journal:

December 30, 1979 (Rainy Day)

"Today is Saturday. Because it is raining, the company arranges political studies and the instructor teaches us. The instructor starts with the glorious history of our army, talks about the nature, purpose, and tasks of our army, and talks about the glorious traditions and glorious history of our army. After listening to it, I was deeply educated and moved.

The New Year is coming soon, and the company is about to release a blackboard newspaper. I volunteered to take on the task and completed the task successfully. Comrade Feng Wenquan was from an electronic component factory before joining the army. The TV in the company broke down and he was asked to repair it. As a result, it lived up to everyone's expectations, and it was repaired. It was awesome."

It was about to be 1980, and this was a new era. We soldiers were very lucky to have traveled from the 1970s to the 1980s, which will be our eternal pride.

The weather has been bad recently, and it is often heavy rain. Therefore, the company can only arrange our political studies. Now the instructor is about to make a comeback. This is his job.

According to our ideas at that time, political studies were very boring and too dry. For us young men in our twenties, this was simply a pain.

When the instructor started from the history of our army, I listened absent-mindedly to these boring words. Grasses of the gunshots at the head of Nanchang City, footprints on the snow-capped grasslands, lights in the caves in Yan'an, etc., became the scene of playing with my friends in my father's military camp when I was a child.

While thinking about the past in a daze, I suddenly heard the instructor say, "Next, I would like to ask a few comrades to answer a few related questions, all of which are what I have just said."

When they heard the question, everyone became nervous and buried their heads in front of their chests, fearing that the instructor would name them.

Because I was wandering around, although I heard the instructor's words, my thoughts were still stuck in the past, so I still held my cheek with my right hand and looked thoughtful. But who knew that the instructor who was looking for the person to ask me was discovered by the instructor who was looking for the person to ask. He mistakenly thought that I was listening very seriously and was still thinking. So he pointed at me with his hand and said, "Shipman of the 12th platoon, you can answer the question."

When everyone turned their eyes to me, I looked at other places without realizing it, but I found that everyone was looking at me, and many people were laughing secretly. I immediately understood that I was shot, and the first person to be asked was me.

I could only stand up with my teeth and wait for the instructor's problem.

The instructor asked with a smile: "Do you know what year and month our army was established? What are the leaders?"

When I heard these two questions, I felt confident. After all, I grew up in the army since I was a child, and every summer vacation, the troops gathered our children of military cadres to the military camps, organized student companies, and arranged some visits and studies. I had heard of this kind of course back then, and probably had an impression of it.

So, my head quickly replayed the memory inventory, and soon I replied calmly: "Our army was established on August 1, 1927. It was led by Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, He Long, Chen Yi and others. It launched the first shot against the reactionaries in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province."

The instructor nodded frequently with satisfaction and said, "Very good, everyone pay attention. His answer was very good, which means that he not only listened seriously, but also took great care." After that, he motioned me to sit down.

I sat down very calmly and accepted the praise from my comrades.

From this moment on, I really began to listen to the instructor’s lectures carefully.

On another rainy day, the company decided to conduct a political examination for the entire company. The papers handed over were basically what the company taught us in class. It can be seen that the company wanted to pass this exam to test the cultural quality of our group of soldiers, or to find out that some people with high cultural level and good writing can be enriched to the regiment headquarters and other places.

During the exam, several cadres from the regiment headquarters, accompanied by the company commander and instructor, came to the examination room to check our exams, which made the already very tense atmosphere even more tense.

I received attention because I answered the first question of the instructor in politics a few days ago, which made me very nervous. Firstly, I would be even more nervous because there were people around me. Secondly, I didn’t write well and I was afraid of being laughed at by the leader.

Therefore, when the leader of the company and a few cadres were lying beside me and watching, not whispering, my heart was about to jump out, and my hand holding the pen was trembling slightly. Perhaps because I was a little nervous, they left me and stopped beside Ye Meng. Several people surrounded him and pointed at Ye Meng's test paper, and discussed softly. I knew that Ye Meng was a educated youth in Shanghai. He had a very calm personality. He read a lot of books and wrote beautiful pen characters. It must be that the leader of the company and the cadres in the regiment were very interested in his beautiful characters.

I sighed secretly: Oh, who made me not practice calligraphy well? I made up my mind to practice my calligraphy well in the future. No matter what I do in the future, the words that can write beautifully will be appreciated everywhere. We must study culture and practice calligraphy hard, so that we can at least deserve the four years of the army!

When in the recruit company, most capable people want to have the opportunity to show off to attract attention. When you divide the troops in the future, you hope to use this to get a good army.

The same is true for me. I simply imagined that I had already shown my skills when answering questions while playing harmonica and studying politics a few days ago. If I had the opportunity, I would have revealed my ability to write and draw. It happened that the opportunity came.

Because I was going to welcome the first New Year's Day and Spring Festival in the 1980s, the company arranged for blackboard newspapers to conduct competitions. When the platoon leader asked everyone who would make blackboard newspapers, my heart suddenly moved and thought to myself: "Okay, I finally gave me a chance to show off my skills." Although I thought so in my heart, I didn't want to be too arrogant, so I didn't say anything until I saw that no one stood up, and I slowly stood up, raised my hand, and shouted: "Report! I will."

So, I was alone in the task of making blackboard newspapers. This was a little bit of a problem for me. When I was studying in school, I was a good at making blackboard newspapers. From arrangement, copying, to drawing illustrations, all the headers were completed by one person. This is the ability, haha...

I was so busy all day long that I was busy with my comrades in our class were not idle either. Some of them helped me cut chalk, and some helped me read the manuscripts sent by each class. It seemed that this was just a matter for our class. The platoon leader was also very satisfied with this. As for the army, what he wanted was this spirit of unity and cooperation.

When I put out the two large blackboards and placed them neatly on the outer wall of the dormitory for display, my comrades watched and commented around the boards, and occasionally cast admiration at me. But I sat quietly aside, looking at everything in front of me calmly, but I couldn't help but feel happy in my heart.

The happiest thing was our squad leader. He patted his shoulders sincerely and said, "Good guy, you really have it."

The platoon leader walked up to me, looked at me with satisfaction, and nodded with a smile.

Speaking of his comrade Feng Wenquan, he worked in a TV component factory before joining the army, and he could make transistors and install semiconductor radios. So, New Year's Day in 1980 was coming soon. Unexpectedly, the only TV in the company broke down and was worried that no one would repair it. It was because the company correspondent Gong Hongxing was smart. He thought that we were urban soldiers, and some of them had already worked before joining the army, so he and the company clerk came to our class and asked who could repair the TV. So Feng Wenquan was called to repair the TV without hesitation. Not to mention, he really had a few tricks. The TV was really repaired by him. Now, not only our rank, but the entire company looked at our class with admiration. After all, it was urban soldiers, and the quality was different.

Seeing that Feng Wen and I had the opportunity to appear, and the deputy squad leader Qin Zhongfa had already become a model through the company's training. Ye Meng also showed his talent with beautiful pens. Now the other comrades were a little embarrassed and wanted to show their skills. Sure enough, the opportunity came again, and this time Shi Yinlin was about to appear.

One Sunday, the company used the rest to arrange a table tennis match between new and veterans. Four of them from both sides came to our platoon to select players. Now, Shi Yinlin, who was originally the main force of the table tennis team in the school and work unit, stood up unscrupulously. The other two comrades from Fujian and Jiangsu were also selected to participate. The four of us formed a new recruit team to face the veteran team composed of veteran squad leaders.

The game was very fierce, and Shi Yinlin took the lead. He won the first game quickly and got a good start. Who would have thought that the two comrades who appeared next failed due to nervousness and the situation turned sharply. Two to one, our recruits were behind, and I was the fourth one to play.

To be honest, I used to play table tennis just because I was interested and didn’t receive training in a systematic way. At the beginning, I signed up for the competition because I saw that no one dared to stand up, so I honestly raised my hand and signed up. Of course, I also wanted to show more hands. But unexpectedly, I accidentally became the key to the competition. Now I was panicked and my hand was shaking a little.

Shi Yinlin told me like a coach that he wanted to play the spinning ball, pay attention to serving and attacking, and win quickly. Deputy squad leader Qin Zhongfa smiled and said to me: "It makes no sense that you are nervous. You have grown up in the army since you were a child, and this little storm scared you?"

The squad leader was about to say that when he saw our platoon leader coming, he didn't speak.

The platoon leader told me with a smile: "Don't always think about winning or losing. If you lose, you will be fine. Just let go of the fight."

After hearing everyone's words, my mood slowly calmed down and stared at my opponent with fierce eyes, as if I was about to swallow him alive.

A peaceful mentality made me show higher fighting spirit and willpower than my opponent. In the end, I defeated my opponent 2:1 and tied the score to 2:2. Both sides returned to the equal starting line. At this time, we actually knew that the balance of victory had tilted towards us, because our last ace was Shi Yinlin with outstanding strength. Sure enough, he lived up to expectations and won another clean 2:0.

In this way, after more than two hours of fierce competition, our recruit team won the game 3-2, and Shi Yinlin's table tennis talent has attracted the attention of the regiment headquarters. I heard that the police platoon in the regiment headquarters is to recruit various soldiers with specialties. It seems that his good luck is coming now.

Seeing that many people showed their skills, Zhou Yousheng couldn't sit still, and he shouted loudly: "You all have the ability. Forget Wu Xiaozhang and I, I can just get whatever we want, and I will be in the army anyway."

Huang Buqing quickly agreed and said, "Yes, we don't have any skills, just do whatever we want."

Zhou Yousheng sneered and said, "You are so smart, and the army likes people like you." Huang Buqing got up and wanted to chase him, but Zhou Yousheng hurriedly hid behind the big Yang Qilin.

Yang Qilin stopped Huang Buqing and said, "Who said we have no ability? I can drive a tractor."

Zhou Yousheng was excited when he heard this: "I have driven a fishing boat so Is it a skill?"
Chapter completed!