Chapter 2 1. The 723 Project of that year

My geological exploration career has lasted for twenty years, and I have experienced hundreds of life-threatening situations, but in my early memory, the most deadly thing is not the torrent of the sky, but the unspeakable dull.For a long time, when I saw the endless mountains and jungles, I would feel suffocated, thinking that I would have to walk through them for more than ten years. That kind of pain is really painful for people who have not experienced it personally. incomprehensible. But this feeling disappeared without a trace after the incident after 1962.Because after that incident, I know that there are actually many mysterious things hidden in this boring mountain, and some of them cannot be understood even if you exhaust your brain's imagination.At the same time, I also understand that the words of the older generation of exploration team members who are in awe of the mountains are not alarmist.

The cause of the 1962 incident may be known to many old comrades doing exploration work. If young readers have parents who are engaged in exploration work, they can also ask.At that time, there was a very famous geological project called the Inner Mongolia 723 Project. It was the general name of the exploration troops who were looking for coal mines in the mountains of Inner Mongolia. In the project, three exploration teams successively entered the primitive jungle of Inner Mongolia to carry out block-type exploration. exploration.Two months after the exploration work began, the 723 project suddenly stopped.At the same time, the engineering headquarters began to second the technicians of other exploration teams. For a while, basically all the technical backbones of the exploration teams in various places were thoroughly investigated, those who wrote forms wrote forms, and those who adjusted files transferred files. No one knows who took those forms and files in the end.

In the end, a group of exploration technicians were indeed selected and seconded to the 723 Geological Engineering Brigade. At that time, there was a lot of trouble, and many people rumored that 723 had dug up something remarkable in Inner Mongolia. As for what was dug up, there were more than a dozen versions, and no one could say for sure.People outside of the 1962 incident often understood it and ended it here. As the "Cultural Revolution" worsened, no one paid any attention to it.Those technicians who were sent into the mountains by trucks were quickly forgotten. At that time, I was among these forgotten geological engineering technicians.According to my later understanding, 723 selected a total of 24 people. We all departed from the geological survey team we were working at that time according to the order of the military region, and assembled in Jiamusi by train, and a small number went directly to Qiqihar.In those two places, they were directly loaded into military vehicles and drove unsteadily from Heilongjiang to Inner Mongolia.In the early days, the military vehicles were still driving on the road, but later they drove more and more sideways. In the last few days, almost all of the journey was spent on the winding mountain road.Before I went, I didn't know what happened there at all, but after listening to the words of the fellow travelers along the way, I also felt that what happened in the mountains might indeed be abnormal.

However, our speculation at that time was still at the industry level. Most people thought that a large oil field might have been discovered, and some old comrades who participated in the exploration of Daqing Oilfield even said it vividly, saying that it was the same when the Daqing Oilfield was discovered. In the current situation, the exploration team discovered an oil and gas field, and they are also national deployment experts. After several months of discussion and verification, the existence of the Daqing Oilfield was confirmed. This kind of statement makes us feel a sense of pride in being selected while we are puzzled.

When the truck transported us to the headquarters of the 723 Geological Engineering Brigade, we immediately realized that things were not as simple as we thought.When we got out of the car, the first thing we saw was the continuous military field tents in the valley, big and small, like countless graves, not like an engineering brigade at all, but like a field army garrison.The camp was very busy, and the people coming and going were all army engineers. We were dumbfounded, thinking that the higher ups were crazy and decided to attack the Soviet Union. It was later discovered that those tents were not all marching tents, but most of them were actually cargo tents. A few veterans secretly lifted up the tents and took a look, and came back and told us that they were all equipment imported from the Soviet Union. Russian, can't understand what it is.

At that time, our exploration equipment was extremely backward. The exploration methods we used were not much different from those when we were first liberated. The country only had a small amount of "modern equipment", most of which were bought from the Soviet Union at extremely high prices. .Like our basic technical soldiers, we have never had a chance to see it. The problem is that at that time, this kind of equipment was used for the exploration of deep-buried ore deposits, and the exploration depth was 1,000 to 1,500 meters. With the national strength at that time, it was impossible to develop such deep-buried ore deposits. , It also needs five to seven years of infrastructure construction before it can be put into production, which belongs to the fact that it cannot quench the thirst of the near.Therefore, for the discovery of such deposits, the country's policy has always been to keep them sealed and not to conduct further exploration, leaving them for future generations.Our maximum exploration depth at that time was only about 500 meters.

There is such a device here, which makes us feel puzzled and have a strange feeling in our hearts. There was no explanation for that night, and the few people we came with were arranged in several tents, probably three people per tent.The nights in the mountains were terribly cold, and there was no way to sleep with the stove in the tent. The orderly who added firewood opened the tent in the middle of the night, and the cold wind swished in. When people fell asleep, they would be awakened by the freezing, and they would simply open their eyes to see the dawn. The two people in the tent with me, one is a bit older, born in the late twenties, from Inner Mongolia, seems to be a little famous person, they call him Laomao, his real name seems to be Mao Wuyue, I said this name Well, it has the same surname as Chairman Mao.The other one was about my age, big and round, with chestnut flesh all over his body. He was Mongolian. His name was Wang Sichuan. He was as black as coal. Everyone called him Xiongzi. He was from Heilongjiang.

Lao Mao has the oldest qualifications and doesn't talk much. Xiong Zi and I chattered, while he smoked and smiled at us, and didn't express his opinion. I don't know what he was thinking about. Xiongzi is a typical northerner, with enthusiasm and passion, and we soon became brothers.He told me that his grandfather's generation had already intermarried with the Han people, and the family went to the customs through the west entrance to work as horse dealers.When the Anti-Japanese War broke out, his father joined the logistics unit of the North China Field Army and raised horses for Luo Ruiqing. After liberation, he returned to his hometown in Heilongjiang and worked as a mine manager in a coal mine.

He joined the exploration team because of this relationship, but the process was not smooth.At that time, the country's basic industrial construction needed energy, and coal mines were the top priority. His father spent the rest of his life rolling in coal piles. Occasionally, when he went home, he opened his mouth and shut up. , his mother often quarreled with his father about this matter, so he had a strong aversion to coal since he was a child.Later, when the work was assigned, his father wanted him to join the coal system, but he firmly refused.At that time, his dream was to be an auto soldier, but later he found out that the auto soldier was in another system and could not enter. In the end, he was unemployed at home for half a year and had to compromise with his father.But he put forward a condition at that time, hoping to find a job in the coal mine with the least contact with coal, so he joined the mine's exploration team, but he did not expect to do well. Later, he was recommended to go to university because of the minority policy. here.

It sounds funny to me, it is indeed the case, although we are the source of the mining industry, but we really do not have many opportunities to come into contact with ore deposits. In terms of probability, it is true that we have the lowest probability of encountering coal mines. After he finished speaking, he asked about my family's situation. My family status is not very good, which was not an honorable thing at the time, so I roughly told him that he was an ordinary farmer. In fact, my grandparents were indeed farmers. My ancestors were from Hongdong, Shanxi. My grandpa’s grandparents were poor peasants, but it is said that my grandpa was a bandit for a while, and had a bit of a family business. During the land reform, he was reported and became a Reactionary rich peasants.My grandfather is a dead-tempered person, so he ran away with my grandma, father, and second uncle. After arriving in the south, he asked my father to recognize a monk as his second uncle. Following the monk, he determined the identity of my father and my second uncle. poor peasants.So speaking of my identity as a poor peasant, but my grandfather was a reactionary, this matter was considered a big or small thing at the time.

After talking about the background, we talked about the local customs and customs, and what happened here. We have one south and one north, one Mongolia and one Han. There are too many things to talk about. Fortunately, we are all people who have suffered, so staying up all night is nothing , the first night passed quickly. The next day, the battalion headquarters sent someone to receive us, saying that they would take us to understand the situation. I don't have a deep impression of that person, it seems that his name is Rong Aiguo, and his age is between 30 and 40 years old (exploration, the wind and rain, generally look old, so I can't tell the difference).This person is a bit mysterious.It's boring to show us around, and he doesn't answer any questions he asks. From his mouth, we only heard some basic information. For example, 723 was actually a project that started three years ago, but it didn’t start until this year due to staff deployment. Others are where the cafeteria is. Life problems like how to go to the toilet. In the next month, things didn't make any progress. We stayed in the camp with nothing to do, and no one came to pay attention to us. It was really inexplicable. The veterans couldn't bear it later, and went to Rong Aiguo several times at our instigation. But it was prevaricated by various reasons. At this time, we have already seriously felt the particularity of the matter, and everyone is panic-stricken. Some people even speculate whether we have committed something and are going to be executed in secret?There are many model dramas of this kind of thing, and we can only feel shivering when we hear the rumors. Of course it's more of meaningless guesses.Autumn in Inner Mongolia is already bitterly cold. It is difficult for people from the south to adapt. Many people suffered from nosebleeds. In my memory, we were sitting on the stove that month, chatting with cornbread and wiping it with old socks. Got a nosebleed. A month later, things finally changed. On a Wednesday morning, we were stuffed into the truck again in a daze, and we continued to drive towards the mountains with two other trucks of engineers. At this time, my mood has changed from excitement and doubt at the beginning to panic. Through the tarpaulin of the People's Liberation Army vehicle, I can see the continuous mountains and virgin forest outside the temporary plank road, and then look at the engineers in the vehicle. With an expressionless face, the atmosphere became very stiff.No one spoke, and everyone leaned quietly in the car, waiting for the end of this journey with the bumps of the car.