It was dry and warm in the cave. By the time the people who had finished repairing the peripheral facilities were standing by the waste gasoline barrels to warm their hands, the rest of the company had already gone to sleep. Even the sentry on duty at night was yawning while leaning on his steel gun wrapped in a raincoat.
"You go and rest, I'll be on duty." Shen Rusong walked over and said to the sentry.
The sentry girl walked away suspiciously. Her eyes with a hooded face blinked, as if to say, "Are you lying to me?" She secretly observed for a long time before confirming that the 2nd squad leader was really on duty for her, so the warm sleeping bag quickly pulled her into sleep.
There are bright sentries, hidden sentries, and mobile sentries. In the dangerous wilderness, without eyes in the dark, any team may suddenly encounter disaster. While fighting against the cold, Shen Rusong held the gun he had sworn to keep people away from him. He patrolled to an unnoticeable corner of the cave and found that it turned out to be a message board for the Jaegers.
Shen Rusong rolled his eyes and remembered this place. When the sentry was handed over, he hurried back here and read the inscriptions on the rocks.
"February 7, 2072, Li Minbo, squad leader of the 2nd squad of the 3rd company of the 102nd independent Jaeger battalion, record."
The handwriting carved on the rock was scrawled, obviously scratched with a dagger. In the dim light of the match, it was obscure and difficult to understand, but it had an inexplicable and familiar feeling. Shen Rusong recognized every word clearly.
The leather gloves touched the lines of writing. Shen Rusong pulled up his scarf to cover the bridge of his nose and continued to recite silently.
"At 21:36 on the evening of February 6, our troops encountered a herd of blood-thirsty beasts at a small waterfall in the river valley and annihilated them. During the battle, soldiers Wang Hua, Zhang Qiuli, and Tan Wenbao died. The situation did not allow them to be brought back, so they had to be buried here. Take away the soldier cards. The mission continues, and I cannot take the three of them home. The loyal bones are buried in Qingshan and buried here."
There is nothing superfluous in just a hundred words, but how much hardship and pain does it contain?
Shen Rusong's eyes felt sour when he saw it. The sacrificed personnel of other troops could always be brought back to the martyrs' cemetery for a good burial, but what about the Jaegers? Mostly there are only cenotaphs.
It's not just this engraving. Shen Rusong found more early or late records on the rock wall. The earliest one is on May 1, 2063, which is the fifteenth anniversary of the reconstruction of the earth's surface. On the left side of the mountain wall, there is a sentence chiselled squarely.
"May Day! Long live the working people!"
There are nine exclamation points after it, and each one is different. Shen Rusong could imagine the joy of these nine hunters taking out their hunting knives to carve into the rock walls in this desolate mountain range during the most profound celebration of the motherland.
Shen Rusong searched one by one. Among the many lines and scratches, he saw "xxx is here for a visit" and "want to go home to find a wife". Under the latter sentence, someone jokingly carved the sentence "I I want to eat the braised pork cooked by your wife."
The funniest thing is that there is another sentence: "I am Jiang Feifei. I did not stand guard seriously. The squad leader asked me to carve a stone to remember the mistake."
Shen Rusong turned around to make sure the platoon leader was not standing behind, lest he would be embarrassed and carve words here.
However, after rubbing his unshaven chin for a while, he took out the engineering shovel and chiseled out the words with the tip of the blade.
"On April 5, 2083, Shen Rusong, the 2nd Squad Leader of the 1st Platoon, 1st Company, 2nd Battalion, 99th Infantry Regiment, passed by while performing maintenance tasks."
Shen Rusong put away the shovel and turned towards the entrance of the cave to stand guard. He suddenly looked back at the three tombs leaning on each other. The three helmets were all rusty and rotten and turned the same color as the stones.
Shen Rusong's nose was so sore that the flying snow melted on his military coat.
Snow fell overnight.
On the morning of the sixth day of training, the light snow had not stopped, and the mountain road was covered with snow about as thick as the soles of boots. The company commander reported to his superiors and received an order to move forward.
"The regiment headquarters said that such a problem was nothing. The 3rd Battalion encountered a blizzard and moved forward anyway. We were told to handle it ourselves."
Shen Rusong thought to himself that Shao Gang was in the 3rd Battalion. Is this kid also suffering from the cold? He must be screaming a lot, this kid just swallowed all the teeth he knocked out, and then beat them back.
What else can be said? Keep going.
On the snowy mountain road, Shen Rusong was riding on a horse. He breathed into his palms and stroked the brim of his hat. He looked at the Hailan River under the clouds and mist. It was a solid-colored leather belt tied around the waist of a plump Northeastern girl wearing a flowered coat. The cool breeze turned bitter, causing his face to turn red and gradually chapped, but when he looked up and down, he could always find a ray of warmth in the sparse light spots on the treetops.
In the next two days, light snow fell and fell. The team walked almost in a circle around Laotieshan, the main peak of Qianshan Mountain, and inspected a forest fire prevention station.
This kind of fire station with clear woods and shrubs around it is used for emergency evacuation and is protected by double barbed wire. The underground warehouse has corresponding ammunition supplies. The ordnance reserves can ensure the long-term consumption of a platoon of soldiers or two reserve militia teams. It can be expanded into a small defensive fulcrum when necessary.
There is also a small cemetery in a secluded area of the fire station. The wooden tombstones have long since decayed in the wind, sun, rain and rain. Only steel helmets or a circle of stones are left, representing the fourteen people who were buried here. Soldiers who sacrificed their lives for their motherland.
The soldiers cut down snow-covered holly trees and made wooden plaques to insert on the graves that had not been cleaned for a year. The soldiers stood in front of the cemetery, taking off their hats and saluting.
Under the gaze of everyone, Chen Xiaoxiang left the helmet of the cavalryman who died accidentally in the cemetery. He said that if there is a soul, maybe he will pass by here, and he can follow the items used in his life, come here, and chat with the ancestors.
Today's citizens of the Union are all historical materialists, but at this point, people are willing to be idealists.
Not only that, Chen Xiaoxiang also left a branch tied with handkerchiefs torn into five or six bundles of colorful cloth.
Someone asked her the meaning of this move. She said it was a custom in Sanxiang. What is its specific meaning? She didn't know, but every time she went to visit the tomb with her elders when she was a child, she would always bring a string of colorful ribbons and tie them at the highest point of the tomb. As for the meaning, she asked, and her father told her that it was about summoning souls and returning the heroic spirits so that future generations could enjoy them.
Chen Xiaoxiang remembered that his grandfather who passed away a few years ago said that colorful ribbons symbolized the prosperity of the family. His second uncle said that brightly colored ribbons could be seen from a distance by his descendants who traveled across mountains and rivers.
There was a small shallow pit beside the cavalryman's helmet, and there was a tuft of the mane of his war horse "Juanzi". This was his lifelong bond with this beautiful creature until the day when the world changed.
It was only one step away from the main peak. During the snow break at noon, people pushed aside the frozen frost clouds and used the maximum magnification of the telescope to see the vague outline of the Yanqi base dozens of kilometers away. But Shen Rusong not only saw When he arrived at the base, he knew that he had always seen Longshan, that majestic mountain.
Thousands of miles away from home, you can still see it.
On the ninth day, heading towards the main peak, at 10 o'clock in the morning, the snow suddenly intensified. The blizzard caused the visibility to drop to less than fifteen meters. The platoon leader ordered everyone to tie ropes to each other to avoid accidentally leaving the team.
People put on goggles, led their horses, and walked with their bodies lowered to fight the strong wind. Even if they did not bring white coats, their brown military coats were all dyed white with frost, and they struggled to walk in the knee-deep snow.
On a mountain peak of more than 2,000 meters, the temperature plummeted to minus 20 degrees. The sparse coniferous forest could not block the strong wind, and the perceived temperature was far lower than the actual temperature. The team took out all their warm clothes and put them on, their noses and tears all frozen on their scarves.
"There are rolling stones ahead! They're blocking the pass!" Ma Yuanguo, who was scouting ahead, returned. In the howling mountain wind, he had to yell to make people hear his words clearly.
"Blow it up!" The company commander covered his ears after shouting. He had never experienced such cold weather.
Shen Rusong led his men to bury explosives on the boulder blown down by the strong wind. After measuring the angle, there was a loud noise and the boulder blocking the road rolled down. The "rumbling" sound was like thunder, which scared the horses almost crazy.
But where is the smooth road? The narrow pass was filled with extremely cold wind. The air flow flew around and turned into turbulence visible to the naked eye. Even the cold-resistant dwarf draft horses couldn't help but scream. The people hiding behind the horses pushed them forward hard, walking on foot. One wrong step and the whole person seems to be blown away from where he was.
This was the longest quarter of an hour in Shen Rusong's life. After crossing the pass, he was not in the excitement of climbing to the top, nor was he in the leisurely mood of finding an edelweiss to hang in his ear. His face, arms, thighs, and any place facing the wind , all frozen.
Strong winds passed through the forest on the top of the mountain. People could not light fires to keep warm, and the exhausted team could no longer move forward. Xia Xiaoyuan could only order the digging of snow trenches. Otherwise, in such a harsh environment, the tents would not stand at all and would be blown away in the middle of the night. Walk.
But how can frozen soil be so easy to dig? More than a hundred people in the company were digging with their hands and feet. They didn't have any construction machinery, and they didn't even have enough shovels. The engineers' folding shovels couldn't cope with the frozen soil. They dug from afternoon to dark before they managed to dig out enough. Half tent trench.
"People can squeeze in, but where is the horse?!" Shen Rusong could no longer feel his toes. He kept jumping on the spot, trying to move his feet a little before the temperature dropped even lower, otherwise he would freeze. It's going to be amputated!
"Tie him down! Tie him up!" Xu Bowen shouted. He saw that the cavalrymen, led by Ma Yuanguo, were still frantically digging hiding places for their horses. At this time, a veteran who had been in the army for five years had more experience than a veteran who had served for two months. The authority of the squad leader is more important.
But pack horses cannot enjoy this kind of treatment. The army chose this long-haired pony because of its cold resistance. The soldiers tied the horses securely and unloaded the supply boxes to prevent any horses from going crazy from the cold and breaking free of the reins, taking away supplies that were especially valuable in the snow.
A tent with bunk beds that usually could sleep one class was now crowded with twice as many people, but many people still had to huddle in the snow trenches, hugging each other to keep warm, and taking turns to enter the tent to take shelter from the wind. And those sentries on duty were hiding behind trees, with tears freezing outside their eyes before they even flowed out.
The most pitiful thing is the machine gunner who is standing at the fixed sentry. He must lie down in his place. The team did not bring antifreeze, so they had to use a hot water bottle under the gun to prevent it from freezing and being unable to fire. There are helmeted rats in this mountain, and who knows if there are maned wolves that appear on snowy nights.
Shen Rusong, Zhao Haiqiang, Xin Jie, Chen Xiaoxiang and other squad leaders were all outside the tent. They did not even go to the corner of the snow trench where there was relatively no wind. Instead, they blocked the entrance of the snow trench and blocked the wind with their backs.
They hugged tightly, cheek to cheek and holding hands. Before the cold, all reserve, pride and even gender became irrelevant. Sometimes, Zhao Haiqiang would go through all the trouble to light a match, and then it would suddenly go out until In the middle of the night, he successfully lit up a cigarette. You took a puff, and I took a puff.
Chen Xiaoxiang's face was hidden behind a bright red velvet scarf. She took out the flat wine flask that was filled in the Jaeger safe house and shared it.
Shen Rusong tasted a vague fragrance on his lips, and heat flowed to his heart. He felt that he was alive again. He knew that he could not fall asleep at this time, and he had to wait until dawn to find a suitable sheltered camping spot before he could rest.
