Wang was one of those who witnessed the moment the Yangtze River dike broke in Jiujiang in 1998.
At 13:00 on August 7, 1998, when the dike broke between gate 4 and gate 5 in the Jiujiang section of the Yangtze River, more than 80 people from Wang’s company – the only company in the broken section at the time – extended the time for the river to flood into the city by nearly 20 minutes.
1
The former artillery regiment’s professional aimer, A Wang, is 40 years old, with a sturdy body and a simple appearance. He talks little in person and much on WeChat.
In the past 18 years, his weight has risen steadily from 60 kg to 90 kg, and new flesh has grown on the knuckles of his left middle finger and gone into good skin, fading into spots. From the time I met him, his circle of friends had only two themes: running and roasting vegetables.
After running, he would write poems, such as.
The stars are invisible.
Yet I feel their presence.
Because you and I.
are so close.
In the distance, on the calm river
Once held your shadows.
……
On July 5, 2016, Wang first sent “old troops, this year’s flood control” in his circle of friends.
On July 6, he forwarded the news link “Jiangxi is now broken, flood warning to the highest level”, commenting that “this year’s situation is like 98 years scenario again”, and then posted news pictures, respectively, “Anhui Anqing, cheer” and “front-line news, Wuhan hold on”.
On July 7, his circle of friends four states a day are about the flood control and the current flood control. This state has continued until now, two weeks later.
Wang was one of those who witnessed the moment the Yangtze River dike broke in Jiujiang in 1998.
2
In 1994, after graduating from technical school, Wang was assigned to Shanghai Third Machine Tool Machinery Factory as an intern. According to the Military Service Law at that time, all young people of military age had to go for a medical examination, and if they passed, they were issued a military service certificate, so they could go if they wanted to be a soldier. The third machine tool machinery factory has always had a tradition of internship workers to become soldiers, this time also facing the conversion, can reduce a is a – but Wang is quite willing to go to the military, can go outside to see.
At the end of that year, Wang became one of the two factory soldiers. When he boarded the train, the Jinhua officer who had been recruiting soldiers at the factory quietly told Wang to follow him and sit with him.
There were a lot of soldiers from Shanghai, land, sea and air, dazzling, the air force wore blue pants and green clothes, the navy wore blue clothes, the army wore green clothes. The train did not go fast, almost stopping at stations, Wuxi, Xiaoshan, Jinhua, at each stop a few officers came up, from the hands of the officer in charge of sending soldiers on board, pulled out a few file folders, roll call, point to all follow him off the train. In this way, each stop down a group of soldiers.
And Wang a factory out of another soldier also in the train, but sitting in which carriage, when to go down, where to go, he did not know, and never saw him again.
In the latter part of the night, the car arrived at Jinhua and the point arrived at Awang.
It was foggy, and the recruits got off the train, crossed the platform, and followed the roll-call officer to a playground where nothing could be seen around them. Suddenly, out of the fog, a large group of people ran out to help them carry their bags with smiles – it turned out to be veterans who had come to pick them up.
A few years later, when Wang became a squad leader, he also went to pick up soldiers on such a foggy night.
Wang joined the anti-tank company of the 83024th Chinese Workers Brigade Artillery Regiment, which was part of the Third Division of the First Army Group, and its predecessor could be traced back to the Second Red Army Corps of the Chinese Workers and Peasants, founded by He Long in 1930 in Xiang-Exi.
What is most dear to Wang is that the inscription for the “Chinese Workers’ Brigade” was made by Wang Zhen, the old leader of the First Agricultural Division of the Xinjiang Corps, to which his parents had contributed their youth. The army headquarters in Huzhou, the First Army Group, the main sources of recruitment are Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Shanghai. The least number of Shanghai soldiers, the year A Wang became a soldier, a company of more than 100 people, only four Shanghai soldiers.
The main subjects were running, rifle, tactics and the famous “quilt folding”, which was very intense. When the Shanghai soldiers first joined the army, they were in a very bad shape, and their physical quality was obviously different from others. Whenever running training, four Shanghai soldiers always took the last four places.
Three months later, the company began to engage in professional, the advantages of urban soldiers began to emerge, especially Wang. He learned turning and pincer at the technical school, and came with a skill set, so he was directly assigned to the artillery company and was trained as a professional aimer.
The aimer needs to know every position and is usually the squad leader or deputy squad leader. A squad of seven people, respectively, the aimer, the loader, the driver, the first gunner, the second gunner and so on.
The first thing you need to do is to take a look at the paper, and then open it up, flatten it out, and hand it to me.
The “Launch Position Record Sheet” that Awang showed me (Photo by the author) The “Launch Position Record Sheet” that Awang showed me (Photo by the author)
This is a “Launch Position Record Sheet”. “When aiming hand, it is to use the function, will calculate, will judge.” The paper was a little damp from the thunderstorm that Wang encountered when he rushed to see me. Awang was distressed that it was a souvenir he had smuggled out when he was discharged from the army. “It’s a good thing there are still a few at home.”
We sat in the store on a weekend night, surrounded by people, the rain outside the window, and the waiter came over and put a warm candle flame.
“It’s like that ’98 movie all over again.” He picked up the two photos he had just shaken off and examined them by candlelight.
It was taken around August 10, 1998, when Wang was at the scene of a flood fight in the Jiujiang River breakwater. The place where he was standing was a coal ship, which was requisitioned by the army on the Yangtze River, and the red flag in the photo was also a ship, the officers and soldiers were using steel through the hull, so that it played the role of intercepting the flood.
A million-dollar flood control transfer
3
Jinhua’s geography is like the bottom of a pot, with mountains on all sides and reservoirs on the hills.
The mountain where the famous Shuanglong Cave is located is where Awang trained in the field, and every few days of the year, the officers and soldiers had to go up the mountain to repair the road. It was typical of the hills of western Zhejiang, the mountains did not look high, but it was difficult to walk, not to mention the construction. But now that I think about it, all that remains in Wang’s mind is the stunning scenery.
“Compared to when I was a soldier, my life after the military was relatively more uneventful,” said Wang, now a property manager of a large art museum. The young experience of the years a wash, filtered out the fatigue and danger, but the rest of the stimulating bravado. For example, in the exercise, was sent to dig dumb gun, if not in the designated time to complete the task, will be on the exercise of the other side of the gunfire. Another example is the night training when you steal fishing, baking shrimp, catching rabbits.
It is not uncommon for soldiers to be sent to fight floods or to be pulled for construction in July and August every year. In his first year as a recruit, Wang went with the team to reinforce the “Fuzhou (Hangzhou) Guiyang (Chengdu) fiber optic cable communication project”; the next year, Wenzhou Yueqing flooded, but the scale was not large and did not require so many people to fight, only a part of the soldiers were deployed, Wang was not among them.
In July 1998, the troops went into She County, Anhui Province, still reinforcing the four places fiber optic cable communication project, still digging ditches and blasting: first make a hole, put a piece of bread-sized explosives into it, load detonators, drag two lines out, and then the 5 squad leader Wang is responsible for loading explosive packages.
On a rainy day, Wang led the 5th shift to work in a small river – to cut off the flow of the river, and then buried the line in the riverbed – Wang lifted a heavy stone to hold the cable down, but at that moment his left hand did not pull back in time. After a sharp pain, A Wang pulled out the palm, pale white finger bones, tendons, visible in the flesh turned over, the blood seems to wait a while before trying to gush out. Later, with his palm wrapped in gauze, Wang was sent to the cooking class, sending water and picking vegetables, mainly to recuperate from his injuries.
Soon after that, one night, just after lights out not ten minutes, everyone had gone to bed, suddenly the alarm was raised, all emergency assembly. Generally speaking, when the troops are working outside in July and August, they rarely blow the whistle of emergency assembly, once they blow up, either to put out the fire, or to help the local public security into the mountains to catch fugitives.
The officer conveyed the superior instruction: tonight the next two hours as preparation time, handing over the work, the project is not engaged, all people have to take the truck on the road overnight, a shift a, to Jiangxi Rui Chang to fight the flood.
Until he got on the truck, Wang was dumbfounded.
Songhua River, Yangtze River, Pearl River, several major water systems have released the flood news, but Wang and his comrades did not think that they would be in such an unprepared situation to go to the front line of the flood, some of them are not even good at swimming.
Only later did they learn that the number of troops deployed to fight the floods in 1998 was a million, and in the history of the country, the only one comparable to that was the resistance to the United States.
She County and Ruichang are about 400 kilometers apart. At this time, the company’s convoy had driven more than 100 kilometers to the vicinity of Kaihua (a county under the jurisdiction of Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province), and while eating and relieving themselves, the order came again – do not go to Ruichang, it has been flooded (A Wang clearly remembers that the original words conveyed were “has been lost”) ), go directly to another place, the name of the place can not remember exactly, only know is near Jiujiang.
Just half an hour after getting on the bus, the order came again: that place has also been “lost”, go to Jiujiang instead.
At that time, the water level of the Jiujiang River had exceeded the warning line by one or two meters, but not many troops arrived to fight the floods in the Jiujiang River, and Wang’s unit was one of the first to arrive.
These military trucks into Jiujiang and not the first time to go to the station, but the car headlights to play bright, in the city of Jiujiang around and around, different roads in and out, driving a night.
More than 30 cars, less than two thousand soldiers, creating the “illusion” of tens of thousands of people stationed in Jiujiang – so as to give some comfort to the citizens of Jiujiang in anxiety.
Eventually, the convoy stopped at the garrison. It was on the second floor of an abandoned steel mill warehouse (where the 98th Flood Plaza was later built), and was the closest to the first line of defense for the troops.
98 Flood Plaza (Photo by the author)九八抗洪广场（作者供图）
At the beginning, the company did not have any special tasks, is to plug plug the bubbling springs and pipe gushing, even so, the size of the danger also appeared hundreds of times. “Soak springs and pipe gushing mostly appear in the grass, the water is clear is fine, turbid is not, the water will hollow out the bottom layer of mud, causing the collapse of the embankment.”
A Wang hand injury has not yet healed, still in the daytime in the cooking class “work”, sleep and then back to the 5th class campsite. The weather switched between heat and rain, and many people suffered from heatstroke. The cooking team’s solution was to cook a lot of garlic, forcing people to eat it whether they liked it or not, to strengthen their intestinal resistance.
From the company, it was only a few minutes’ walk to the Jiujiang Yangtze River embankment. Wang still remembers that when walking on the embankment at night or in the rain, it is easy to be mixed with rocks in the grass; there are many rats along the river, and surprisingly, they will bite; sometimes they will also encounter snakes, which is because the snake cave was flooded and had to run to the embankment.
At the beginning, the young people patrolling the dike will also be bragging, chatting, but see the water level has been rising, the heart are afraid of up. Jingzhou and Wuhan across the river, as well as this bank of Jiujiang, at this time have been under pressure of water levels far above the warning line, we are constantly speculating in the mind: which of the three places to blow up to release the flood? Or can all three places really be held, as requested by Jiang Zemin, then the country’s top leader?
On the dike, there was also a wooden “life and death sign” – “people in the dike”; two or three kilometers away in a warehouse, began to pile up the explosives used in the flood – is the same regiment of other companies to carry.
At that time, the water level was already 5 meters above the ground in Jiujiang, and everyone’s head was gathered with the possibility of sacrifice at any time.
Wang’s parents had retired from their Xinjiang farm to Shanghai this year, and were glued to the TV news every day, watching the Jiujiang River and the water level. At that time, some of the county and district leaders who came to patrol the dike, occasionally carry a cell phone with them – “Big Brother”, the opportunity to borrow the right time, ordinary soldiers can also use.
It so happened that Wang had just installed a landline phone at home. After dialing, he clumsily put the big brother of the unknown leader to his ear and heard his mother yelling urgently, “Don’t be foolish to rush ahead, run when you should run!”
4
To run, or not to run? Where to start? –Soon, nature made the choice for the torn people, and some places near Jiujiang began to break up.
At noon on August 7, after lunch, Wang was preparing to go from the company to the cooking class when he ran into the 4th squad leader, who greeted him and asked him to go on patrol. It so happened that Wang was not feeling well and wanted to rest for a while, so he did not go. (Wang said afterwards that if he had gone, he would have gotten the credit for finding the danger.
Three officers and soldiers patrolling the embankment to the fourth to the fifth gate near, found a tube surge (Editor’s note: tube surge, refers to the role of seepage, the soil in the fine particles are formed from the coarse particles in the pore space away, resulting in the formation of soil through the seepage channel, resulting in the collapse of the soil phenomenon, tube surge damage is actually a progressive destruction.) , one immediately went to the duty point report, the other two rushed back to the company to report. Still asleep on the floor of the second floor of the station, a wang, jumped up.
The situation in front of me, as if a live demonstration of everyone imagined the picture: in just a few minutes, the dike from the tube to the collapse of the breach. Fifty to sixty meters of dike surface first sinking, and then collapsed, almost completely disappeared. The vast river water kept gushing closer and closer.
Company commander He Dehua brought 18 people jumped into the river to plug the breach, the remaining less than 70 people all followed, carrying rocks and sandbags. At this point, the superior order also came down: “Must hold for half an hour.”
A Wang just healed wound on the left hand broke open, ruptured out of the constant seepage of blood, sweat mixed with dirty water erosion, he felt a burst of intolerable stabbing pain, and then, he simply ripped off the gauze, the most seriously injured middle finger in the mouth “to disinfect the pain”, and in this bizarre position carrying sandbags constantly running back and forth.
No reinforcements. The regiment got the news that the sister companies were preparing to lean on the line, and the flood from the breach swept over the convoy of troops behind. For example, the second battalion, the fifth company, was washed every one to the trees and drifted away with the water.
Minute by minute, that building at the steel plant site and the high part of the embankment had been separated from the heaving river, and the vehicles and devices between them were washed away like matchboxes. River water instantly gushed into the building, the two soldiers who could not run away in time washed a few heels, pushed against the wall, instantly broken bones and serious injuries.
By this time, the air raid siren had been raised over Jiujiang City and residents were evacuated urgently.
There were still hundreds of people in the dormitory of the steel plant, and Wang took off his life jacket and gave it to the residents. Residents wearing life jackets retreated backward, and the soldiers who took off their life jackets went forward to the top.
However, the mouth of the breach a thousand miles, knowing that it can not be blocked, or only forward blocking. “According to the instructions of the superiors, to buy time.” The commanding officer said, “I can’t plug it, I’m going to be court-martialed.”
About ten minutes later, another order came: “If you can’t block it, withdraw.” This was similar to what Wang’s mother had said on the phone. But where to evacuate? The second floor of the factory was not yet flooded, and still visible, but there were more than 20 meters between their foothold and Awang, and the depth was more than one person high.
Nearby floated some two-meter-high tin gasoline barrels, the company commander made it into a raft, so that soldiers with good water pulled over with a rope, one by one to hold the swim. A Wang just learned to swim in the army training, someone wrapped their arms around his neck and swam together.
More than 80 people returned to their quarters with the help of gasoline barrels. At this point, they had lost any communication links, no one knew whether they were dead or alive, nor did they know their exact location. In the twilight, this two-story factory on the water, like a quiet island.
5
“It was more than 20 hours later, and only in the afternoon of the next day, did a ship hauling sand – presumably temporarily requisitioned by the troops – come from the direction of Wuhan and bring us food and fresh water. “
“How did you spend those 20 hours or so?” I asked Awan.
“Just waiting for rescue. That plant was still relatively sturdy and didn’t collapse.”
“You were all hungry?”
“There is still something to eat, we found the peas planted by the residents of the family home on the river, raw, with shells all eaten. There were also some leftover buns from two days ago, wrapped in raincoats, or soaked in water, the flour was soft, but the meat was still good. The company commander said put a night, afraid of bad, don’t eat, we still broke and ate. I was the first to eat, I said I taste it, I ate all right everyone eat.”
“What did you discuss that day into the night?” macos/deepLFree.translatedWithDeepL.text
The officer conveyed the superior instruction: tonight the next two hours as preparation time, handing over the work, the project is not engaged, all people have to take the truck on the road overnight, a shift a, to Jiangxi Rui Chang to fight the flood.
Until he got on the truck, Wang was dumbfounded.
Songhua River, Yangtze River, Pearl River, several major water systems have released the flood news, but Wang and his comrades did not think that they would be in such an unprepared situation to go to the front line of the flood, some of them are not even good at swimming.
Only later did they learn that the number of troops deployed to fight the floods in 1998 was a million, and in the history of the country, the only one comparable to that was the resistance to the United States.
She County and Ruichang are about 400 kilometers apart. At this time, the company’s convoy had driven more than 100 kilometers to the vicinity of Kaihua (a county under the jurisdiction of Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province), and while eating and relieving themselves, the order came again – do not go to Ruichang, it has been flooded (A Wang clearly remembers that the original words conveyed were “has been lost”) ), go directly to another place, the name of the place can not remember exactly, only know is near Jiujiang.
Just half an hour after getting on the bus, the order came again: that place has also been “lost”, go to Jiujiang instead.
At that time, the water level of the Jiujiang River had exceeded the warning line by one or two meters, but not many troops arrived to fight the floods in the Jiujiang River, and Wang’s unit was one of the first to arrive.
These military trucks into Jiujiang and not the first time to go to the station, but the car headlights to play bright, in the city of Jiujiang around and around, different roads in and out, driving a night.
More than 30 cars, less than two thousand soldiers, creating the “illusion” of tens of thousands of people stationed in Jiujiang – so as to give some comfort to the citizens of Jiujiang in anxiety.
Eventually, the convoy stopped at the garrison. It was on the second floor of an abandoned steel mill warehouse (where the 98th Flood Plaza was later built), and was the closest to the first line of defense for the troops.
98 Flood Plaza (Photo by the author)九八抗洪广场（作者供图）
At the beginning, the company did not have any special tasks, is to plug plug the bubbling springs and pipe gushing, even so, the size of the danger also appeared hundreds of times. “Soak springs and pipe gushing mostly appear in the grass, the water is clear is fine, turbid is not, the water will hollow out the bottom layer of mud, causing the collapse of the embankment.”
A Wang hand injury has not yet healed, still in the daytime in the cooking class “work”, sleep and then back to the 5th class campsite. The weather switched between heat and rain, and many people suffered from heatstroke. The cooking team’s solution was to cook a lot of garlic, forcing people to eat it whether they liked it or not, to strengthen their intestinal resistance.
From the company, it was only a few minutes’ walk to the Jiujiang Yangtze River embankment. Wang still remembers that when walking on the embankment at night or in the rain, it is easy to be mixed with rocks in the grass; there are many rats along the river, and surprisingly, they will bite; sometimes they will also encounter snakes, which is because the snake cave was flooded and had to run to the embankment.
At the beginning, the young people patrolling the dike will also be bragging, chatting, but see the water level has been rising, the heart are afraid of up. Jingzhou and Wuhan across the river, as well as this bank of Jiujiang, at this time have been under pressure of water levels far above the warning line, we are constantly speculating in the mind: which of the three places to blow up to release the flood? Or can all three places really be held, as requested by Jiang Zemin, then the country’s top leader?
On the dike, there was also a wooden “life and death sign” – “people in the dike”; two or three kilometers away in a warehouse, began to pile up the explosives used in the flood – is the same regiment of other companies to carry.
At that time, the water level was already 5 meters above the ground in Jiujiang, and everyone’s head was gathered with the possibility of sacrifice at any time.
Wang’s parents had retired from their Xinjiang farm to Shanghai this year, and were glued to the TV news every day, watching the Jiujiang River and the water level. At that time, some of the county and district leaders who came to patrol the dike, occasionally carry a cell phone with them – “Big Brother”, the opportunity to borrow the right time, ordinary soldiers can also use.
It so happened that Wang had just installed a landline phone at home. After dialing, he clumsily put the big brother of the unknown leader to his ear and heard his mother yelling urgently, “Don’t be foolish to rush ahead, run when you should run!”
4
To run, or not to run? Where to start? –Soon, nature made the choice for the torn people, and some places near Jiujiang began to break up.
At noon on August 7, after lunch, Wang was preparing to go from the company to the cooking class when he ran into the 4th squad leader, who greeted him and asked him to go on patrol. It so happened that Wang was not feeling well and wanted to rest for a while, so he did not go. (Wang said afterwards that if he had gone, he would have gotten the credit for finding the danger.
Three officers and soldiers patrolling the embankment to the fourth to the fifth gate near, found a tube surge (Editor’s note: tube surge, refers to the role of seepage, the soil in the fine particles are formed from the coarse particles in the pore space away, resulting in the formation of soil through the seepage channel, resulting in the collapse of the soil phenomenon, tube surge damage is actually a progressive destruction.) , one immediately went to the duty point report, the other two rushed back to the company to report. Still asleep on the floor of the second floor of the station, a wang, jumped up.
The situation in front of me, as if a live demonstration of everyone imagined the picture: in just a few minutes, the dike from the tube to the collapse of the breach. Fifty to sixty meters of dike surface first sinking, and then collapsed, almost completely disappeared. The vast river water kept gushing closer and closer.
Company commander He Dehua brought 18 people jumped into the river to plug the breach, the remaining less than 70 people all followed, carrying rocks and sandbags. At this point, the superior order also came down: “Must hold for half an hour.”
A Wang just healed wound on the left hand broke open, ruptured out of the constant seepage of blood, sweat mixed with dirty water erosion, he felt a burst of intolerable stabbing pain, and then, he simply ripped off the gauze, the most seriously injured middle finger in the mouth “to disinfect the pain”, and in this bizarre position carrying sandbags constantly running back and forth.
No reinforcements. The regiment got the news that the sister companies were preparing to lean on the line, and the flood from the breach swept over the convoy of troops behind. For example, the second battalion, the fifth company, was washed every one to the trees and drifted away with the water.
Minute by minute, that building at the steel plant site and the high part of the embankment had been separated from the heaving river, and the vehicles and devices between them were washed away like matchboxes. River water instantly gushed into the building, the two soldiers who could not run away in time washed a few heels, pushed against the wall, instantly broken bones and serious injuries.
By this time, the air raid siren had been raised over Jiujiang City and residents were evacuated urgently.
There were still hundreds of people in the dormitory of the steel plant, and Wang took off his life jacket and gave it to the residents. Residents wearing life jackets retreated backward, and the soldiers who took off their life jackets went forward to the top.
However, the mouth of the breach a thousand miles, knowing that it can not be blocked, or only forward blocking. “According to the instructions of the superiors, to buy time.” The commanding officer said, “I can’t plug it, I’m going to be court-martialed.”
About ten minutes later, another order came: “If you can’t block it, withdraw.” This was similar to what Wang’s mother had said on the phone. But where to evacuate? The second floor of the factory was not yet flooded, and still visible, but there were more than 20 meters between their foothold and Awang, and the depth was more than one person high.
Nearby floated some two-meter-high tin gasoline barrels, the company commander made it into a raft, so that soldiers with good water pulled over with a rope, one by one to hold the swim. A Wang just learned to swim in the army training, someone wrapped their arms around his neck and swam together.
More than 80 people returned to their quarters with the help of gasoline barrels. At this point, they had lost any communication links, no one knew whether they were dead or alive, nor did they know their exact location. In the twilight, this two-story factory on the water, like a quiet island.
5
“It was more than 20 hours later, and only in the afternoon of the next day, did a ship hauling sand – presumably temporarily requisitioned by the troops – come from the direction of Wuhan and bring us food and fresh water. “
“How did you spend those 20 hours or so?” I asked Awan.
“Just waiting for rescue. That plant was still relatively sturdy and didn’t collapse.”
“You were all hungry?”
“There is still something to eat, we found the peas planted by the residents of the family home on the river, raw, with shells all eaten. There were also some leftover buns from two days ago, wrapped in raincoats, or soaked in water, the flour was soft, but the meat was still good. The company commander said put a night, afraid of bad, don’t eat, we still broke and ate. I was the first to eat, I said I taste it, I ate all right everyone eat.”
“What did you discuss that day into the night?”
“Just discuss whether we can get out alive. I also asked our company commander, not that people in the embankment in, people die embankment die, now the embankment is not in how we do. The company commander smiled and said, we big deal to go by boat. In fact, the atmosphere that night was very silent, collective silence, are not talking much, also tired, give up tossing, waiting for news. There was some loneliness.”
“It was raining outside?”
“No, I remember clearly, the weather was nice and hot that night, we slept on the second floor and could see the stars in the sky. At that time I was thinking that I would come to Jiujiang once more in the future because I had saved many people here. I think there is always a chance, because the Beijing-Kowloon line just opened not long ago, I think the future of travel to Hong Kong will certainly pass through Jiujiang well.”
In the afternoon of August 12, the dam was reunited, and in early September, Wang’s unit left Jiujiang and returned to Jinhua, and in October, Wang’s company was awarded second-class merit by the Central Military Commission.
After the water receded, Wang had gone back to see the river dike and felt that the entire surface of the dike had been raised. In order to verify his feelings, he came to the cooking class, but stood down in front of the door of the hut where he helped cook – could not enter, the door frame touched his head.
6
Later, Wang never went to Jiujiang again. Just occasionally I would think: inside those people saved, some of them should have been grandparents.
On July 15, 2016, Wang sent a package to Jiujiang eighteen years later. In the package were newspaper clippings, photos and medals from eighteen years ago, and the recipient was the current company commander of the old unit.
An old photo kept by Ah Wang: On August 15, 1998, Chi Haotian, then Minister of National Defense of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, inspected the officers and soldiers of the troops guarding the dike. (Photo by the author) An old photo kept by Wang: Chi Haotian, then Minister of National Defense of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, inspects officers and soldiers of the dike guarding unit on August 15, 1998. (Photo by the author)
From the very beginning, when he learned that the First Army had gone to fight the flood, A Wang felt that this matter was “very relevant” to him. Later, knowing that his company was also in the company, and in Jiujiang, he immediately “lit up”.
Wang first looked for his own recruits – recruits later also became squad leaders, squad leaders have led recruits – and so generation to find the past, one by one relay. One day later, Wang found the current company commander of the old unit.
Wang was not the only one who had this kind of stress reaction; almost all of the veterans of the Third Division Artillery Regiment who had enlisted in the army from the 1980s to 2000 and were located in various provinces and cities were in horizontal contact. Some have even been discussing the organization of a “Veterans Old Third Division Commando” to visit their old unit back in Jiujiang, but these have been stopped by the old heads of the retired – “In order not to add chaos to the troops, they will only send individual representatives from the nearest provinces and cities. Veteran representatives to visit and depart in recent days.”
Wang, as an old squad leader, asked the current company commander about the supply situation, after all, after eighteen years, the material is much richer, “eat well, there is mineral water, there are boxes of rice, watermelon”, the equipment is not the same, “have their own helicopters, than we were then too strong, at least the rescue is not need to tie their own gasoline barrel raft”, as well as communication, “the troops can use cell phones, with WeChat, also have groups, too convenient.”
He saw online criticism that the troops were still fighting the flood in a dumb way, using the flesh and blood of soldiers to block flood peaks, etc. He wrote long letters about the various hazards he knew and remembered and how to deal with them, including how to clean the wounds when bitten by rats and what kind of tube surges are most dangerous, and sent them to the current company commander.
“In another 30 years, it may still be necessary to be a soldier to fight the floods,” Awang explained, “When there is a pipe surge, engineering machinery can’t get in, only people. For example, the embankment is narrow and long, the embankment below the east and west of the water, some in the bushes, some in the mud, who to plug? Can only rely on people to plug.”
Wang provided old photos: the embankment is white are sacks, five or six floors so high, sacks of sand, coal, rice, soybeans, everything. (Author’s photo) Old photo provided by A Wang: the embankment is white with sacks, as high as five or six floors, sand, coal, rice, soybeans, everything in the sacks. (Photo by the author)
Wang is most worried and the most unspeakable is, in case of a breach, I’m afraid that eighteen years ago a scene to reappear. It was not the afternoon when I swam in the water with a gasoline barrel, nor the starry night when I waited for rescue. Compared with the ordeal of getting out alive, something happened later that left a deeper mark on Wang.
On August 8, 1998, just as Wang’s company was rescued and briefly rested, many troops, including armed police, navy and firefighters, were pulled in by boat from the river, and 100,000 troops began a four-day, four-night battle.
Now it is said that 100,000 tons of steel and eight large ships were sunk before the Jiujiang River breach was blocked. How was it actually plugged?
“All civilian boats on the river would be stopped and pulled to a designated location, with welders chiseling through the boat and letting it sink, with steel pipes playing in the gaps. Those soldiers were lying on the steel pipe, blocking the water waves , when the wave came, a few people were washed down, after a while, the wave came again, and washed down a few people, dead or alive do not know.”
Wang gazed at me: “Have you seen the famous photo?”
This representative photo of the September 8 floods, recently spread again in the major forums and WeChat friends circle. (Author’s photo) This representative photo of the September 8 floods has recently been circulated again in major forums and in the WeChat circle of friends. (Photo by the author)
I believe this scene often appears in Awang’s nightmares. Because later, when Awang sent me into the subway entrance, he said again: “That shot is really memorable and scary, the steel is densely packed with people, a wave came over and knocked off a dozen people, I do not know whether they died or not. Just like that for four days.”
I later checked the information, this approach is called “steel and wood combined dam technology”, which won the first prize in the Army Science and Technology. I was reminded of his poem.
The stars are invisible.
I can feel their presence.
Because you and I
are so close.
In the distance, on the calm waters of the river
Once held your shadows.
……
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