Chapter 31 Chapter Eleven

What happened next finally made Shangguan Feng feel completely relaxed. At the end of the 342 Heights Battle, a group of people meandered along the newly opened safe passageway of the Second Battalion of the A Regiment in Qipanling North Dapo.An hour later, they had arrived at Heifengjian without making a sound. These are three young men also wearing grass-green military uniforms.Walking in the middle is a large soldier with a distinctive collar patch and cap badge; behind him is a combat worker wearing an unmarked jacket-style military civilian uniform; walking in the front is a teenage boy. He also wore a single military uniform similar to that of the migrant workers who participated in the war, without any military rank marks. The three of them did not attract too much attention when they walked south to north along the path by the forest on the east side of Heifengjian.

It wasn't until they approached the campsite with nine rows and three rows that Qin Erbao, who was sitting on the grass by the forest, was the first to notice the problem: "Hey, platoon leader, look, what's going on with that little guy?" After he shouted, Shangguanfeng and the soldiers stood up from the grass and looked towards the group of people.Soon, they also saw a flaw among the three people who seemed to be walking calmly.Although they all came down from Height 342, their moods and demeanors were not quite the same: the boy in the front was barefoot, unkempt, with dirty and torn clothes, and a foot-long cut was made on the left trouser leg. The mouth is open, and half of the bare legs are exposed when he takes a step.Blood was still oozing between the toes of his right foot, and when he took a step, a dark brown blood stain was left on the road.He must have cried not long ago, and the tears were still pitifully on his face.Realizing that there were many people watching him by the edge of the forest, the boy raised his head, and Shangguanfeng saw two small, dark, terrified and bewildered eyes from his sunken eye sockets; The big soldier is 1.80 meters tall, with a generous body, strong and powerful.Although he had just gone through a battle, his brand-new military uniform was neat and tidy, showing joyful colors in the bright morning light. A submachine gun was hanging upside down on his right shoulder neatly, and his right elbow was naturally and powerfully bent. Back against the body of the gun firmly, with the thumb of his right hand sticking the strap of the gun at an obtuse angle in front of his shoulder, he looked very proud and satisfied, as if he was not here to fight but to accept inspection.Even so, his attention was exceptionally focused, and from time to time he would look vigilantly at the boy in front of him, as if he was afraid that he would run away suddenly; as for the thin-faced migrant worker beside him, he was obviously a soldier. Of the three rural youths recruited temporarily, he was the most relaxed of the three, with an attitude of staying out of the way, looking left and right as he walked, as if he was not here to join the war, but to visit the mountains and rivers.

After walking a few steps closer, Shangguanfeng and the soldiers saw the boy's face with deep eyes, protruding forehead, puffed lips and cheeks, and the subtle differences between the military uniform on his body and the jacket-style military casual clothes worn by our army's migrant workers. , found some strange exoticism. "Hey, folks, which unit do you belong to?" Qin Erbao was the first to step out of the forest, and chatted with the big soldier among the three who was obviously the temporary person in charge. "From the Second Battalion of Regiment A!" The big soldier replied loudly and confidently as he walked.

"What... do you mean?" Qin Erbao asked, pointing at the boy who was walking in front. "Wow, captive!" The big soldier replied; realizing that his words immediately caused surprise and shock at the edge of the forest, he stopped in satisfaction, glanced at the boy as if showing off, then at Qin Erbao and the people who were following him. The soldiers who surrounded him by the edge of the forest had this expression on their faces: It shouldn't be that they were noticed by people when the three of them came here; but since they have been noticed, he is still willing to chat with them for a few minutes In a word, let these people who haven't even been on the battlefield open their eyes.Everyone is a soldier!

"A captive?... How did you catch him?" After almost all the platoon surrounded him, Qin Erbao walked around the little prisoner as if he was looking at a rare object, his eyes shone with excitement, and he raised his head to ask. "Catched while cleaning the battlefield!" With so many people watching, the big soldier became even more proud, and said loudly and slightly disdainfully, as if dissatisfied, "Our battalion captured this one prisoner! ... It is said that the whole regiment Only this one was captured!...There were not many enemies on the mountain, and the light cannon wiped them out! We went up and fired our guns into the sky!...We found him when we were cleaning the battlefield," he said, pointing with his left hand. The little prisoner crouched down coweringly on the grass, without looking at the latter, "It turned out that he hid in a rock crevice as soon as the shells fired, and we forced him out of the pile of dirt! "

The soldiers onlookers exclaimed "tsk tsk", which made the big soldier's eyes brighter and his mood happier.For a while, everyone stopped paying attention to him, and went to pay attention to the little prisoner underground.Today was the first day of the war, and they saw the captured prisoners for the first time in their lives, so they naturally felt surprised and fresh.While discussing in a hurry: "This kid has fifteen at most!" "How could they call such a young child to fight!" "Look how poor he is, he has no shoes on his feet!" "No shirt on, only a military uniform!"

... "Look if he's cold!" The Zhao Guangming brothers, who hadn't been seen all morning, also squeezed into the crowd.Zhao Guangliang, who also looked like a child, saw the little prisoner and cried out in pity. He noticed that the little prisoner's bony shoulders were trembling slightly. The little prisoner first squatted on the ground, then sat down; his little arms were folded on his knees together, his little dirty face was propped on them, his frightening eyes were hiding from those around him; Qin Erbao grinned at Qin Erbao, who came closer to look at him, as if he wanted to smile, but he didn't succeed. He suddenly lowered his face and buried it in the crooks of his arms, his immature shoulders kept silently shake up.

"Have you ever asked how old he is?" Qin Erbao stopped paying attention to him, raised his head, and pulled up with the big soldier escorting the little prisoner. The migrant worker who was standing next to the big soldier, who was still looking around at the whole Heifengjian during this time, interjected.It turned out that he was a field interpreter for the Second Battalion of the A Regiment. "I interrogated him at Xianshantou Xiangshangxin. He is four years old this year, a tenth opera student, has only been a soldier for a year, and has opened a small tea shop three times. "The translator said with great interest in difficult Mandarin, "He (said) he couldn't serve small tea (poor), and if he opened small tea (poor), the government would stop bullying (eating) food for them!" "

I don't know if it was because he understood some of the meaning of the translation, or because he was full of fear of his situation, the little prisoner suddenly hoarse and cried "ahhh". This sudden cry stopped the chirping conversation among the onlookers at the edge of the forest.Everyone stopped paying attention to the big soldier and the translator, and turned their attention to the little prisoner.After a while, the original curiosity on everyone's face gradually turned into unconcealable pity. "Is he hungry?" It was still Zhao Guangliang who asked another childish question, raised his eyes, and looked at Li Le and Shangguan Feng, the class leader of the ninth squad, as if asking for approval. He was relieved when he saw that they hadn't expressed anything. Boldly touching the little prisoner's shoulder lightly with his hand, he handed over a pack of compressed dry food that had just been torn off the wrapping paper, "Hey, eat it!" He said to the little prisoner, suddenly realizing that the other party couldn't understand his words, He looked up at the interpreter as if asking for help, "Comrade, please tell him, tell him to eat some dry food!"

The interpreter said something aloud to the little prisoner in a language as urgent and quick as a bird's song.The little prisoner didn't look up, and cried even harder. "What are you doing!" The big soldier who had always been arrogant felt a little embarrassed.A few minutes ago, he was the hero and star of this place, but now that the little prisoner was crying like this, he felt an unfavorable atmosphere from the eyes of the people around him. "Look, no one made things difficult for him." He said, looking around in the crowd, as if he wanted to find someone to come out to prove to himself that he really did not make things difficult for the little prisoner during the march just now, neither tied the little prisoner with a rope , and did not force the little prisoner to walk behind with a submachine gun.But he did not find such a person. "...If you want to eat dry food, you can eat it. Let's just rest here for a while before leaving!" He said to the little prisoner annoyed, helpless, and pitying, not realizing that the latter also couldn't understand him, so he simply went from He unloaded the submachine gun from his shoulder, sat down on the ground and smoked.

In the end, the translator leaned down, leaned to the little prisoner's ear, and said something to him in the brisk, snappy language like birdsong. Only then did the little prisoner stop crying, and raised his head, which was stained with tears again. Xixi's small face looked at the people around him blankly, as if inspired by some kind of encouragement, he took the compressed dry food from Zhao Guangliang's hand timidly, and gnawed it without completely peeling off the plastic wrapping paper.He was so hungry that he ate too fast and choked after a few mouthfuls.Zhao Guangliang watched him eat all the time, and at this moment he unscrewed the lid of his kettle and handed it over. The elder brother treated his younger brother the same way, saying: "Drink saliva and eat slowly!" This time, the little prisoner understood what he meant without an interpreter. He took the kettle, touched his chapped lips carefully on the spout, and drank it in big gulps. He choked again because he drank too much.When returning the water bottle to Zhao Guangliang, for the first time, there was a faint trace of childish gratitude in his bewildered eyes. The people around him breathed a sigh of relief, and the atmosphere became relaxed again. Shangguan Feng was also in the crowd, but he never squeezed to the front.For a moment, the word "captive" had vividly aroused in him a hostile feeling and thought; but when the little captive was seen with his own eyes, certain new feelings and thoughts arose in his mind, and he forgot. I have been thinking about whether the war is over or not.The little prisoner in front of him didn't quite fit with all the understandings of prisoners he had read from books in the past.In the past understanding, although the captive should be given preferential treatment, its meaning is connected with the "enemy" after all, so it is first of all disgusting in emotion; the feelings and thoughts given to him by the little captive before him are not Different: the first thing that the little prisoner reminded him of was not a person from an enemy country, but a child who was only fourteen years old, a person who might not understand the political and military concepts of "enemy" and "captive" at all; Those terrified and dazed eyes did not reveal the mortal hostility and strong national and national consciousness that a soldier should have, but only a deep instinctive despair and sadness, and another kind of more The reality is also more pure fear of the surrounding environment.The feeling of being stabbed in the heart by something sharp when our army shelled at dawn once again became stronger in his life. "...he is only fourteen years old. Why is he only fourteen years old? Who else is there in his family?... Why do they let a fourteen-year-old child fight in the war? Is there no other boy like this?" Is there a more suitable person?..." During the time when the little prisoner was crying and then gulping down the dry food, Shangguanfeng kept churning with the above thoughts in his mind, and the painful feeling of being stabbed became stronger and stronger "... Even if this child is a captive, he is still naive, and he doesn't understand what will happen to him at all... But why is there such deep sadness in his eyes?... Maybe although he doesn't understand anything, Deep down in his heart, he knew that it was unreasonable and inhumane for him to be sent to the battlefield at a young age, and he had no strength to resist this fate.... What he didn't understand was only war, but he didn't understand his own situation. I understand...." All these answers came to his mind just now, and they seemed to have an important connection with a deeper question that he had been thinking about since he entered the war, so he couldn't stop thinking along this line of thought. go down.He has vaguely realized that, apart from their different situations, he and the little prisoner should be thinking about the same problem in the face of war. At this moment, Liang Pengfei came out of the woods in the direction of the company command post. Liang Pengfei was going to Jiandi to see the cooking class.In the depths of the woods, Zhao Jian smoked a cigarette and figured out the problem that was crucial to him. He once again thought about the problem of eating in Quanlian.Cheng Ming has been staying in the company's shelter and he has to finish the matter. The 40-minute meal time stipulated by the deputy head is coming soon.Walking out of the woods, he saw a group of people gathered together instead of hiding in the cat's ear hole as required. Among them was the leader of the third platoon, Shangguan Feng. Fire a cannon here, and the people in the third row will all run out of the forest. What if something happens! "Third platoon leader, what's the matter with you?!" He was more than 20 meters away from the crowd, and he sternly shouted at Shangguanfeng. Qin Erbao, deputy of the eighth class, answered the instructor's words ahead of the platoon leader.Qin Erbao was very happy this morning, because he was the first to find the little prisoner among the group that walked down from Height 342, so it seemed that he should report this matter to the instructor instead of Shangguanfeng.Qin Erbao also had other meanings: everyone in the platoon knew that the instructor had an extraordinary relationship with him, and he wanted to seize the opportunity to consolidate this impression in everyone's minds! "Instructor, come and see! The Second Battalion of Regiment A has captured the prisoners!" He shouted to Liang Pengfei in a bragging, loud voice, making others think that he was not only Liang Pengfei's "confidant", but maybe even his relative! Now that Qin Erbao answered the instructor on his behalf, Shangguanfeng didn't say anything else; the soldiers surrounding the captives scattered and went back to the forest. They didn't like this pretentious instructor; Qin Erbao didn't leave, He wanted to wait for the opportunity to "report" to the instructor in more detail how he found the captive. Seeing a "chief" of the brother army coming, the big soldier escorting the little prisoner threw away the cigarette butt between his fingers and stood up from the grass. Liang Pengfei stopped before reaching the little prisoner; he had already understood Qin Erbao's words, and at this moment, because the soldiers dispersed, he saw the dirty boy sitting on the grass by the forest.It was also the first time for Liang Pengfei to see a prisoner. He was a little shocked at the first moment, but the deep-rooted sense of the enemy and the enemy that he had formed in his heart after years of political work immediately reminded him: let the soldiers see such a prisoner before the company went into battle. It is definitely harmful and dangerous to their fighting spirit; the third platoon actually allowed the prisoners to rest in the camp of the platoon, and it seems that some people even expressed their warmth to the prisoners, and gave them dry food and water. Once this kind of thing gets out, Who can guarantee that the superior will not come to investigate Jiulian's position and tendency?He is a political instructor, and if there is trouble, he will be unlucky with these soldiers!Thinking of this, the color on his face was not only sullen, but also panicked. So he instinctively did the most important thing right now: drive the captives away from Heifengjian! "Which unit do you belong to? What's your name?" He looked at the big soldier escorting the captives sternly, and asked loudly, "Why did you let the captives stay here! ... Who is responsible for any problems! ... Hurry up Take him away?" The big man's face changed color, he hurriedly put the submachine gun back on his right shoulder, and stared at the little prisoner angrily.The big man was also angry: it wasn't that he wanted to sit here to rest, it was all because of the captive soldier who became coquettish as he walked.He yelled at the boys on the ground: "Get up! Get up! Go!...Who told you to sit here! You don't even have food to fight!...Go!" The interpreter helped him shout to the little prisoner in that bird-like language.The prisoner obediently stood up, stretched his neck, swallowed the last mouthful of compressed dry food with difficulty, lowered his head, and without looking at anyone, walked with the two escorts to the Dashan Gorge in the north of Heifengjian. Liang Pengfei turned his head and looked at Shangguanfeng angrily after the prisoner walked out of the arrow. He wanted to give the seventeen-year-old platoon leader a lesson: If he hadn't come in time, I don't know that Shangguanfeng would have stabbed him this morning. What a political trick!After thinking about it, he didn't do that: he was planning to go to Jiandi to watch the cooking class, and from this he thought of the conflict between the company commander and the chief of staff just now.Today is not yesterday, since Shangguan Feng also went to the battlefield, he can no longer treat him with the same attitude as yesterday.The interpersonal relationship on the battlefield is complex and delicate, he better not create a master who might shoot him in the back! In this way, he ignored Shangguan Peak and strode towards the bottom of the stream. Shangguan Feng returned to sit in front of his cat ear hole in the forest.Before the little prisoner came to Heifengjian, he still thought about the war on Qipanling according to the general law of war. The general law of war told him that after our army bombarded, the enemy would counterattack. Now the enemy's counterattack has never happened In his heart, he still couldn't believe that the battle of Qipanling was over: after the little prisoner came to Heifengjian, because he saw with his own eyes how tattered and shabby the boy he once regarded as the "enemy" was, How hungry the stomach is and how weak the spirit is, there is a new explanation for the fact that the enemy did not fire at Qipanling and Heifengjian in accordance with the general laws of war this morning: this is a very poor army raised by a very poor country. The army, their failure to fire may just be related to the word "poor". ——At this moment, he found himself willing to believe that the war on Qipan Ridge was over! A real, deep sense of joy overflowed his life.If the battle of Qipanling is over, he and their platoon will have nothing to fight!The thing I have been worrying about for more than three months—death—will never happen! He lay down on his back on the grass in front of the cat's ear hole, his eyes looked through the gaps in the forest leaves, looking at the blue sky washed by water in the early morning in the war zone.At this moment, his heart is as pure and relaxed as the sky, shining with the bright sunshine of life. "...I'm still alive, yes," he thought tearfully, "how good it is to be alive, not because of anything else, because of Kant, because of Pythagoras, because of Newton, it's good to be alive. ...No, just being alive is an incomparably beautiful thing. I didn't understand this in the past..." A strange, thin, whistle-like sound from a distant mountain forest pierced through the beautiful morning sky, gliding over from nowhere, and quickly turned into a sharp, falling whistling sound.Instinctively startled, he straightened up and sat up without thinking about it, but through the gaps in the trees, he saw the scene downhill: a tall soldier in the second row was walking on the path by the forest, the corner of his mouth Biting a green and tender grass stalk that was shining green in the sun, suddenly, a black-red flame wrapped in gray-white smoke rose, and mud, gravel, broken branches and leaves of trees and Some sticky debris immediately rained down on the forest.He only paid attention to the soldier in his mind, and didn't accept the fact that he had thought, so he didn't hear any voice.The smoke dispersed, and he saw that there was only a deep pit left in that place, but the soldiers in the second row were gone. "Where did he go?" He wondered for a moment, looking at the peeling and burning bushes beside the pit, his heart tightened suddenly, "Will he escape in time? ... Is he dead? ?” All of a sudden, he believed that the man must have fled to the stream below before the shell hit the ground, so he set his sights on the stream.Part of the water surface was shining brightly under the sun, and two jets of white water were jumping up from near the picnic site of the cooking team; The plume of smoke also rose into the sky from the woods where Qilian was.The hearing impairment that suddenly appeared in his consciousness disappeared, and Shangguanfeng heard the earth-shattering explosions of heavy bombs one after another.Suddenly he saw the instructor Liang Pengfei, who ran back into the woods before reaching the bottom of the ravine, his face was pale, and he was too trembling to say a complete sentence: "He damn these artillerymen! . . . Where the hell are they going to fight!" Another shell landed in the middle of the forest, exploded, and Liang Pengfei disappeared in a blink of an eye.What Shangguanfeng heard was the whistle from the company headquarters.The company commander, Cheng Ming, ran over with a gray face, and while violently blowing the white metal object in his hand, he shouted something in panic and exasperation.His shouts made the soldiers in and out of the woods fall towards their cat ear holes like grasses blown down by a hurricane.Shangguanfeng jumped up from the ground, still not accepting what had happened in his consciousness, Cheng Ming ran up to him, stared into his blood red eyes and cursed: "Damn it, are you deaf?!... Hurry up and tell your soldiers to hide!" The company commander's expression was so ferocious, Shangguan Feng seemed to understand everything in a flash!Looking back at the campsite of the whole platoon, there was no one in the woods.He had just rolled and crawled into the cat's ear hole, when a shell fell not far from the hole with his buttocks, blowing up a masson pine that was as thick as a bowl.The tree crashed down at the entrance of the cave, and he could clearly see the light of life still shining on the green needle-like leaves of the crown. Groups of fireworks burned in the forest, and the roar of the shells landed one after another.Shangguanfeng suddenly didn't pay attention to them again. He felt that he had more important and urgent things to pay attention to and think about, so he turned his eyes to the bomb crater at the edge of the forest.A stream of green smoke was floating in the crater, and the sun shone obliquely on it, like a translucent veil; in the bushes along the crater, black and red flames burned more and more vigorously, making crackling noises from time to time, In his feeling, it was more terrifying than the sound of shells exploding. "...Where did that soldier go?" The question came to his mind again, "What's his name? Where is he from? Where did he come back from just now?...He's dead." suddenly think of.Death is not blood and flesh flying everywhere, or corpses lying in the grass, but a deep pit outside the forest, leaving nothing behind! Then there was a tenth of a second of blankness in Shangguanfeng's consciousness, and then, a shock came from the depths of his life.He still doesn't understand its meaning, this morning with a clear blue sky, beautiful white clouds, and dazzling sunshine turns into darkness before his eyes!