Chapter 4

  I didn't want to ramble on about my feelings when I first entered the army from civilian life, I think it's not that interesting. As long as a person enters a highly disciplined and unfamiliar environment, they will feel tense, afraid, and a little uncomfortable, so they either look for people to chat with or pretend to be a thinker and keep their mouth shut.

  It's almost like this bird feather now, not much difference.

  Might as well think about it, since we've already started talking nonsense, let's talk nonsense thoroughly. Anyway, this year is popular with self-exposure of privacy, who knows, if I expose myself like this, maybe more people will read my nonsense book?

  Let's talk about what happened on the first night!

  At night, everyone went to bed early and didn't say much. Since it was the first day and nobody knew each other well, they all went to bed early with their own thoughts.

  I was just one feeling at that time - hot!

  Think about it, the stove in that place is filled with large smokeless coal from Xinjiang, and the firepower is absolutely fierce. A large iron bucket of water can be boiled dry in 20 minutes, and the furnace plate can be burned to a bright red color.

  The whole room was like a warm house, with cold winds howling outside, but inside the house it was as warm as spring.

  Then he pulled open the quilt and slept with it on.

  It's midnight, can't go on.

  The frozen fish has come back to life!

  Those who have used a kang know that before going to bed, you need to cover the top of the kang with a thick layer of fine coal ash, poke a small hole in it with an iron rod, and then place a bucket of water on top.

  In that case, not only is the room temperature high, but also at night, the water vapor slowly releases, making breathing smooth and absolutely not dry. When dawn breaks, a full bucket of hot water is just right for a family to wash their faces and brush their teeth.

  Who still remembers the first time burning the earth stove and there is a thing called "pressure fire"?

  This is not it, the stove was almost extinguished in the middle of the night.

  Xinjiang's winter is something else!

  There is no stove in the house. Don't mention getting out of a warm quilt, even if you just stick your feet outside the quilt for three minutes, it can freeze people to wake up!

  I reckon in a house of twenty people, everyone has already woken up from the cold, but no one wants to leave their quilt, just staring at who can't hold on and gets up to add coal first.

  At this time, the door creaked and a person in black came in with a small basket of coal in his hand. He quietly walked to the stove, gently lifted the furnace cover and added coal to the stove.

  By the twinkling firelight, I saw clearly that it was Kang Ming.

  It's freezing outside, but Ming is only wearing a thin undershirt, the kind issued by the army, and has thrown on a thick cotton coat. It's clear he just got out of bed to bring us coal from the pile outside.

  At that time, I felt a sudden collapse in my heart, and I thought this brother was righteous!

  Just wore that green cavalry uniform, and in my heart there really wasn't any concept of old soldiers loving new soldiers or squad leaders being close to their subordinates, just felt that this brother Jiang was quite righteous!

  I didn't make a sound, just watching Kang Ming wrapped in a big coat standing by the stove, waiting for the fire to regain its bright red color, before reluctantly wrapping his coat tightly and walking out.

  Before Kang Ming went out, the instructor pushed the door and looked into the house, and quietly asked Kang Ming: "Didn't freeze these little guys?"

  Kuang Ming shook his head: "No way! All new recruits have fires burning and coal added in their rooms, absolutely no one will freeze!"

  The instructor nodded: "If we can get through tonight, there will be coal tomorrow!"

  Kuang Ming also nodded: "Instructor, you go to sleep first, we'll keep an eye on things here, nothing will happen!"

  The two of them quietly talked and quietly closed the door and quietly left...

  Our base was a half-abandoned base before the 1980s, and it was used by the Uyghur villagers who herded sheep, and possibly also used by those camel smuggling gangs that smuggled Pakistani blankets and Indian god oil.

  Now it's our turn to use the roads that can lead to the base, all of which have become wilderness, and the old brothers of the transportation team are really using the engineer's shovel to open two steps and repair the road surface for us to transport materials.

  In addition, the concept of this special unit at that time was really unknown to many people, so others thought it was a temporary unit, just gathering for a while, and the allocation of materials was not so timely.

  So on the evening of the day we arrived, all the coal in the whole base was only enough for seventy percent of the rooms to have a fire after cooking dinner.

  Then those drill instructors, our older brothers who were veterans of the Vietnam War, and those brothers who were only a few years older than us but had many more scars on their bodies, gave us new recruits the rooms that could provide warmth.

  They, including my instructor, spent the night squeezed in three rooms with just a few quilts and military coats.

  Xinjiang, on an evening in December.

  I remember that in my later years in the army, I also survived like this, of course not by letting new recruits take over the house but by going out to do some trivial tasks or participating in wilderness survival training and so on.

  Xinjiang's snowy night, that kind of cold is enough to freeze a person's soul out of their body, making them howl and flee!

  But my old comrades-in-arms used their battered bodies to bear that hellish cold and left the warmth for us new recruits who had just put on our green uniforms.

  They were all raised by their parents.

  So the brotherly feelings in the troops are so direct and frank.

  In training, that's absolutely scolding and hammering with a heavy hand, but in life, it's really...

  Dad and mom have taken care of me like this!

  So isn't this what they say in society now?

  The feelings of those who have gone through thick and thin together are the strongest.

  What is iron?

  This is iron!

  As I write, it seems like what I'm writing is a bit too melodramatic and fake.

  I'm actually a person who speaks rubbish, and I'm particularly good at spouting clichés, empty words, and pompous phrases that can nauseate people for half an hour with my officialese.

  To put it bluntly, I just hate those noisy propaganda bastards who haven't even been in the army for a few days but claim to be veterans. They make up disgusting stories that no one believes!

  Then just add a joke and everyone will have a good laugh.

  He slept till almost dawn. A guy from Yimeng Mountain area probably ate too much noodles at night, suddenly jumped up and ran out.

  At that time, I was dizzy and felt that this guy's courage was commendable. It was so cold, but he still dared to run out. As the saying goes, people have three urgent situations: when they are anxious, they can climb up a house and remove tiles. That is not false at all!

  After a while, that guy came back again, holding his stomach and groaning in the room.

  I was puzzled at that time!

  How can this be called a solution?

  Won't it be appendicitis?

  He hastily shouted in the quilt: "Brother, what's wrong with you? Is your intestine hurting?"

  That guy hummed and hawed, saying it wasn't that he was going to the toilet, but the wind was blowing so hard that no matter how hard he tried, nothing came out. I'm suffocating! Ahhh...

  Otherwise, one would think there were no clever people in this world.

  Someone immediately came up with an idea and said: "Why don't you put on a big coat to wrap your butt, hold a cotton hat in front of you to block the wind and try it?"

  Those guys just went and successfully solved it.

  It's just like this: once it gets noisy, then his affairs will be spread far and wide.

  What do you think it looks like when someone goes to the toilet wearing a big coat and has their earflaps hanging in front of them?

  Does it look like a wild boar sitting on the ground and ready to wrestle with a black bear?

  Later on, that guy's nickname was Wild Boar, probably because of this incident.

  It's said that at that time, due to a lack of necessary supplies, there were quite a few strange things happening in our training camp.

  At that time, there were two particularly special examples.

  First of all, there is the issue of drinking water.

  The river water in that place in Xinjiang is mostly snowmelt from the snowy mountains, and after passing through tens to hundreds of kilometers of natural soil filtration, it basically becomes a standard for pure water, which is clear and sweet.

  He can't hold his liquor, we're a bunch of city boys who are used to living the high life!

  Especially in the first few days after the training camp was established, the water tanker had not yet arrived, so we could only make do with drinking the freshly thawed snow and ice water.

  Most of the brothers from rural areas have no problem drinking this. Especially those Shandong brothers from Yimeng Mountain area, who are originally physically strong, drinking a little snow water that has just melted is not a problem at all, and they all praise the sweetness of the snow water.

  But we soldiers from these cities can't take it anymore.

  First, several impatient brothers drank snow water and started rushing to the toilet one after another. This trend quickly spread. The Huanglian Su in the small medicine box of the team doctor became a scarce commodity. In the end, each sick brother could only be strictly controlled, and the doctor personally delivered the medicine to his mouth, absolutely not giving him a few more tablets.

  It's not easy to control the city soldiers on this side, but now they have started to appear with the same phenomenon as those brothers from Yimeng Mountain area, and they also treat the toilet as their home in group actions.

  The military doctor was stunned.

  Shouldn't you have gotten used to this problem from drinking snow water a long time ago? How come it's only after two weeks of drinking that this phenomenon started appearing?

  Let's hurry up and find out the cause. After all, the population density in the military camp is very large, if it's something like an infectious disease, it will be easy to get into trouble.

  After checking, it turned out to be a cause of the disease that made people cry and laugh.

  We city folks get stomach troubles from drinking water, but you brothers in the Yimeng Mountains get them from eating.

  Yimeng Mountain area, especially the old district, almost all of our brothers are from poor families. Even those with slightly better family circumstances only get to eat meat dishes during festivals and occasionally catch a fish in the river to make a soup, but even then they have to let the elderly at home eat first. The oil and water in their bellies are indeed quite scarce.

  The food in the army may not be possible to get any delicacies, but it is absolutely filling and the oil and water are relatively sufficient. Especially at noon and evening, there are always two meat dishes with those fatty meat slices, city soldiers basically all have a bit of picky eaters don't like to eat, naturally they all fill their bellies with those who love oil and water brothers.

  For years, the dry and withered intestines suddenly endured so much oil and water. Those brothers from Yimeng Old District naturally had an unadapted gut, and it was definitely a new round of metabolism that never ended.

  This made things a bit difficult for the cooks at the time!

  Can't say that for the sake of adjusting the brothers' appetite, there are city soldiers and rural soldiers?

  It was then that I realized what localism is and how hard it is to leave one's hometown.

  That night, just after dinner, I saw several brothers from the Yimeng Mountain area holding a tea pot and pouring water into a cup. Then they sprinkled something into the cup and gulped it down in one mouthful.

  I was curious and wanted to go over and take a look.

  These brothers from the Yimeng Mountains are all kind-hearted people. There must be some big dates in that bundle to share with everyone, it's impossible for them to drink something good without giving us any.

  I saw my past, a brother said there's nothing good about it, actually just a little bit of mud brought from hometown. The elderly at home said that if you travel far and your intestines don't adapt, use the local water and mix it with the soil from your hometown to drink and it will be fine.

  I just laughed and said isn't this a bit far-fetched?

  How can you still believe in superstition? Did your family give you some fun stuff like Buddha's incense ash or something?

  But the next day, those brothers' stomachs really recovered.

  I remember that brother said the soil they carried with them was called - mother soil in Yimeng Old District.