my lost youth, and for my dear motherland.

—Epigraph

Iron factory ditch flood resistance

When the recruit training was about to leave the company, the iron factory ditch near the station suffered a flood that had not been seen in a century. On that day, except for me, all the comrades-in-arms in the class participated in the flood fighting and rescue. For many years, I felt uneasy because I was not able to participate in that glorious mission, and at the same time I missed the love of the class leader.

The three-month intensive training of the tense recruits ended as planned, and they also met the assessment, just waiting for the assignment to the next company. During this period, the company began to tidy up the sanitation of the camp and take care of the angular ridges for the forest belt.

One day, our class went to the camp to pull soil in the field. Since it was the first time to take a military vehicle outside the camp, we were all very excited, and although the location of the Tutu was in the Gobi Desert on the outskirts of the city, this did not affect our passion in the slightest. As soon as we got in the car, we talked and laughed, and we didn't know that the car was moving. "Be careful, head", I don't know which comrade reminded me behind me, and I was about to turn back to find out, only to hear a "bang", my left head hit the basketball board, and my left eye suddenly had a gold star. The car stopped, and the squad leader came out of the co-pilot and asked me if it mattered, if I could go and load the soil. I said it didn't matter, it wasn't a big problem. When I came to the field, I and my comrades-in-arms in the class loaded the "141" liberation car with a spade and a spade.

Soon after returning to the company, the left eye area of my eye began to slowly become swollen, and later it became a "panda eye". The squad leader was very distressed when he saw it, for fear that there would be a mistake, so he took me to the health team for treatment. The military doctor said that the congestion was very serious, but fortunately the retina was not damaged, and it would be fine if you took some medicine to stop congestion and rest for a few days.

While I was injured in the eye, the company received the task of fighting the flood and rescuing me, and the squad leader reported me to the company headquarters as a sick person. Seeing that I couldn't get to the front line of flood fighting and rescue, I was very anxious, so I boiled the boiling water in the class, boiled a few buckets of hot water, and put it on the temperature next to the stove. Although it is spring, the temperature in the northwest is still low in the morning and evening, all below zero, and you don't have to think about it to know that the task of the comrades-in-arms is very difficult, and they must be cold and hungry to race against time.

The troops set out early that day and returned after dark. According to my comrades-in-arms, on the way to the scene, the "141" liberation vehicle was running so fast that it was eager to put on its wings and fly to its destination, and almost shook them out of the carriage on the Gobi Desert. Time is an order, time is life. The superiors required that they must rush to the flood control site as soon as possible. Due to the abnormal temperature, the snow on the mountains on both sides of the Tiechanggou Reservoir melted faster than in previous years, and it was menacing, and there was a great danger of bursting the embankment. Once the embankment breaks, the lives and property of the herders downstream will suffer serious losses. The Gobi Desert was full of hard stones, and the military vehicles did not follow the existing roads at all, but all followed the operational map and took shortcuts to find new paths, bumping up and down along the way, swaying left and right, and some comrades-in-arms turned out of their stomachs all the food they had eaten in the morning.

The task was successfully completed, and the comrades-in-arms dredged the mountain torrents, and dug ditches with iron picks in the Gobi Desert, allowing the icy snow water to flow to the Gobi Desert and saving the embankment. Back at the camp, the pants of the comrades-in-arms were as hard as a piece of iron cloth, which was a thick layer of ice that had been soaked with snow water.

When my comrades-in-arms returned to the dormitory, they were very happy to see my boiled water and several large buckets of hot water. The squad leader said that I stayed at home, and I also participated in the flood fighting and rescue, ensured the logistics, and praised me. But I knew that I didn't go to the front line, I just did what a left-behind person should do.

What a good squad leader like a brother!

The years have blown away the youthful face, but left the memory of youth. "My old squad leader, how are you doing now...... "My old squad leader" is my favorite song to sing so far. There is a deep memory and nostalgia for the military camp in the song, and there is also a respect and miss for the squad leader.

Defense construction

At the beginning of the 90s of the 20th century, the border guards were extremely difficult, the conditions were poor, the heating was against the fire wall, the baths were once a week, and a large bathhouse was shared. Officers and soldiers rely entirely on letters to communicate with their families, and it usually takes a month to receive them once they go and go, and the scene of the movie "Looking at Charila from a Distance" can be vividly reflected in a certain border guard unit in Tacheng, Xinjiang, where I am stationed.

A military wife took her son, who had never seen her father before, and came to the army to visit her husband, an officer who had not seen her for two years, and set off from a small town in Sichuan on the mainland, taking a car, train, and then a car, and spent 10 days finally coming to the army station, but she did not see her husband.

It turned out that her husband had received a temporary task to lead the troops to the border line for national defense construction, and the letter to the family was still on the way. There are rules in the army that family members cannot go to the construction site. The military wife had to live in the military guest house, and her husband did not return until the end of her vacation. When she returned to her hometown, she received two letters from her husband. She couldn't wait to open it, and one said that she could bring the child to the army; One said that he would go out for construction in the near future and not come to the army. made her baffled, how could she say "come" for a while, and "don't come" for a while. It was only after she carefully read the final payment time that she realized that the original letter of "come" was a few days before the letter of "don't come". The military wife and her husband were always on the road, but they didn't go in the same direction.

After the story spread among the officers and soldiers, the unit's public information officer came to interview the officer and asked him what he thought. The officer only said lightly: "The story of my body abounds in the army, and I don't say anything."

yes!" Don't say anything, the motherland knows me, a big heart, may the world be happy......"

Isn't this military song "Say Nothing" a true portrayal of all contemporary Chinese soldiers like this officer?

I was assigned to the engineer company under the new recruits, and every year after the ice and snow melted, in April and May, all the officers and men of our company had to go to the border line to carry out national defense construction. At that time, the conditions for border patrols were poor, and the slightly better ones relied on horseback, mostly on their feet, and each patrol took a long time. The glorious and arduous task entrusted to our company by the higher authorities was to build a patrol road, build one section a year, and finally achieve the goal of connecting all the patrol roads along the border line, and change the traditional patrol method from the previous one to motorized.

During my three years as a soldier, the company built roads for three years. Once, because I was applying for a military school, the instructor asked me to stay and review. The time for each unit to go out for construction is relatively long, generally starting from the melting of the ice and snow in April and May, and ending with the official arrival of winter after the first snow in October, which lasts for half a year. During this period, food and accommodation were all in the wild, and the conditions were extremely difficult.

The summer in the northwest is very long, and the temperature in the Gobi Desert is even more unpredictable, "wearing a cotton jacket in the morning, wearing yarn in the afternoon, and eating watermelon around the stove at night" is the most appropriate portrayal, and the construction environment is extremely harsh. In the field, the officers and men of the whole company wore straw hats, braved the scorching sun, the wind and sand, and rushed to carry out construction. At noon, the surface temperature is often fifty or sixty degrees, and when the temperature is highest, eggs can be scalded when they hit the stones, and shovels shovel the hot Gobi sand and gravel soil "squeak" harshly; If a gust of wind comes, the sand hits the face with a faint burning pain, and the eyes cannot be opened, and the beads of sweat keep falling to the ground like pouring beans, and the dust will be drowning in a moment; A full military kettle of water, if not saved, "Gu Dong Gu Dong" can be eaten in one breath; At night, wrapped in a thick military quilt and put on a military coat, I still feel cold; I often wake up as soon as I fall asleep, and the gusts of wind in the Gobi Desert blow the tents crackling......

With the motherland becoming stronger and stronger, the mainland and its neighbors have successfully negotiated on the issue of the border demarcation line left over from history, and the border demarcation line for our border defense troops to guard the motherland has been demarcated. In August of the year I was admitted to the military academy and left the army, my comrades-in-arms went out to carry out a new task -- to erect border barbed wire and military wires......

Today, the border patrol roads of the old army have long been paved with asphalt roads, and the patrols have changed from motorized to mechanized; Modern communication methods have replaced the long Hongyan biography, and you can video at any time when you want to love your relatives; Officers and soldiers can take hot showers every day; In winter, the fire wall was used for heating and air conditioning...... Conditions in all respects are different from those of more than 30 years ago. All officers and men are confidently striding forward on the road to the goal of strengthening the army.

About the Author

Li Hongfeng, a native of Linshui, Sichuan, is a member of the China Microfiction Society, the Sichuan Provincial Fiction Society, and the Guang'an Writers Association, and the first batch of "· Most Beautiful and Enthusiastic People in the New Era of Meritorious Contributions" (singing Guang'an category), and is now working in the People's Procuratorate of Linshui County. In 2019, he began to write amateur literature, and his literary works have been scattered in more than 50 newspapers and periodicals such as "Procuratorate Daily", "Xinjiang Daily", "Northern New Daily", "Sichuan Legal Daily", "Guang'an Daily", "Tianchi Novels", "Star Poetry Magazine" and so on. He has won more than 20 literary awards such as the second prize in the literature category of the first "Mao Jin Cup" Honest Literature and Calligraphy and Painting Works Creation Competition. He was awarded 5 individual third-class merits and 2 collective third-class merits. He is the author of a collection of essays, "Swinging River Ditch".

The content of this article is original

Please indicate: "Source: Fang Zhi Sichuan"

Source: Sichuan Provincial Office of Local Chronicles

Author: Li Hongfeng

Pictured: Fang Zhi Sichuan