War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1052 The first colleague who needs to be buried
In this night's dream, Wei Ran returned to his childhood grandma's house, back to the small fishing village of Baiyangdian, where the fish is fat and the water is beautiful, and he walked around the stove to help his grandma make delicious skin jelly.

However, before the dream ended, let alone eating the skin jelly made by himself in the dream, Wei Ran woke up inexplicably.

Looking around in a daze, at this time, the children were still cuddling each other and sleeping soundly, the cast iron stove in the middle was still burning hot, and even the few enamel kettles on the stove were still burning. Still steaming slowly.

Getting up silently, Wei Ran walked to the edge of the stove, gently opened the cast iron cover with an iron hook, first looked at the charcoal fire that was still burning inside, and then threw a few pieces of firewood into it before restarting. Put the lid on the fire.

Returning to his position, Wei Ran was about to lie down, but there was a vague whistle outside that made him uneasy. Almost at the same time as his face changed drastically, there was a loud "boom" from the direction above his head. There was a loud noise, followed by tremors like the earth shaking and mountains shaking!

"Whoa!"

Under his helpless gaze, there was a crack in the corner of the basement wall that was strong enough for the cold wind mixed with masonry and rubble to rush in, and the splashed earth and rock also smashed on the sleeping children. wrapped in a blanket.

For a moment, the sound of exclamation, screams, cries, and even the sound of shelling coming from the cracks and the slapping of buildings collapsing hit everyone's eardrums, and Wei Ran's hoarse roaring and shouting also was completely covered up.

"Hide in the corner! Hide in the corner! Open your mouth!"

While reminding loudly and in vain, Wei Ran picked up a little guy who was only six or seven years old and was crying, and wrapped the blanket that the little guy was originally wrapped around his chest and back almost roughly. He circled around, then pushed it to the corner, and pinched his cheek with his hands to signal him to open his mouth.

He took out the flashlight and shot a beam of light that shook the only three other adults in the room, then shook the older children headed by Alexander, and finally aimed the beam at the little guy who had been placed by him.

Soon, Lydia and Mrs. Via were the first to react, and Ke Na and Alexander understood his meaning in no particular order.

With the help of these people, more and more children were wrapped in blankets and pushed to the corner, and were signaled to open their cheeks.

At the same time, Wei Ran also opened the door. However, before he could step out, there was a rain of bricks outside, those big and small bricks, those big and small broken walls, and even the third floor. The two frozen corpses were all smashed down, and in a very short time, they piled up in a small pile on the open space outside the door.

Before he had time to think about it, he immediately closed the door again, rushed to the edge of the stove as fast as he could, and poured out the burning charcoal fire in the cast iron stove with hot water from the enamel kettle.

In the steaming water vapor and dust, the sudden change in temperature of the red-hot cast iron stove cracked a gap enough to make it useless, and the only light source in this small basement was left in the hands of Wei Ran. The beam of the flashlight.

Fortunately, it was more convenient for him to use the light beam to guide children and adults to the designated place to hide.

But at this time, the artillery fire falling from outside did not show signs of stopping, the gap above the head was getting bigger and bigger, and more and more ruins of the collapsed buildings fell on the ground.

"Whoa!"

There was another heart-shattering sound of collapse, and Wei Ran subconsciously shot the beam of light, but vaguely found that there seemed to be a figure who seemed to be hit and fell into the smoke and dust.

Regardless of the danger, Wei Ran and Ke Na rushed over in no particular order. When the two of them re-entered the steaming smoke, they found that Mrs. Wei Ya was crushed by a broken wall that was half the size of a door. the entire lower body.

But even so, she still held the baby Galina well in her arms.

Seeing Wei Ran and Ke Na rushing over and trying to dig themselves out, this skinny old lady who had only had a full meal last night ignored the dark red blood gushing from the corner of her mouth, and her skinny hand deep inside was dead. He grabbed Wei Ran's belt desperately, and when he brought his ears closer, he immediately said intermittently, "Baobao, take care, children, Victor, they leave it to you, no, no, no human flesh. Kona. "

Hearing this, Wei Ran sighed secretly, stretched out his hands to take the tightly wrapped Galina, and at the same time stretched Ke Na who was trying to lift the section of the broken wall, letting her put her ears close .

"Kona, protect the child, live...survive."

While speaking, Mrs. Via tremblingly took out a small TK pistol from her arms, and handed it to the tearful Ke Na with difficulty.

After looking at Ke Na and Wei Ran for the last time, and then at the corner of the wall crying in the darkness in the distance, Mrs. Via waved her hands in satisfaction and murmured silently, "Go, go."

"boom!"

Just at this time, there was another loud noise from outside the cracked gap. Seeing this, Wei Ran, who was holding the child in his arms, immediately grabbed Ke Na's wrist, pulled her to hide in the corner, and threw her and baby Galina in her arms.

"Grandma Via! Grandma Via!"

Ke Na, who was held tightly by Wei Ran, cried out hoarsely, but this cry was completely covered by the sound of collapse coming from the direction of Mrs. Weiya again.

I don't know if it was ten seconds or one minute, or even longer, the location of the shelling finally shifted from where they were, and the one-meter-wide crack above the head finally stopped falling into pieces. Bricks and tiles.But this originally warm basement was completely destroyed.

"Kona! Victor! Are you still alive?" In the darkness, Lydia yelled in panic.

Hearing this, Wei Ran immediately shot the beam of the flashlight over, and then turned towards Lydia, like an old hen protecting a chick, squatting on the ground with her arms outstretched, protecting the children cowering in the corner behind her, It seemed that she could block falling bricks and concrete blocks with her thin arms.

"We're still alive!"

Wei Ran responded loudly, "I, Ke Na and Galina are still alive, how about you? Are any of you injured? Alexander! Are you there?"

"I'm here!" Alexander responded first before Lydia could speak, "All five of us are here, and each of us holds a younger brother or sister."

"I have five children here," Lydia immediately responded, "We are all still alive! Mrs. Via? Where is Mrs. Via?"

As soon as he asked this, Ke Na, who was still in Wei Ran's arms, trembled subconsciously.

"Mrs Via she"

"She was buried." Wei Ran said, he had already stood up, and pointed the beam of the flashlight at the place where Mrs. Weiya was buried.

After such a short period of time, the broken bricks and tiles piled up there were almost one meter high, and Mrs. Via's only arm was still exposed outside.

After a short period of sluggishness, Lydia and the older and younger children all gathered around, frantically trying to move the broken bricks, trying to dig out their grandma Via.

"How could this be, how could it be like this."

Ke Na, who came to help, repeated over and over again in a crying voice, "Didn't we just eat for the first time last night? Didn't we already have something to eat? Why do you torture us like this?"

"Kona, Lydia."

Wei Ran grabbed the belts of the two girls and easily pulled them back a meter, "Now is not the time to dig her out, we need to let the children live first!"

"Let me go!" Ke Na cried and turned around, trying to break free from Wei Ran's confinement.

"If we don't find a warm place soon, soon all of us will freeze to death."

Wei Ran aimed the beam of the flashlight at the young girl's eyes, forcing her to cover her eyes with her hands while continuing, "We now have 16 children who need to be taken care of, and we need to do everything possible to keep them alive. There needs to be a warm shelter, the fire needs to be rekindled, and they need to be fed like they were last night."

Seeing that the girl gradually calmed down and stopped struggling, Wei Ran looked at Lydia again, and then he looked at the older and younger children who were still trying to dig Mrs. Via out, "Alexander, bring Your people are responsible for dressing up the younger brothers and sisters and wrapping them in blankets. We need to find a warm enough place as soon as possible before we freeze to death, and we need to load all our food and drink into the car before other people come over. take away!"

After finishing speaking, he immediately loosened the belts of the two girls, and continued to speak loudly, "We have a lot to take away, including our clothes, blankets, and even the pine needles and dead grass spread on the floor. Go next door for firewood and food, so boys, I need your help."

"Victor, what about grandma Via?" Alexander, who seemed to have become the king of children, stood up and asked.

"Wait until we survive, if we survive."

Wei Ran gave a major premise, and then continued, "We will come to take Grandma Weiya away when the time comes, but for now, we must give priority to ensuring that those who are still alive continue to live."

"I" Alexander gritted his teeth, "I listen to you, and we all listen to you."

"What about you?" Wei Ran looked at Lydia and Ke Na.

"What do we need to do?" Lydia was the first to express her attitude.

"Lydia takes care of baby Galina and the youngest children"

Wei Ran paused and continued, "In addition, he is in charge of directing Alexander and the others to take away everything that can be taken away from this house, and think about where we should move by the way."

After finishing speaking, Wei Ran looked at Ke Na who was still crying, "You and I go to the next door to check the supplies, and take everything we can take away."

Before he finished speaking, Wei Ran handed the flashlight to Lydia, and after searching through his memory, he found the candlestick with half of the candle fixed under the smashed table.

Taking out the lighter and lighting the candlestick, Wei Ran walked out of the room on his own. After a moment of hesitation, Ke Na finally glanced at Mrs. Weiya who was still buried below, and finally followed Wei Ran out of the basement, and walked to the corner of the room. next door.

The round of shelling just now, not surprisingly, also caused cracks to appear on the wall of the basement, and even the door was tilted to one side, which saved the trouble of unlocking it.

Pushing open the useless wooden door that might still be used as firewood, Wei Ran lit a candle and walked into the basement.

Fortunately, although the top of the head also collapsed, the wooden table, as well as the boxes and musical instruments placed on the table were intact, only covered with a thick layer of dust.

"Move them all out"

Wei Ran involuntarily arranged a job for Ke Na, and then put the candlestick on the table out of the wind, picked up the tin bucket full of coking coal, and then picked up the locked wooden box. His personal flagon was stored in the metal book.

"Victor, will you bury Grandma Weiya, right?" Ke Na asked sobbingly before Wei Ran walked out of the basement.

"Yes..." Wei Ran stopped in his tracks, "I promise."

"I will bury her with you"

While speaking, Ke Na had already hung the bayanqin on her chest, and then picked up the snare drum that belonged to her father.

"No problem." Wei Ran said, took another step, and walked out of the basement that had been turned into a dilapidated building.

During the back and forth, the few supplies in the basement, together with the table, the door frame and even the door panels, were moved out.

At this time, the sky was still gray, but not far away, several buildings ignited soaring flames due to shelling, which in turn dyed the night sky a dangerous red.

They didn't dare to use the flashlight at all. Under the command and leadership of Wei Ran and Lydia, many children moved all the things that could be taken away from the three basement rooms to the outside of the ruins of the completely collapsed building. Two sledge carts, an upside-down table and door panels were installed.

After a rough inventory of these things, all kinds of firewood barely filled a sledge cart, and the rest of the space was filled with dismantled scrap cast iron heating stoves and sections of iron chimneys.

On the other sledge cart, there was the box containing bread and dried fish and half of a frozen pike, plus horse hides and internal organs that were laboriously snatched from the front line, and of course, two bayan instruments and a set of snare drums.

As for the door panel and the upside-down table, there are packed dry pine needles and weeds, as well as sundries such as pots and pans.

Finally, looking at the 16 children of different ages and wearing Budyonny hats of various colors, Wei Ran looked at Lydia, "Have you decided where to move?"

"Think about it"

Lydia took a deep breath, and finally looked in the direction of the basement, "Come with me, I'll take you there, it's a bit far away, but it's definitely safer than here."

"Let's go then"

As Wei Ran spoke, he picked up the reins of the first sledge cart and threw it over his shoulder. This cart was the heaviest, so naturally he was pulling it.

The second car was pulled by Lydia, and the upside-down table was dragged by several older children headed by Alexander. By the way, one of the girls was also responsible for carrying the baby Galina.

The door panel was pulled by Ke Na. On the door panel, apart from the pine needle wrapping, there were also the youngest children such as Anastasia and Bogdan who liked to eat their fingers.

In the night before dawn, under the leadership of Lydia, this not-so-big but extremely slow "convoy" braved the biting cold wind and the icy snowflakes blown by the cold wind, step by step. moved towards the relatively safe northeast direction.

Before the sun rose completely, Lydia brought Wei Ran and others to the edge of a dilapidated playground, pointed to a locked concrete house on the edge of the playground and said, "That's it, that small house is the playground It has a semi-subterranean basement where my mother and I hid when the war first started.”

While talking, Lydia had already pulled out a necklace from her collar, took a key from the necklace, and opened the padlock on the iron door. At the same time, she did not forget to continue to introduce, "My mother used to be the school doctor of this school. , this small house is also the place where the medical room is set up every time the school holds a sports meeting."

Having said that, Lydia has already pushed open the fairly thick iron door, beckoning everyone to come in.

This small house has only one floor on the ground, with an area of ​​no more than 20 square meters. One wall is an iron door for access, and the other three sides have glass windows with metal window frames. There is also a layer of iron railings that look extraordinarily strong outside. , Even inside, there are two additional wooden boards wrapped in iron sheets in each window, as long as they are closed, the outside light can be completely blocked.

But in this small room, apart from two empty tin cabinets, a rusty cast iron stove, and some tools such as brooms and snow shovels, there is not even a single piece of firewood, and even the ground is hard. cement paving.

Correspondingly, the temperature here is as low as a refrigerator, and the only thing that is stronger than the outside is just to block the biting cold wind.

"The insulation in this room is too poor, and since the water supply has been stopped, it is very inconvenient to use water. It takes half an hour to walk to the river to fetch water."

As Lydia spoke, she pushed open the two metal cabinets, revealing a wooden door on the floor that was no more than half a meter wide and no more than one meter long.

Using the other key on the necklace to unlock the small lock on the wooden door, Lydia opened the wooden door, took the flashlight handed by Wei Ran to open it, and explained as she walked down, "This basement used to be used by the school to store The place where chemistry classes are used, after all, there is only a playground around here, so even if there is a fire or explosion, you don’t have to worry about losing anything.”

Having said that, Wei Ran, Ke Na and the children also walked in in a row. Compared with the cold ground, this semi-underground basement has glass windows with anti-theft railings all around.

These long glass windows are each 1.5 meters long and almost 30 centimeters high.However, when the beam of the flashlight swept over, all the outside of these windows had been buried by the snow on the surface.

In addition to the cover of the snow outside, there is an iron baffle of almost the same width and length hanging from the bottom of each glass window.

Obviously, as long as the metal baffle is lifted up and hung on the hooks on the window, the windows that are not too big can be completely blocked.

In addition, there are two layers of fairly thick sponge mats in the basement, and there are still some metal shelves and several large glass jars containing chemicals on the surrounding walls.

Of course, the basement was unsurprisingly gloomy and cold. A rusty crust of ice was still frozen on the edge of one of the windows and on the window sill. It was evident that the snow outside melted and flowed in and froze.

"The advantage here is that you don't have to worry about being bombed"

Lydia explained, "After all, the surrounding area is a playground, and the classrooms in the distance have been bombed more than once. The Germans will not be interested in this place."

"Here it is"

Wei Ran was the first to step on the concrete steps to the ground while he was speaking, and at the same time he did not forget to say, "Children, let's move all the things in the sledge truck into the outside room, and then clean it well. Before dawn, Let's get some more food!"

Hearing that there was something to eat, these children who were still in the grief of losing Mrs. Via finally got some motivation.

With their help, two sledge trucks, plus an upside-down table and door panels temporarily used as sledge trucks, together with the things carried on them, were moved into this small concrete house one by one, and placed in different categories. Neatly.

While Wei Ran was busy on the ground, Ke Na and Lydia also brought a few children out, took out all the sponge mats used for sports activities in the basement, patted them carefully, cleaned the basement and resurfaced it. After the sacks of pine needles, the sponge mats were laid back.

After cleaning everything up, Wei Ran placed the cast iron stove in the room on the ground on the side of the entrance and exit steps in the basement, and brought the iron chimney out of the basement, connected the chimney he brought, and poked it out along the hole in the wall.

Leaving the task of lighting the fire to the two girls and the children, Wei Ran picked up the snow shovel and cleared away the snow around the small concrete house, letting the early morning sun shine through the long and narrow windows in the basement. went in.

This is not over, he also used the snow that can be seen everywhere to build a windshield wall outside the basement windows.

When he finished his work and returned to the basement, the rusty cast iron stove was already burning red, and the basement, which was not very big, became extremely warm.

"The children will be taken care of by you"

Seeing Wei Ran coming in, Lydia immediately stood up and said, "I'm going to work, and I will bring food back in the evening. Also... I will hide Mrs. Via's situation, so that the children can still eat every day. Get an extra 100 grams of bread."

After finishing speaking, the girl stepped on the cleaned cement steps and left the warm basement alone.

“My children and I are in charge of making aspic”

Ke Na also stood up and said, "We can only bury Grandma Wei Ya when we are full."

"In that case, I'm going to take back the mouse cage that was set up yesterday."

Wei Ran said and looked at Alexander who hesitated to speak, "Alexander, from today onwards, you and your friends are mainly responsible for helping Sister Ke Na make jelly and collect firewood."

"Don't you need our help in catching mice?"

Alexander asked subconsciously, but he didn't know it. Lydia, who had returned to the surface and was about to open the door, also stopped what she was doing, quietly waiting for Wei Ran's answer.

"No need, I can do this kind of thing."

While talking, Wei Ran took out a plate of chocolates and distributed one to each child including Ke Na, "This is today's breakfast. As for whether you can have delicious meat jelly for dinner, it depends on You and Kona worked hard."

"I promise that my brothers and sisters will eat aspic!" Alexander replied loudly while chewing the chocolate stuffed into his mouth by Wei Ran.

"I'm most at ease in entrusting this kind of thing to you"

As Wei Ran said, he had already walked up the steps, "Remember not to close the door of the basement completely, and the broken corner of the window is not allowed to be blocked, otherwise everyone will be deprived of oxygen."

After finishing speaking, most of his body had already left the basement, and then he saw Lydia who was standing at the door eavesdropping.

(End of this chapter)