War Photographer's Notebook

In the cold basement, Wei Ran stuffed the end of the red chalk into the crack of the wall, then looked up at the sky where snowflakes had been falling all the time.

After a while, he slowly exited the basement, sat on his sledge, wrapped the blanket tightly, and slowly shook the generator rocker on the chair, while slowly adjusting the thick wire that served as the antenna.

From the simple speaker, after bursts of piercing noises, the same radio content as that from the radio speaker in the distance finally came out.

Stopping his work again, Wei Ran carefully looked at the "magically modified" chair.

He didn't know where the radio system fixed on the chair was removed, but the hand crank generator system was definitely sawed off the back half of a children's bicycle and fixed on the back of the chair.

In particular, the crank handle is just a pedal with only one side left. Even on the generator, which is only the size of the smallest Coke bottle in the future, the brass brand label of "Moscow Bicycle Factory" can be vaguely seen.And in the seat position of this half bicycle, there is also a bicycle light fixed.

Gently flipping a switch connected to the bicycle light, as he shook the pedals again, the light also turned on a rather dazzling light.

Flip the switch to turn off the headlights, and the radio with a wasteland style immediately broadcast a passionate and powerful broadcast from the Leningrad Radio Station.

"boom!"

Just when he stopped to turn his pedals, the German shells once again crossed the Neva River, smashing the sky and covering the city that had already been turned into ruins. A moment later, accompanied by the bleak air defense siren, There was also the roar of the engine overhead, as well as the terrifying bagpipe sound unique to the Stuka dive bomber.

Inexplicably, he thought of those people he met in Stalingrad when he was sent into the battlefield by the metal book for the first time.

I remembered the Pravda reporter Konon from the Soviet Union and from Leningrad in the Soviet Union on the battlefield in Finland.

He must be suffering from hunger somewhere in the city right now.
He muttered to Wei Ran, who was powerless to bomb and shell, and then remembered the dental clinic beside the Moltke Bridge in Berlin.

"Compared to what you did in Stalingrad and Leningrad, what the Red Army did in Berlin is nothing short of angelic."

Wei Ran stood up, looked at the artillery shells passing through the air, watched those aerial bombs landing freely with the sound of whistles muttering to himself, and watched the columns of smoke rising in the distance, watching Watching the black puffs of shells from the anti-aircraft guns firing from all over around the bombers.

After a while, those Stuka bombers that had completed their bombing mission either lifted off into the air and flew away, or fell with black smoke, or exploded in the air, turning into the last dirty aerial bomb.

After a while, the air defense siren that was covered by the continuous gunfire finally quieted down, and even the German artillery died down soon after.

But in less than 10 minutes, black smoke and flames were already rising in many places in the city in sight, and on the snow-covered streets outside, vehicles drove past in a hurry. A fire truck that can count as a drop in the bucket.

After an unknown amount of time, Lydia, who was wrapped in a blanket, stumbled into the ruins.

"Are you injured?" Wei Ran noticed the gauze wrapped around her forehead the moment she saw her.

"Nothing serious"

Lydia waved her hand, "Just now a shell landed near our office. I was scratched by the shattered glass. How about you? Are you not injured?"

"No." Wei Ran stood up while speaking, and asked while pulling the sledge outside, "Didn't you get any coal today?"

"no"

Lydia sighed, "And there's no more milk, Galina can only drink honey water today, is there any honey left?"

"Yes, there are many more," Wei Ran said, "enough for Galina to drink as milk."

Lydia responded with a bitter smile, "I'm afraid this is the only good news."

"I also caught three mice." Wei Ran signaled the other party to sit on the sledge, and said while walking back against the wind, "they are all fat."

"How long do we have enough food?" Lydia asked worriedly.

"The internal organs of those military horses are enough to eat like this for another three or four days." Wei Ran paused, and tentatively said, "Lydia, I plan to go outside the city to get some more horse meat soon."

"You mean to ask, do you want to take Alexander and Alyosha?"

"right"

"There are already warriors as big as them in this city." Lydia sighed, "Victor, take them with you and give them a sledge."

"Are you going?" Wei Ran asked again.

"Of course I want to go," Lydia replied without even thinking about it. "If one more person goes, he can bring back more things, especially..."

"Especially firewood, right?"

Wei Ran slightly increased the speed of the car, and replied after a little hesitation, "Comrade Matvey came to the basement at noon today, and he wrote a message on the wall. We are going to meet tomorrow, and maybe we will go out of the city the day after tomorrow. .”

Hearing this, Lydia's eyes lit up immediately, "In this case, I will ask for leave in advance tomorrow!"

This time, Wei Ran didn't say anything, just bowed his waist and walked on his way with his head stuffed against the wind.

Before the sky darkened, the two finally returned to the concrete house next to the playground.

It's only been a day since we saw each other, but the children who were already waiting for them to take a group photo are obviously much cleaner.Even the hair of several little boys was cut short.

Of course, compared to the surprises brought by these children who seemed to have scrubbed their bodies, the gauze on Lydia's head was obviously more frightening to them.

After some explanations, Lydia hugged a little girl who had obviously washed her hair and asked, "Are you taking a bath?"

"Sister Ke Na organized us to wash, but we just wiped our bodies and washed our hair."

The girl nestled in Lydia's arms explained with a happy smile, "During the day today, we found a lot of bath towels and soap in the collapsed bathroom of a school, as well as a lot of unworn socks and underwear. .”

"No wonder your hair is so fragrant." Lydia said with a smile, "Let's take a group photo together. After the photo shoot, I want to wash it too."

"Where are we filming?" Cora, who had obviously washed her hair, asked immediately.

Seeing everyone looking at him, Wei Ran pointed to the door, "Just outside!"

Before he finished speaking, the two children, Alexander and Alyosha, greeted their classmates and moved a bench converted from a shelf to the outside of the small house.

There was no need to command at all, and the little children sat in a row on the bench as if they had rehearsed in advance. Immediately afterwards, the older children also stood behind the bench, and in the middle, vacant There was enough room for Wei Ran, Kona and Lydia to stand.

Seeing this, Wei Ran pretended to untie the sack, rummaged through it, took out the Rollei SLR camera from the metal book, and started debugging.

Soon, he pulled the sledge truck over, put the camera on it and adjusted the angle.

"Get ready!"

As Wei Ran spoke, he pressed the time-lapse shutter, and then ran to the back of the bench at the fastest speed, and stood in the gap specially reserved for him between Ke Na and Lydia.

Without waiting for him to stand still, the children, led by Ke Na, shouted "Ula!" over and over again.

"Ula!"

Wei Ran also yelled along with the children. The double-lens reflex camera mounted on the sledge also drove the shutter to open and close once the delay was over.

"Victor, what good things did you find today?" Alexander moved to the side of the sledge while speaking.

"You guys will definitely like what you found today," Wei Ran said, and he had already pulled out three disembowelled mice from the sack.

"What about that?"

Alexander took the mouse and looked anxiously at the blanket-covered chair on the sledge, "Is there anything good in there?"

"Send the mouse to Ke Na first, and then remember to block all the windows."

However, Wei Ran kept it a secret on purpose, "Besides, Alyosha, take your younger brothers and sisters back to the basement, and remember to leave the place closest to the vent."

"Come back to the basement with me! Also, bring the stool back." Alyosha immediately greeted the younger children, and carried the bench back to the warm basement.

"Aren't you filled with chairs here?"

Lydia, who was holding the baby, asked curiously. Although she came back on a sledge, she didn't notice anything special about this chair wrapped tightly in a blanket.

"You'll know later." Wei Ran took out the portable wine jug containing honey and handed it to Delia while speaking.

Seeing this, Lydia smiled, took the jug, and followed Ke Na and the children into the cement house and into the basement.

Seeing that he was the only one left outside, Wei Ran pulled the sledge into the room, locked the door behind him, took off the chair wrapped in a blanket and walked into the basement.

"That's a chair!"

Alexander, who had been teased by curiosity, immediately made his judgment, but in his tone, he was unavoidably disappointed. Such a chair was not enough for the stove to burn overnight.

"Shh-!"

Wei Ran made a silent gesture, and then covered the fire from the stove with an enamel kettle filled with snow.

It wasn't until the basement was plunged into darkness that he groped to untie the blanket on the chair, fumbled to flip the switch, and vigorously shook the pedals.

Driven by the crankset and chain, the only remaining rear wheel of the half of the children's bicycle tied to the back of the chair immediately started to rotate, and the bulging tires also drove the generator to start humming.

"Wow--!"

Amidst the exclamation of the children, the headlight that was also removed from the bicycle emitted a dazzling beam of light, easily illuminating the basement!
"How long has it been since we saw the lights?" Lydia couldn't help asking in a low voice.

"It's been about half a year since the power supply stopped in September." Ke Na sniffled beside her.

"Alexander, Alyosha, you two come over and take turns helping me generate electricity."

Wei Ran, who was still shaking his pedals, greeted him, and after the two fur boys came to help, he immediately stretched out the wire that served as an antenna through the gap in the vent.

"Clap!"

As he flipped the switch, the headlights went out amidst the children's exclamations of disappointment and dissatisfaction, but soon, the place was plunged into the dark basement again, and the radio blah blah blah noise.

Without moving the simple antenna, Wei Ran fumbled on the chair to find the knob to switch channels and turned it slowly. The noise from the simple speaker also fluctuated from time to time, and occasionally there was short music or a few words. Sentences.

"Zi la la, here is Quansu. Zi la la. Broadcast. Taiwan"

"All-Su Radio Station!" The children, including Lydia and Kona, all called out the name of this channel.

"I come!"

While speaking, Ke Na had already moved the kettle on the stove, and with the help of this light, she got close to Wei Ran and took away the work of adjusting the channel.At that moment, Wei Ran even thought of a certain money-lovers girl who spent the summer vacation at his grandma's house and robbed him of the TV remote control with him when he was a child.

When he came back to his senses, Wei Ran gave the job to Kona, Lydia and the rest of the children who followed him, but he silently took over the job of cooking dinner.

Amidst the laughter of the children shaking their pedals in turn and obviously treating the job of power generation as a game, the rudimentary and rudimentary radio also played various news intermittently.

Some of those news came from Moscow, some from faraway Stalingrad and even more distant Kazan, even Yeburg's factory and Irkutsk lumberyard, and some came from the city where they were located.

But those news brought great encouragement and confidence to survive the war to the children and women in the basement who were powerless against the war.

At the same time, Wei Ran also secretly added some energy-rich meat oil to the evening broth,

This night, for the first time, the children turned their attention from dinner to the various sounds coming from the broken speaker tied to the leg of the chair, so that they didn't notice at all. It was thicker than before.

These children, including Lydia and Kona, didn't even notice that Wei Ran also used the excuse of urinating to escape to empty all the large glass jars containing chemicals on the shelves on the first floor, and filled them with the last time. Fuel from the tank of that crashed plane while going to the front.

Almost as soon as he emptied the oil drum and put the glass jars full of fuel on the corner of the shelf, Lydia also came up with a bucket of hot water, a piece of soap and a towel.

Seeing this, Wei Ran immediately gave up the first floor to Lydia who obviously wanted to scrub her body, and returned to the basement where the radio was still playing.

That night, before going to bed, Wei Ran was urged by many children on the pretext of "stinky feet". He took a bucket of hot water, towels and soap prepared for himself in advance, and went upstairs to scrub his body. And, by the way, new socks and underpants that the kids found in the ruins of the school.

Although he was "disgusted" by the children, he knew that this just proved that these suffering children were gradually developing towards a better side.

What about tomorrow?
Wei Ran, who was lying on the sponge cushion, couldn't help but began to look forward to what kind of good news Matvey would bring when he met tomorrow.

Sorry for the late update.