After breakfast, Zhang Ke, the platoon leader, set off early with the patrolling soldiers. Unlike what I have seen before, the military horses in the alpine plateau are fat and strong, with smooth fur and brocade-like, and their fat buttocks have unique marks. The charger they ride is very long and looks a little thin. The military dog followed for a while and was persuaded by the soldiers to go back. The soldiers said that it was nearly a hundred miles back and forth, and the military dogs could not keep up with their physical strength.
In order to experience patrol, on the first day, I spent an afternoon in the company yard, practicing riding, but I just rode away and dared not let go. Seeing that I was bent on patrolling, the soldiers looked at each other and were silent. After thinking for a long time, I finally came up with a compromise. I sent a jeep from the company to send me, and then I rode in a place where no cars could pass.
Eyes full of snow-capped mountains, ravines and ridges. This is a road, but it is actually just an abandoned sidewalk. The jeep turned around and rampaged in the wild ditch, stopping and stopping, barely running for more than 20 kilometers, unable to move forward.
Zhang Ke let the soldiers ride in front, he led the horse and I followed. I don't know why, soldier Zhang Chunlin's army kept running out, and he was thrown off his horse several times in succession. I walked silently with my mouth open, panting like an ox. "Bang-"Suddenly there was a rumbling sound. I looked up and saw that Zhang Chunlin had quickly stood up from the stone beach and jumped on his horse without saying a word.
When I was resting on the way, I uncovered Zhang Chunlin's clothes and saw several bruises, while Zhang Chunlin, whose lips were black and blue, looked indifferent and seemed to feel no pain. He panted nothing. No one in the company has fallen off a horse dozens of times. When I first learned to ride a horse, my crotch was worn out and my underwear stuck to my flesh and blood. He can't take it off when he comes back from patrol. People who don't know look smart when we ride horses. In fact, after riding for a day, his back ached so much that he couldn't stand it.
"Now, the altitude under our feet is 4320 meters. Can you hold on? " Zhang Ke turned to ask me.
"Nothing, just my heart pounding, my legs like stepping on a cotton pile, soft and soft."
Zhang Ke waved his hand: "Persistence is victory, let's go!"
You can't see the road at all, but you can see the ice and snow. The snow stung my eyes with tears, and the cold wind roared, stabbing my face like a knife. The snow was thick and steep, so they didn't go at once. The soldiers can only trudge to the mountain pass on the snow below their knees. Pants are wet to the thighs, cotton shoes become rain boots, feet first freeze and then slowly become numb. Zhang Ke said that he patrolled here with soldiers last winter and fell into a snow ditch more than 20 meters deep with three soldiers. Fortunately, the snow is thick, otherwise he would be disabled.
As the altitude increased, the pain of lack of oxygen began to attack me. I climbed a few steps and stopped to catch my breath. My heart was pounding and I was flustered and short of breath. Look at the side face, the soldiers are also black and purple, panting with their mouths open. We are like a group of fish out of water.
I know that trekking on the snow-capped mountains above 4000 meters above sea level is equivalent to carrying 30 Jin, and the oxygen content in the air is only half that of the plain. Every step forward is a challenge and test to the limit of life.
Lunch is dried naan, pickled mustard tuber and ham sausage. We sat in the snow, and the boiling water in the thermos was as cold as if it had just been taken out of the refrigerator. It makes us toothache and thirsty, and we are refreshed at ordinary times. At this time, it is like sawdust in our mouth, which is difficult to swallow.
That year, Zhang Ke graduated from the Army Military Academy and entered the border defense company of Pulan, just turning 25. During his three years in the company, he charged more than 100 times on the snowy mountain dangerous road, and how many times he experienced life and death tests with his comrades-in-arms, even he could not remember. Zhang Ke said that today's road is the best of all patrol points in the company. The sky is beautiful, the wind is not strong, the sun is shining, and the weather is rare.
Debris flow, snowstorm and hail are commonplace in patrol. Sometimes, when the sun is shining, I am walking. Suddenly, a large dark cloud floated over, and ice bumps the size of walnuts swept over. There's nowhere to hide, just stick to it. In March of this year, he and his soldiers were caught in a snowstorm while patrolling. The left-behind cadres of the company saw that it had passed the time to return to camp, but they disappeared. They immediately sent troops to search along the road. If the rescue officers and soldiers don't arrive in time, they may become eternal sculptures on the snow-capped mountains.
When he first arrived at the border defense company, as soon as he put down his work, Zhang Ke was anxious to be transferred, but he couldn't save face because he volunteered to go to the border defense company. Later, after many tests of life and death with the soldiers, Zhang Ke's impetuous heart gradually calmed down. In fact, he is younger than some soldiers, but the company soldiers call him Zhang Ge.
When I climbed to the mountain pass at an altitude of 5098 meters, I felt chest tightness and shortness of breath, my legs were weak, and I felt faint at any time. Seen from the telescope, a dozen kilometers west of the mountain pass, the Indian army's Karapani post is clearly visible. Only the silent barracks. Zhang Ke said that the winter environment is hard, and the Indian army will not enter the post until the weather gets warmer and the snow melts next year.
On the way back, my legs were as heavy as lead and I didn't know anything when I walked.
Zhang Ke and the soldiers stumbled back to the company, and it was already dark.
When I woke up, Zhang Ke said that you fainted, and everyone carried you on horseback.
Sorry for the trouble. This sentence turned around in my mind, but I didn't say it. I shook his hand gently. I know my language is pale, and shaking hands may better convey our understanding.
Through the window, you can vaguely see the lights flashing in Pulan County at the foot of the mountain. Lying in bed, the whole body hurts like someone hitting it with a hammer.
The cold wind roared outside the window all night. Altitude sickness and fatigue make me toss and turn, in a daze, sleepless all night.
two
The company's military doctor said that I had a cold and I had to rest in the company and have an intravenous drip for two days. I was dizzy and had to stop my trip obediently.
With intravenous drip, I chatted with Sergeant He Qi and listened to his story about the plateau.
He Qi is a driver and drives a company car. He hasn't come home for six years. On the time scale of the mainland, six years is not a long time, but on the snowy plateau, the river of time is slow and undercurrent, and life will stop breathing at any time.
One winter, He Qi drove a cart to send a soldier with a bad cold from the company to Shiquan River, just in time for the rare snow in the history of Ali area. He looked everywhere and it was covered with snow. Seeing that there was no way out, He Qi could only grope his way forward by memory. At nine o'clock in the evening, the car entered the Menshigou, accidentally plunged into the snow pit, and asked him to do his best, but the car just couldn't be saved. He Qi was in a hurry. The life of the sick soldier in the car is in his own hands. Once he becomes pulmonary edema, he will die immediately. He Qi left cadres with cars to take care of patients and vehicles, picked up a sledgehammer and rushed to the bar machine line 40 kilometers away alone for help.
When crossing Osaka, he slipped and fell into a deep valley, and his face was covered with blood. He encouraged himself over and over again in his mind to get up quickly. If he can't get up, it means that you and your comrades waiting for rescue will be "glorious" on this vast snowy mountain. Stumbling all the way, seeing Barr's yard, he couldn't hold on any longer and fell headlong into the snow. Later, the sick comrade-in-arms was saved, but He Qi lay in the hospital bed for more than half a month and almost lost his life.
Unexpectedly, in April of the following year, He Qi met death again. It's still on this dangerous, undercurrent road, and the car is trapped in the damn glacier.
For three days and nights in a row, He Qi drank the snow water in the river ditch, dug up the grass roots to satisfy his hunger, wrote a suicide note, and pinned his hopes for life on the slim waiting. One night, He Qi heard a noise outside the car. He broke out in a cold sweat when he looked through the glass. Several hungry wolves ran around the car. They searched under the car carefully. He Qi closed the car door and squatted nervously in the car with the iron bar in his hand, lonely, anxious, afraid or ready to kill. He Qi was covered in urine, but he was afraid to open the door. On the fourth afternoon, I finally saw a passing car. He Qi was soft on the snow. The cry is hoarse, anxious, sad, depressed and excited, like an old wolf howling at night.
"Why don't you go to the station for help?" I asked.
"Equipment is the second life of soldiers."
"On this snowy mountain, birds don't even pull shit. Where are people? Besides, the car is still stuck in the glacier, who can get rid of it. " Maybe my words are a little abrupt. He Qi didn't say anything. He bowed his head and sat on the stool, scratching the dead skin on his hand bit by bit.
Before going up the mountain, I thought of an old plateau: the most bitter thing on the plateau is the autobots. They struggled with death all the year round on the line of life and death and survived again and again. Every autobot's experience on the plateau is a legend that ordinary people can't imagine.
The liquid in the infusion bottle is like a stagnant river, slowly and difficultly dripping into my blood vessels. The sky on the plateau is pure and thorough, and time slips by in the bright sunshine. I sat at the door of the consulting room, my eyes wandering gently on He Qi's rough and dark face. His eyes are pure and bright, and they are the eyes of soldiers. There is an irresistible penetration in firm courage. The purple lips are thin and the teeth are as white as snow. The mark left on his face by plateau ultraviolet rays may accompany him for life.
In fact, He Qi has every reason to choose to leave. After serving for two years, he will have the right to bid farewell to this sinister snowy plateau and choose to retire and return to the Jiangnan water town with flowers, misty rain and bridges. Parents also expect him to go home and take on the burden of managing the enterprise. However, he stayed and chose to become a sergeant.
"I didn't expect to be a soldier when I came to the horizon. When I first came, I didn't adapt to the plateau environment. I was so bitter and desperate that I even thought about being a deserter more than once. Two comrades-in-arms who joined the army in the same year as me, one died to save the patrol comrades, and the other died of pulmonary edema. After many life and death tests with veterans, I also understood my inner choice of life. There are some things that you will never understand if you have not experienced them. " He Qi's tone is calm and his language is slow, as if he were telling a yellowed past. It looks pure and calm.
The steel blue sky makes the white snow mountain more dazzling. I remembered a sentence from Shen Congwen: A soldier will return to his hometown before he dies on the battlefield.
"Dreamland, you stand in front of me, blocking my whereabouts. How confusing it sounds to dream, but I don't hesitate. " An old song of an old singer, like a gust of wind, suddenly roared at me from the other side that had just visited.
It was sunny, and we sat in front of the clinic and talked all morning. I believe that He Qi's experiences that others can never have will gradually expand the depth and breadth of his life inward and outward in time. After many years, the life in the plateau frontier will quietly exude the quality and taste of life on him.
Because of the warm and pure sunshine on the plateau, the things carved on the vast snow-capped mountains will also be in his heart.
three
It's not far from Zada County to Pakistan Border Company, only over 90 kilometers. Unexpectedly, the car bumped on the road all day.
The dry ditch is well-deserved, full of stones, the car is dancing, and the internal organs are bursting. But the pain doesn't stop there. Car water tanks often boil. After running for a few kilometers, you need to stop to "cool down" and wait for the temperature of the water tank to drop before moving on. The vast snow-capped mountains are full of suspense and mutation, and anything can happen. What if a pack of wolves are killed in the valley? We trudged through fear and anxiety. Very not easy out of the deep ditch, a lift eye, more than 4700 meters above sea level in Malanda Sakamoto.
The driver Song said, "Sit tight. If you have anything, jump out of the car and take action. " I really feel the fear. The car climbed slowly to the big board, and I was in a cold sweat in fear. My cotton-padded coat is very cold and my teeth are frozen. When I saw Li Xiangping, the company commander of the dam border defense, and the soldiers carrying tractors and guns coming towards us, my eyes suddenly burned and I felt a strong impulse to cry.
It's no coincidence that Li Lianchang picked us up. On the way, he told me that this road is dangerous and deep, and it is the most prone to accidents. Late at night on August 26 last year, he suddenly received a phone call from the Armed Forces Department, saying that a vehicle was trapped in Zadagou, and the company immediately sent someone to rescue it, and the people and vehicles he didn't want to send also lost news. Li Lianchang faintly felt bad, and quickly sneaked into the night with several soldiers in the rain. When they stumbled all the way to dawn, the scene in front of them made his mind "hum" with a loud noise: heavy rain poured down, flash floods more than 30 meters wide flooded the whole valley, and rocks the size of cars were swept away by the flood. Three freight trucks were looming in the river ditch. The driver lay prone on the hillside and watched the car being swept away by the flood, but there was nothing he could do.
In March of this year, Yang Mingchun, political commissar of the Armed Forces Department, went to the company to squat, also in Zadagou. The car broke down on the road, the fuel consumption was finished, and it was dark and snowy. Li Lianchang drove to save people. It's snowing and windy, so he can't see the road clearly. When he dismounted from Landaban, he took out his backpack belt, tied himself at one end and the car at the other, and took a stick to explore the road ahead, with a deep ditch at his feet. The car followed him down the hill bit by bit, and Li Lianchang slipped to the cliff twice, both of which were saved by backpacks.
Li Xiangping said, "According to your departure time in the morning, you should have arrived early. I figured the road might be uneven, so I rushed over. " Outside the window, on the other side of the snowy mountain, the sun, like a huge red fireball, is rapidly slipping behind the mountain.
The next morning, I squatted in front of the company to gargle. Li Xiangping pointed to a purple sapling with chopsticks in the yard and said, "In the past five years, the soldiers have been as careful about these treasures as planting flowers. They have grown so big, and they are still so big. Life and death are not long. "
After breakfast, I want to chat with the soldiers of the company. As soon as I sat down, several Tibetan compatriots came to ask Li Lianchang for help, saying that a Tibetan boy fell off a cliff and broke his leg, hoping that the company could drive him to Zada County Hospital at the foot of the mountain. The military doctor Yuan Boping immediately set off by car.
There are more than a dozen Tibetan herders living around the company. This is not a small village in the sparsely populated Ali Plateau. The company and the resident Tibetan herdsmen help each other and guard the border. Herdsmen are short of medical care and medicine, and they are willing to find company officers and soldiers in case of major disasters and minor illnesses. The company always tries its best to help.
Before leaving, Li Xiangping held my hand tightly and said, "Come again when you are free!" His dark red face is full of vicissitudes. My heart is so tense that I can't say a word. I thought you and the soldiers were stationed in the "forbidden zone of life" all the year round. Not everyone can come if they want to, and not everyone's body can stand the test of hypoxia, danger and uncertainty. Is there any chance for me to come again?
four
Bolin Frontier Defense Company is located in the mountain nest, with an altitude of 4,620 meters, which is not high on the Ali Plateau, but the altitude reaction is fierce. Less than half an hour after arriving at the company, my head began to swell, like someone hitting it with a hammer. I put the backpack strap on my head as the soldier taught me, but it was useless. Maybe it's just a kind of psychotherapy.
After dinner, Li Shenghu and I slowly climbed a hillside next to the company and sat and chatted in the cold wind.
When Li Shenghu graduated from Lanzhou Medical College, he could have been assigned to Xi 'an, but he was full of passion and volunteered to go to Ali to do border defense work. The school rewarded him with more than 10 thousand yuan of medical equipment, but he was afraid it was not enough. He took out the 3000 yuan accumulated at school and added two small things to Dashan. During more than two years working in Pauline, he wrote 16 diaries. Lack of oxygen at high altitude and poor memory, he recorded his life at high altitude with pages of words.
Two months after his son was born, he received a telegram. He was so happy that he couldn't sleep for several nights and wrote one letter after another under the lamp. He said that he wanted to call his wife Fan Jinling to say hello, but the snow closed the mountain and he couldn't send the letter. The phone had to be dialed to the county town hundreds of kilometers away, and the road was blocked by heavy snow. There is nothing he can do.
When the mountain started in August of the following year, Li Shenghu went down to Zada County on business. After finishing the company, Li Shenghu wants to call his wife and son. He wants to hear his son's voice, and he also wants to talk to his wife in private.
There are only three long-distance telephones in the county. He held the telephone for two hours. Finally, the phone was dialed. The wife on the other end of the phone is holding her eight-month-old son, and Li Shenghu is at the head of the snowy mountain in the distance. The couple teased their son at both ends of the telephone line across Qianshan, but the son just kept silent. In order to let the husband far away from the border hear his son's voice, the wife slapped his son and his son cried. Listening to the cry of the son on the other end of the phone, Li Shenghu was sour with the receiver, tears welled up in his eyes, and he was too guilty to say a word.
Li Shenghu named his son Li, and took the word "Bo" specially, saying that he was working in Bolin Border Defense Company when his son was born, and he was unable to take care of him, so he owed them a debt of gratitude. Li Shenghu wrote this in his diary, hoping that his son would understand him when he grew up.
It was not until his son was over one year old that Li Shenghu returned to his hometown. At first, the child cried as soon as he saw him. Gradually getting acquainted with his son, his son will call him dad with a smile, and Li Shenghu's holiday is also very fulfilling.
After a long silence, Li Shenghu looked at the snow-capped mountains in the distance and said, "Now my son is two and a half years old. We have only lived together for six months, and we went on holiday this summer. I don't know if the little guy will remember me. "
Li Shenghu is busy with his work while reviewing the postgraduate courses. He said that the border defense environment is difficult and there is a lack of medical care and medicine. Company officers and soldiers and Tibetan compatriots need themselves. If they can pass the exam, they want to come back after graduation.
Bubu, a Tibetan soldier, is the shepherd of the company. Last winter, the sun was about to set, and the cloth layer was driving the sheep back. Unexpectedly, I met two wolves on the road and followed him and the sheep closely. Knowing that the wolf was afraid of fire, Cloth Layer took off his clothes in the cold of more than 30 degrees below zero, lit it, and threw the burning fireball all all the way, driving the sheep back. Back to the company, the cloth layer was stripped to the trouser leg, and people were freezing to death.
I listened to Li Shenghu telling the story of the cloth layer and stared at the soldiers in the camp at the foot of the slope. Li Shenghu suddenly fell silent, and I was still waiting for him to continue. A face, found his eyes full of tears.
I dare not ask again. I looked up at the sky, and I couldn't see a cloud in it. Blue is empty, boundless and lonely, and we sit quietly in the wind. Listen to the wind through time. There are no traces of green and black mountains around. Surrounded, undulating, towering into the sky.
Company officers and men insisted that I stay one more day. I'd like to, but I have a headache, chest tightness and want to vomit. I wish I were dead, so I had to run away.
The car has climbed halfway up the mountain. I turned around and saw the officers and men of the company still standing in the yard waving.
five
Lei Deqiang from platoon leader to company commander, like a nail, stuck in Zhaxigang for six years.
Zhaxigang, which means auspicious mountain in Tibetan, is located on the tuyere. The soldiers, like the accountant, pinched their fingers and calculated it for me, saying that there is less than one month in a year when there is no wind.
A few days ago, three soldiers of the company went to the training ground with a board. There was a strong wind on the road, and the board was rolled into the sky and flew in the air like a kite. The witty soldier fell to the ground and ran away.
Coincidentally, when I arrived, Lei Deqiang had just returned to the company from his hometown to visit relatives. Along the way, he worked tirelessly and waded through mountains and rivers, wrapping more than 30 strawberry seedlings with cotton-padded clothes from Shaanxi thousands of kilometers away. When the soldiers saw a pile of green Xin Wei brought back by the company commander, they shouted with joy all over the yard that they could eat strawberries this year. Lei Lianchang, who is tired of traveling by boat, is too busy to take the soldiers to the greenhouse for planting.
On the windowsill of the dormitory, there are flowers planted by officers and men in wooden boxes and iron drums. It's a flower, but it's actually just a few pots of green plants, such as holly, and I can't name them. There are two pots that are very eye-catching and sad. One pot is garlic seedlings, and the other pot is planted with a Chinese cabbage. These are carefully cared for by the soldiers as flowers.
Even sparrows can't live on the plateau. It is a miracle that soldiers can feed so many green plants. A soldier told me that every summer, the company will hold a flower planting competition.
The officers and men were filled with joy, and my heart was a little heavy, as if something was pulling my heart.
Instructor Wang Baohua said, "There are snow-capped mountains all around. In the past, soldiers had to wait until they went down the mountain to see flowers and plants. In the past two years, Lian Li has mobilized everyone's wisdom, planted flowers and grass, went down the mountain for business trips, and visited relatives for vacation. You bring a flower root, and he takes a handful of flower seeds and slowly raises so many. "
In the past, the company's vegetables came from Lhasa and Yecheng, Xinjiang, thousands of kilometers away. The car had to run on the road for three or four days. When the vegetables are delivered to the company, they are yellow, dry and rotten, and not everyone can eat them. One winter, the snow closed the mountain, and ten Chinese cabbages were cooked with vermicelli and salt for three months.
Since flowers can feed, they can certainly grow into vegetables. The soldiers dug stones and filled the soil at the lee of the foot of the mountain to make a plastic shed. Fire a firewall to keep the greenhouse warm in winter. When vegetable seedlings survive the long winter, in summer and autumn, you can eat some fresh vegetables you grow.
I followed Lei Lianchang around the greenhouse, only to see two beds of Chinese cabbage and a bed of carrots, with leaves just sticking out from the ground, thin and weak. Lei Lianchang said with a smile: "There are cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers, all of which have been planted. It's too cold on the mountain to raise the temperature. It takes a while to grow up. "
There is no spring and autumn on the snowy mountain, only winter and summer, and cotton-padded clothes are worn all year round. Now, the season is early summer When can those vegetables in the greenhouse be eaten as vegetables?
On the way back, I kept thinking about Lei Lianchang's strawberry seedlings in my mind, hoping that they could bear some sweet and sour strawberries on the snowy mountain. When the soldiers tasted strawberries on the snow-capped mountains, it was early autumn in the mainland.