Literary Master 1983

Chapter 81 Cat Ear Cave (IV)

It took several more hours to get back to the headquarters from the hillside in a military jeep. Because it was night, the driver drove extremely carefully.

Laoshan is not a very high mountain, only about 1,400 meters. Later it was converted into a large memorial hall, and people can almost climb the entire climb on foot.

But now, the roads in Laoshan are bad, the forests in Laoshan are deep, and the rivers in Laoshan have a height difference of hundreds of meters. Apart from the traces of battle, humans have not actually changed the original appearance of this mountain, and it is not suitable for human survival.

It was already after midnight when Yu Qie moved into the concrete dormitory. He was now back in the safe Malipo County. From afar he could still see the undulating back of Laoshan Mountain and the moon sinking among the bamboo forests on the mountain peaks.

The entire condolence team has returned, and tomorrow they will all head to a new, safer place.

Only Yu Qie remains here.

When Yu Che came in, everyone applauded him. They had all heard that Yu Che was going to go down the cat ear cave.

Feng Gong was puzzled: "Do you also have a great-grandfather who was a Beiyang warlord? Yu Qie, you are really a desperate man! Give me back the suicide note I wrote to my wife, and I will give it to her myself!"

Zhu Shimao was impressed by Yu Qie's noble sentiments: "I used to be unconvinced by anyone, but now I am completely convinced by you! You are a writer with real feelings!"

It turns out that it is so dangerous for a military writer to go to the front line to collect materials. The shitty terrain alone is enough to kill me. No wonder it took several people from the General Political Department and Military Literature and Art to invite me - they thought it was impossible for ordinary people to come.

Liu Jiaju brought the novel "Ruan Shi Dingxiang" to Yu Qie, and Yu Qie said, "You let me read this novel too? Zhang Shouren of "October" also let me read it."

"Then read it again."

Then Liu Jiaju mentioned the concept of "true feelings".

"Yu Qie, what exactly are you going to write? What have you seen during your visit?"

"I discovered several things when I came here. One is that the soldiers really want love because they are too young. For example, Li Hai is only 19 years old... In addition, there are many female comrades who are willing to take risks to come to the front line to express their condolences, or even fight directly... And there is the strange thing about the 'cat ear cave'. No one has ever written a novel about it before."

Liu Jiaju said excitedly: "You are the first one! You get to write this story!"

Yu Qie said: "How about I write a love story on the front line? It's called "Death Kiss", a short story of 19 to words. A -year-old soldier was seriously injured after fighting in Laoshan. The wound was infected and he had a high fever. He also had serious complications. He only had his last breath. The female nurse Zhang Ru saw him for the last time and asked him if he had any wishes..."

"…The little soldier said, I have never been in love, and I have never hugged a woman. Sister nurse, can you hug me?"

Just by listening, Liu Jiaju was about to stutter: "Well...what did the female nurse do?"

Not only him, all the men were listening, not daring to breathe, for fear of affecting Yu Qi's train of thought.

Yu Qie said slowly: "The female nurse leaned over and gently hugged the injured little soldier and kissed his cheek. The little soldier's wish was fulfilled, and he slowly closed his eyes and died in the nurse's arms."

"Is it over like this?" The speaker was Gu Yue.

"ended."

"Didn't they fall in love?" Feng Gong confirmed. "No, there was no love at all. If I had to say, it was only comradeship... It was a Chinese woman who kissed a Chinese man. They represented these two images."

"Great, great!" Liu Jiaju stood up suddenly, shocking everyone. "Yu Qie, you originally wrote "Letter from the Fiancée" and said bad things about women. Now you write "Kiss of Death" and praise good women... It's complete!"

"I actually never told you that the Vietnamese on the other side of the mountain also read our novels. They played "The Garland under the Mountain" on a loudspeaker in a loop. They said, 'Liang Sanxi and Jin Kailai will end up like you. Your wives and children are waiting for you. Don't fight. Go home and reunite with your families.'"

"Go back? Go back to your mother!"

Liu Jiaju clenched his fists as if he was going to hit them: "'Letter from the Fiancée' is about to be broadcast, and now you've written 'Kiss of Death' to contradict it, leaving the Vietnamese helpless!"

Yu Qie added: “But I also want to include the story of the cat-ear cave, and describe in detail the living and combat conditions there… This will exceed the length of a short story, and the two parts are too separated, I don’t know how to deal with it…”

"Come with me, Yu Qie!"

Liu Jiaju directly pulled Yu Qie out of the dormitory and started talking about the novel "Ruan's Lilac".

This novel was originally published in the first issue of "October" and caused quite a controversy. However, four years later, this year it has blossomed again and won the first Military Literature and Art Award, so Liu Jiaju also knew about this novel.

It turns out that the novel "Nguyen Thi Lilac" is a sequel to Xu Huaizhong's other novel "Anecdotes from the Western Front". The unit numbers in the novels are all the same 941st Unit on the Western Front.

However, in fact, these two novels were originally the same novel. Xu Huaizhong felt that the two were too separate, so he simply took "Ruan's Lilac" out separately and made it a short story.

Liu Jiaju told Yu Qie: "You should write "Death Kiss" as a short story. As for the novel about the cat-ear caves on the front line, you should also write a novel. This one will be longer... What do you think?"

"I think it's okay."

"That's fine, let's do it this way. At worst you can just publish a sister article. We at Military Literature and Art are not afraid of publishing articles, we are only afraid of not having any articles!"

Well, since the person who commissioned the article said so, I have to consider the editor-in-chief's opinion.

During these days of field trips, Yu Qie also roughly understood the real situation in the Laoshan area and why it eventually turned into a cat ear cave war:

The terrain of Laoshan is a narrow river valley and a mountain range. The troops could not march in the river valley on a large scale, so they could only go into the forest and climb up the hillside. At this time, the scattered caves made it a natural position one after another, which had to be gnawed one by one.

During large-scale combat, in order to cover the combat, the artillery will bombard in advance so that the people in the cave dare not come out, and then stop for a while. This time is left for the combatants to fight for the position, which is very short.

If the defending team fails to defend, the position is lost. If the defending team succeeds in defending, the attacking team fails and has to wait for the next wave of cover attack.

The rules are obviously in favor of the defenders, who have the possibility to hold their positions again and again because they are not engaging in a one-time 1vN battle, but rather N times of 1v1 battles in this terrain.

Writer Yu personally went down the cat ear hole to give back to his fans in the army, just to make his other novel more realistic.

"Bloody Battle of Laoshan"! Yu Qie planned to write such a novel. Since no one had written it before, he would write it.

(End of this chapter)