War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1609 Reunion Wine

  Where is this?

Wei Ran pushed the corn stalks from the stove mouth into the stove, while feeling around with his eyes.

There were four stoves lined up in a row in the room. One was making pancakes, another was stewing a big pot of beef offal, and there was another small pot boiling a not-so-large amount of hot stew.

Next to another stove, someone was using a spatula to reach into the stove, waiting for the oil inside to heat up, and then pouring it into a large bowl of chili powder.

  This food is too good.

Wei Ran muttered to himself, and at the same time couldn't help swallowing again.

He didn't know what was going on. He was really hungry and greedy. He was greedy for the big pancakes that were almost half a meter thick piled on the curtain on the table not far away, and he was also greedy for the big pot of beef offal.

Of course, his greed would not affect his judgment.

Not to mention anything else, just from the unhurried movements of the noodle-cutting chef, the not-so-big piece of dough, and the small half pot of hot sauce that was enough for four or five people at most, he could roughly guess that the noodle-cutting chef was probably making a special meal for someone.

"Xiao Wei, hurry up and get a bucket of cold water. It should be fresh water from the well, not from a jar." The noodle-cutting master gave the order while kicking a wooden barrel next to him.

"okay!"

Wei Ran, who had already been sweating profusely from the fire, stood up before he finished speaking, picked up the wooden barrel and walked outside.

Leaving the hot kitchen, Wei Ran saw a well in the corner of the yard and a jujube tree with lush branches and leaves and half-grown fruits hanging on it growing diagonally against the wall.

May or June? Wei Ran muttered to himself as he walked to the edge of the well.

He first took a look into the well and saw that the end of the windlass rope had sunk into the water. He immediately reached out and turned the windlass handle.

After a moment, the wet hemp rope pulled a leaking iron bucket up little by little.

By the time the bucket of water was poured into the wooden barrel, it had leaked out and only half of the barrel was left.

Throwing it back into the well, Wei Ran swung the rope to let the bucket sink while looking at his clothes.

He was wearing a pair of round-toed cloth shoes with his big toes exposed, and he had leggings on his calves. There was a large patch sewn on his pants, especially from the crotch to the inner thigh and even the buttocks.

In addition, he had a cloth belt tied around his waist, and a white cloth jacket with a front opening that was windproof on both sides and extremely cool. Even around his neck, he had a white towel soaked in sweat.

  Is this really cavalry? Cavalry on the stove?

Wei Ran muttered to himself while turning the windlass vigorously to lift the second bucket of water and fill the wooden barrel.

"Grumpy"

Before he could even pick up the bucket of water, his stomach began to make a series of noises again, tempted by the aroma of food wafting from the east wing.

  He is also a stove cavalryman who was reincarnated from a starving ghost.

Wei Ran muttered something to himself, picked up the wooden bucket full of water, and glanced at the main house in the yard.

The three main rooms were made of blue bricks and gray tiles, but the doors were closed, and there were two guards standing at the door with guns on their backs.

Without looking at it any further, he decisively carried the water back to the east wing.

"Pour it all into the basin and fetch another bucket."

The noodle-cutting master gave instructions, and in such a short while, the dough he was holding on the wooden board was almost gone.

Wei Ran was straightforward. He poured the bucket of water into the large wooden basin next to him, turned around and walked out with the bucket in his hand.

This time, before he reached the edge of the well, a soldier ran in and asked, "Wei Ran, who is Wei Ran?"

"It is me!" Wei Ran said quickly.

"Come with me!" The soldier turned around and ran out before he finished speaking.

After looking at the noodle-cutting master who peeked out from the east wing to watch the fun, Wei Ran waited for the latter to nod before putting down the wooden barrel in his hand and running out of the not-so-big yard.

It was not until he passed through the door that he realized that this seemed to be a cross-courtyard.

"Hurry up and catch up," urged the soldier who had already walked more than ten meters away.

Hearing this, Wei Ran didn't have time to take a closer look and quickened his pace to catch up with the other party.

Led by the hurried soldier, Wei Ran almost jogged all the way to another adjacent yard.

This yard is a little bigger than the small one just now. There are many soldiers in the yard, some are cleaning their guns, some are sharpening their sabers, some are simply mending their clothes or smoking pipes.

In the corner, there is even a stove that looks like a blacksmith's shop, where red-hot horseshoes are clanging and pounding.

"Follow up"

The soldier who led the way urged again and took Wei Ran, who quickened his pace, into the westernmost room in the row of main houses.

"report!"

The soldier standing outside the door shouted loudly.

"Come in! Come in quickly!"

Before he finished speaking, the bamboo curtain was opened from the inside, and a soldier with thick eyebrows and big eyes greeted him enthusiastically with a slight Shanxi accent, "Are you Wei Ran? Come on! Check these two out to see if you recognize them!"

Bending down and entering the relatively cool room, Wei Ran was stunned when he saw the other two young men standing up in the room.

The two men were each wearing a new military uniform, with a nine-dragon belt on their chest, and each had a box gun.

The man on the left is wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and has a bookish air, while the man on the right has a completely opposite temperament.

"Brother Wei!" The two men shouted the same name almost in unison.

"Follow Xiao Li!"

When Wei Ran came back to his senses, he couldn't help but shudder and hugged Li Sui'an in his arms - he finally saw someone he had seen before! And he recognized him!

"And me!" Zhao Jinyu said with a laugh.

Compared with Bai Guang before, Zhao Jinyu is not only much stronger, but also half a head taller.

As for Li Sui'an, he looked a bit stronger than he did in his memory, and although the scholarly air was still there, it had faded a lot.

"Is your injury healed?" Wei Ran asked in surprise.

"It's all right! After half a year of nursing, it's finally healed!"

Zhao Jinyu said as he untied his Nine Dragon Belt and unbuttoned it, showing the horrible scar on his stomach that had healed. "There's no root of disease left!"

"What about you?"

Li Sui'an also asked, "Brother Wei, how did you survive?"

Hearing this, Wei Ran couldn't help but shudder. He deliberately patted the other person's shoulder with his left arm, which had been cut off by a machine gun in Teng County. Seeing that he was not surprised at all, he couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

He had already guessed that the reason why he appeared here intact was definitely because the metal notebook had slightly changed some of Li Sui'an's memories.

"I survived by hiding in a pile of corpses," Wei Ran sighed.

"My third brother."

"He didn't survive," Wei Ran sighed, "He died together with the Japanese."

For a moment, this not-so-big room fell silent. The soldier with thick eyebrows and big eyes left silently and whispered something to the soldier who brought Wei Ran outside the door.

"It's okay, it's okay." Li Sui'an wiped his face, "At least I didn't desert."

"How did you two meet?"

Wei Ran took the initiative to change the subject and asked.

“It’s a long story.”

Zhao Jinyu asked the two to sit down first, pointed outside the door and said, "The one just now was my brother-in-law, his name is Ma Jintao, and he is also the commander of this cavalry company."

After introducing the identity of the soldier just mentioned, Zhao Jinyu and Li Sui'an also talked one after another, interspersed with Wei Ran's impromptu fabrications, and briefly described their respective experiences.

According to the information Wei Ran obtained indirectly, after Yang Shiyi threatened her uncle with herself to send the two of them into the customs, Wei Ran left first on the pretext of delivering a letter.

After the separation, Zhao Jinyu rode on the Yang family's horse team and finally arrived in Shanxi, where he was sent to the home of his second sister, Zhao Jinlan.

Since then, Zhao Jinyu has been waiting for news from his elder brother Zhao Jinge. This wait lasted until May of the following year.

By then, Zhao Jinyu's injuries had long since healed, and he even found a temporary job as a security guard at his brother-in-law's house.

But he couldn't settle down at all, and he really wanted to go back in his dreams. In the middle of May of that year, Yang Shiyi asked the Yang family's caravan to bring him a letter.

This letter was written by Yang Shiyi on behalf of Hu Bazhi and Tian Xiaohu. According to the letter, due to the current situation, all the anti-Japanese fighters chose to lie low, so he was told not to rush back and to protect the flag.

Seeing that he could not return to the Baishan Heishui area to fight the Japanese, Zhao Jinyu simply found his brother-in-law and begged him to take him to the battlefield.

Originally, Ma Jintao didn't want to bring his brother-in-law with him.

This is not to say that Zhao Jinyu is not capable of plastering the wall, he is really worried that his father-in-law's youngest son will die on the battlefield.

Later, it was Zhao Jinyu's second sister Zhao Jinlan who spoke up, and Ma Jintao finally made up his mind to put his brother-in-law into his cavalry company as a communications soldier.

Compared to Zhao Jinyu, who entered the cavalry company by virtue of "nepotism", Li Sui'an is different.

Since the capture of Teng County in 1938, he was seriously injured in the shelling and fell into a coma. He was helped to break out and escape by Platoon Leader Han from the Beiguan position, and then he fled all the way to Xuchang.

At that time, the 1st Cavalry Division happened to be transferred to Xuchang to undertake the river defense mission. Li Sui'an, who had luckily escaped from the gates of death, was noticed by Ma Jintao because of his literacy. He was quietly inserted into his cavalry company and was specifically responsible for clerical and orderly work.

It was also from the mouths of these two brothers that Wei Ran finally knew how he ended up in that room.

In short, I was a "refugee" picked up by the kitchen team a few days ago.

As luck would have it, the day before they were "picked up", Zhao Jinyu and Li Sui'an had already followed Captain Ma to scout the enemy.

It was almost noon today when all the company members returned. Ma Jintao, the company commander, heard from the kitchen team that they had picked up a refugee named "Wei Ran".

Needless to say, when both Li Sui'an and Zhao Jinyu heard this familiar name, they were all stunned, and then they were ecstatic. That's why Wei Ran was brought here to be introduced.

It was not until this time that Wei Ran realized why he was so hungry. Before he was picked up, he was a refugee who had survived the flood caused by the breach of the Huayuankou dam! How could he not be hungry! He was so hungry that he could not even eat two skinheads!

What made him secretly give that living ancestor the middle finger and the thumbs up was that even the knife-cut noodles cooked in the kitchen were prepared for Captain Ma and the three brothers Li Suian and Zhao Jinyu - they had made meritorious service in this investigation.

Correspondingly, Wei Ran also made up a plausible experience for himself - since they parted at Shanhaiguan, he had been busy delivering letters, met Li Sui'an on the way, and followed them from Peiping to Teng County. Later, after luckily surviving in Teng County, he went upstream along the Yellow River, and then became a refugee because of the breach of the Huayuankou dike.

"I never expected it! The three of us are so destined to be together!"

When the three of them finished reminiscing about the past, the soldier who had just brought Wei Ran in and the noodle chef who had asked Wei Ran to fetch water had already brought the food.

"Xiao Wei, you are such a hidden talent! I never thought that I, Old Liu, would pick up a treasure!"

As the noodle-carving chef spoke, he had already placed the large ceramic basin in the middle of the table. The basin contained noodles soaked in ice-cold well water.

"I just realized that my two brothers are actually under the command of the company commander."

Wei Ran quickly stood up, and together with Li Sui'an and Zhao Jinyu, took down the stacked large bowls of hot stew, two large bowls of beef offal, and a large bowl of chili, mashed garlic, etc. from the wooden tray held by the young soldier.

"Lao Liu, sit down and eat together."

Company Captain Ma, who was following behind, spoke casually, holding a jar of wine in his hand.

"You guys eat, I still have to deliver food to the other soldiers."

Old Liu from the kitchen wiped his hands with his apron and said, "Make as much as you can. If it's not enough, there's more! Xiaobai, don't stay here anymore. Come on, come with me to the kitchen to have a drink."

"Then I'll have to take half a day off and drink as much as I want!" said the young soldier who brought Wei Ran here jokingly.

"Go!" Ma Jintao waved his hand casually.

"Yes!"

The young soldier named Xiaobai saluted with great energy, then happily followed Old Liu from the kitchen staff out of the room.

"That's my fellow countryman Bai Yuguang"

Ma Jintao introduced while breaking the seal of the wine jar, "He is also a child from a poor family. He has been working as a groom beside me since he was fourteen or fifteen. Come on, today we are brothers, let's have a drink first!"

"Dry!"

Zhao Jinyu and Li Suian responded in unison and raised their glasses.

"Cheers!" Wei Ran, who came a step later, also raised his glass and clinked it with the three of them.

After gulping down the white wine in the bowl in one gulp, Wei Ran immediately picked up the strainer and took the initiative to serve a bowl of noodles to Captain Ma.

"Come on your own, don't be polite. My Ma Jintao's cavalry company doesn't have so many rules!"

Before he finished speaking, Captain Ma had already picked up the chopsticks, picked up a large portion of shaved noodles from the bowl and handed it to Wei Ran.

After some polite exchanges, they sat down again. While Wei Ran was pouring wine for everyone, Captain Ma asked, "Wei Ran, I was too arrogant and treated you as my brother."

"What you said," Wei Ran said while pouring wine for the other party, "Brother Ma, you are flattering me."

"Let's stop being polite. I'm not a cultured person who is always polite."

Captain Ma picked up the bowl by the rim and clinked it with Wei Ran and the others. After taking a sip of the wine, he asked, "Brother Wei, what are your plans next?"

"Brother Ma, if you have any instructions, just tell me directly," Wei Ran said as he also took a sip of wine.

"We are brothers, so there is no need to ask for orders."

Captain Ma waved his hand, picked up a piece of beef offal with chopsticks and put it into his mouth to chew. After swallowing it, he continued, "Brother Wei, if you just want a peaceful life, I will bring you a few silver dollars later. You can go to Shanxi to find my father, buy land and a house, get married and have children, and you will always have a peaceful life."

"Brother Ma, is there any business in killing devils?"

Wei Ran picked up his wine bowl and clinked it with Li Sui'an and Zhao Jinyu one after another. "In the winter of 1937, my brother Jinyu and I killed quite a few devils in Baishan Heishui. In the early spring of 1938, I followed my brother An in Teng County and killed quite a few devils as well."

At this point, Wei Ran drank the wine in one gulp, refilled it, and clinked glasses with Captain Ma again. "Since you call me brother, I won't be polite. You have a big family and a big business here. If you have any business that can kill the devils, take me with you."

"Okay, haha! Okay!"

Captain Ma drank up the wine in his bowl and laughed, "What a coincidence! What we do is kill the devils!"

"Brother, give Brother Wei a box gun!"

Li Sui'an suggested, "He's better with a gun than I am. I learned hand-to-hand combat from him!"

"Not my brother-in-law!"

Zhao Jinyu also chimed in, "Like Brother Wangchuan, Brother Wei can read and write, and is truly worthy of our cavalry company."

"It's hard to say! Xiao Hai!"

Captain Ma patted his forehead and said, "Xiaobai has gone out to drink, let's eat first! After we finish eating, let Xiaobai take you to get a gun and a new set of clothes."

"Brother-in-law, can you also give a horse to Brother Wei?" Zhao Jinyu said, holding the wine bowl.

Unexpectedly, Captain Ma was not as happy as before when Zhao Jinyu suggested this. "Brother Wei Ran, I'm not being stingy. We have a limited number of horses in our cavalry company. We don't have a suitable horse for you at the moment."

"Brother-in-law, how about trying the biting horse in the backyard?" Zhao Jinyu seemed to come up with a "bad idea".

"No, no, no!"

Captain Ma waved his hands without thinking and said with a gloomy face, "That ignorant animal! Damn it, it almost bit off the second captain's ear. No! It must be castrated before it can be ridden."

"That's hard to say!"

Zhao Jinyu seemed to be waiting for this sentence and said, "Give me the biting horse and give my horse to Wei."

"You kid! I knew what you were planning!" Company Captain Ma reacted immediately.

"No, what's going on?" Wei Ran asked curiously.

"About two months ago, our division received a new batch of Qinghai soldiers, and also received a lot of Qiaoke war horses."

Captain Ma said with a headache, "Each company was given two extra horses this time, but when our company went to pick the horses, it happened to be dark and we didn't look carefully, so we brought back an uncastrated one. Let's not talk about this anymore, let's eat first!"

Upon hearing this, Wei Ran and the other two looked at each other, picked up their wine bowls and paused the previous topic.

For the next half an hour, the four of them chatted about all sorts of things over their bowls of wine and noodles. After each of them had three full bowls of knife-cut noodles, the four of them finally finished the big jar of wine.

"Brother Wei, follow us and find a place to rest."

Li Sui'an said as he cleaned up the mess on the table, "I'll take you to find a place to take a shower later."

"Brother Wei, let them arrange for you."

Captain Ma also said, "Jin Yu, go find Xiao Bai and ask him to get a new set of clothes for Brother Wei, and also get two guns, one long and one short, and a saber."

"I'll go get it for Brother Wei myself later!"

As Zhao Jinyu spoke, she helped to carry the ceramic bowl that had been barely emptied of noodles, and left the small room with Wei Ran and Li Sui'an who were carrying bowls and chopsticks.

"Jin Yu, I didn't have a chance to ask just now."

Wei Ran was holding a pile of bowls, chopsticks and empty wine jars as he walked towards the yard where the kitchen was located and asked, "Do you know how Brother Hu and squad leader Xiaohu are doing now?"

Upon hearing this, Zhao Jinyu, who had just been immersed in the joy of reuniting with an old friend, couldn't help but froze.

After a brief silence, Zhao Jinyu sighed and said, "I have been exchanging letters with Sister Shiyi over the past two years, and the news about Brother Hu and Squad Leader Xiaohu also came through her letters."

"What do you mean?" Wei Ran asked immediately.

"Ugh!"

Zhao Jinyu put what he was holding on the steps, asked him and Li Sui'an to sit down next to him, then took out a pack of cigarettes, took out two and gave them to Wei Ran and Li Sui'an.

"Sister Shiyi said in her last letter"

Zhao Jinyu sighed, "The Japanese in the Northeast are getting more and more violent. The Sun sisters have been helping the Anti-Japanese United Army pass on intelligence in the past two years. At the beginning of this spring, they brought a letter from my eldest brother."

"Where are the others?" Wei Ran asked.

"other people"

Zhao Jinyu slapped his thigh and took a big puff of his cigarette. "Brother Hu and squad leader Xiaohu have lost contact since the beginning of spring. Sister Hongxia left a letter saying she would go to Langcaozigou to find them, but she also lost contact later. It's the same... We don't know whether they are alive or dead."

"What did you say?" Wei Ran was stunned.

"Wait a little longer"

Zhao Jinyu picked up the pottery basin again while talking, and said worriedly as she walked, "Sister Shiyi's letter will be delivered in the middle of every month. Let's see if there is any letter from them this month."

Hearing this, Wei Ran and Li Sui'an looked at each other, picked up their bowls and plates and followed.

"you"

Wei Ran opened his mouth and said, "I just heard the company commander and Jin Yu call you Wangchuan?"

"yes."

Li Sui'an smiled bitterly and muttered to himself, "Wangchuan, Li Wangchuan, Wangchuan"

"You haven't been home in the past two years?" Wei Ran asked after a moment of silence.

"no"

Li Sui'an shook his head and said, "I dare not go back. If I hadn't met you, no one would know my name is Li Sui'an. They only know that my name is Li Wangchuan. Li Sui'an, Li Sui'an, died in Teng County."

(End of this chapter)