Chapter 2 A dream come true

I remember when I was a child, I heard some old people who didn't know the inside story say: Chairman Mao worked on the Tiananmen Gate.From then on, a dream of standing guard for Chairman Mao in front of Tiananmen Square sprouted in my young heart.Later, the dream seemed to be connected with my ideal.The scenes of Tiananmen in the movies once made my blood boil, and the majestic appearance of Tiananmen in the traditional Chinese paintings once made me full of thoughts and excitement.When I followed this dream and became a 19-year-old man, the empathetic old man of history probably saw through the secrets in my heart and gave me a chance to make my dream come true.

One morning at the end of 1970, at Handan Railway Station, the sound of gongs and drums was loud, and the local party, government and military leaders were sending off more than 200 recruits who had joined the army.The fathers and folks who spoke a strong local accent said goodbye to their relatives in tears.The love between father and son, mother and child, and brother and sister who live together day and night will soon be pulled away with the rotation of the wheel. Suddenly, people's innumerable emotions have become exhortations with thousands of words, wrapped in a festive atmosphere. It was a little tragic, and the cold air was a little hot.Under the command of the comrades leading the troops to enter the station, our pure green team, which did not wear the red five-star red collar badge, waved goodbye to the tearful parents.It's really love Yiyi, don't Yiyi.

With a long whistle, I bid farewell to these new comrades-in-arms and this hot land in southern Hebei where we were born and raised. The stuffy tank car was like a black dragon, spitting fog and taking off on the North China Plain. It didn't take long for everyone to forget the parting scene just now amidst the rattling of the wheels and the rails, immersed in laughter .The first hot topic in the car was to tell about his extraordinary experience of being selected into the "Royal Forest Army" after passing five trials and beating six generals.It is said that this is the first time that the Beijing Garrison came to Handan to recruit troops.Conscription is strictly selected according to the special forces, and each commune only selects 2-3 people, and the most are selected 6-7 people, which is really rare.There are three main conditions: First, they must be politically clean and reliable. They should stand guard for Chairman Mao and the Party Central Committee.Second is physical appearance.Not only requires good physical fitness, tall and well-proportioned stature, but also handsome facial features and military temperament.Again, the education level should be above junior high school.In the era when politics was in command, those of us passionate young people from the countryside have been screened and selected to become members of the Beijing security forces. Not only are we proud of ourselves, but it is also an honor for our family and even the whole village.The eyes of all the young people in the car were full of excitement, confidence, and longing for the future.

In the evening, we arrived at Fengtai Station.When I got off the bus, I was taken to Beijing Institute of Chemical Technology in a limousine by the leader of a department in the Beijing Garrison who had been waiting for a long time.At that time, all the students went to the mountains and went to the countryside, so the army temporarily borrowed the college as a training base for recruits. During the more than one month of recruit company training, we mainly received strict queue and pace training to cultivate a good military posture.The long-term "three stares and one stare" on the playground often made our eyes stare at gold stars, and our hands, nose and face were purple and red from the biting cold wind.The endless goose-stepping exercises left some recruits with sore legs that made it difficult to get into bed.I remember that what frightened us recruits the most was the emergency assembly at night.While sleeping soundly, suddenly, the sound of an emergency assembly horn pierced the silent night sky.Everyone jumped out of bed and fumbled in the dark to pack their backpacks.After running a few laps on the playground, I saw everyone's backpacks were really varied: some were reversed, some were tied wrongly, and some were as loose as bread.Hard work pays off. After more than a month of hard training, the basic qualities of soldiers have begun to emerge.Sit like a bell, stand like a pine, move like lightning, and move like the wind.Huhu, who fully demonstrated the new force of the soldiers in the garrison, was angry.

One morning when our recruit training life was coming to an end, all the recruits were ordered to gather on the playground to be selected by the guard of honor battalion.The guard of honor battalion is a battalion directly under a certain security division, that is, the guard of honor of the army, navy and air force.The main task is to go to the capital airport and other welcome occasions to accept the review by foreign heads of state and government heads on behalf of the army, navy and air force.The Guard of Honor Battalion generally does not go to other places to recruit troops. Its source of troops is mainly to select those handsome boys who are taller and more handsome from among the recruits of our division.Therefore, being a guard of honor is undoubtedly attractive and tempting to us.We all held our heads high, arranged in a neat square formation with companies as units, and waited quietly for selection.All the majestic guards of honor have blazing eyes, personable manners, and extraordinary military aspirations in every gesture, showing the demeanor of the Chinese military spirit and full of the masculine beauty of Chinese soldiers.They looked at everyone one by one, and if they found that they were qualified, they would let them take a step forward and be regarded as being selected.The two guards of honor walked around me, as if they wanted to choose me, but they whispered a few words, maybe it was because my height of 1.75 meters was not up to the height they required, or something else For some reason, it was still not selected in the end.Although I was not selected as a guard of honor this time, I was not discouraged, because my greatest wish was to be a guard soldier in front of Tiananmen Square.

After recruit life was over, I was assigned to the company. At the time, it was a mobile company and was not on duty.Quanlian had just returned from camping and was temporarily staying at the Central Political and Legal Cadre School adjacent to the Central People's Broadcasting Station.I heard from the old comrades in the company that our company used to be on duty in front of Tiananmen Square.Lin Biao, the deputy commander-in-chief and minister of national defense, proposed in 1969 that the troops should engage in camping and training, and that the roll call should start from the Beijing garrison area. Therefore, the company handed over the duty point to the brother company in 1970, and began a very arduous long-distance camping and training. Temporarily become a non-duty company.Without on-duty tasks, of course, daily military training is inseparable.In this way, those of us recruits assigned to this company feel very uncomfortable when we see recruits assigned to other companies either standing guard in important state organs or in the office of the head of the central government.In response to this situation, the company started a glorious history education, the main purpose of which is to educate recruits to love the company.A series of exquisite pictures show that the predecessor of this unit was the Central Guard Corps of the Communist Party of China, which was the unit where Zhang Side was commended by Chairman Mao in his lifetime.After the liberation of the whole country, the army was changed to the Capital Guard Division, and then the Beijing Garrison was established on this basis, and became an important security force in the garrison.As the division, this company has made great contributions in guarding the party and important national leaders and defending important places of the country, whether in the anti-special struggle in the early days of liberation or in the period of peace construction, and some even fought with enemy special forces. He sacrificed his young life in the struggle.Education works, it makes us fall in love with this proud company.Of course, it is still my wish to stand guard in front of Tiananmen Square.

One day in late May 1971, we suddenly received an order from our superiors, and our entire company went to Tiananmen Square to pick up our duties.At that time, we couldn't mention how happy we were, and we rushed to tell each other.Especially those of us new fighters who have never been on duty, we are even more happy.That night, I tossed and turned and couldn't sleep. The dream of many years finally came true, and the excitement that is as good as anyone's wish is really indescribable.The next morning, facing the rising sun, we marched into the most sacred place in the motherland——Tiananmen Square.On this day, the leader of the company decided to transfer me to the company headquarters as a correspondent, and I happily accepted the task.At that time, the duty points of the whole battalion were distributed in the surrounding area centered on Tiananmen Square.Our company headquarters is located on the second floor of the Little Red Building in the southeast corner of Tiananmen Square, and the third floor is the battalion headquarters.From the windows of our dormitory, you can have a panoramic view of Tiananmen Square, the Great Hall of the People, the Museum of Chinese Revolutionary History, the Monument to the People's Heroes, the national flag of the Republic and the wide square.The main duty points of our company are: the Museum of Chinese Revolutionary History, the mobile post in the square, the post of the statues of Ma and Enwei, the mobile post on Chang'an Street, the post of Zhengyangmen and the People's Bank of China, the post of the Supreme People's Court and the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau And so on, and later added the peripheral post of Chairman Mao Memorial Hall.These posts are distributed in and around Tiananmen Square.Since then, I have lived and fought in Tiananmen Square, which is attracting the attention of the world, and my dream has come true.