War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 397 A Lunch

On a small piece of luxurious sunny space, with the sound of the crisp shutter, Teacher Jaina seemed to have got rid of all the burdens in an instant, and she seemed to have nothing to worry about.

"Mr. Jaina, where is your home?"

After putting away the camera, Wei Ran asked, "I'm not sure if I can send the photos back for you, but as long as there is a chance, I will definitely try my best."

"Yaroslavl"

While speaking, Jaina took out the cigarette case from her pocket again, unfolded it, took out a pen, wrote a series of detailed addresses on it and handed it to Wei Ran.

"If there is a chance, I will help you send the photo back, but I can't guarantee it"

"Don't force yourself"

Teacher Jaina waved her hand without waiting for Wei Ran to finish speaking, lit another cigarette, took a deep breath and said with a smile, "Even if I wait until the end of the war to give it to them, maybe I will receive it by myself." Photos sent or sent in the past.”

"I hope so"

Wei Ran turned to look at the children in the distance who were still playing games with Ivan and his friends, and changed the subject, "Gianna, tell me about those children."

"Big kid or kid?"

"Aren't they all children?"

Hearing this, Jaina smiled, "Most of them are children from nearby villages, some of their parents are guerrillas, some are Jews, some are still alive, some are dead or missing, and some are not even alive. Knowing who his parents were was just something we brought back from here and there when we were looking for survivors."

"It must be very hard to take care of these children, right?"

“It was really hard work”

Jaina took another sip of the cigarette, "Fortunately, Ivan and the others help, and those little guys are also very sensible."

"I never thought about sending them away?" Wei Ran asked tentatively.

"Where are you going?"

Gianna, who was standing in the fence, puffed and asked, "We are already surrounded by the Germans in this forest. Even Alisa's plane can only take two children away at a time, and her The place where the plane can fly is not necessarily safer than our place. More importantly, instead of wasting precious fuel to transport these children, the plane should deliver more supplies to the various guerrillas hiding in the forest."

Wei Ran couldn't help but sighed, "I think things are too simple."

"Tell me about you!" Teacher Jaina changed the subject, "Why did you come to this kind of place for an interview?"

"We must let more people know what you are doing, right?" Wei Ran gave an impeccable answer.

"Perhaps so."

Teacher Jaina didn't delve into this matter, but reminded, "But our place may not be as safe as you think."

Wei Ran smiled when he heard this, "I'm not a reporter who can only press the shutter as you imagine."

"I hope so"

Jaina snuffed out the half-smoked cigarette, put the remaining half back into her pocket, pushed open the fence door and said, "Okay, comrade reporter, I'm going to teach the children."

After taking the cloak handed by Jaina, Wei Ran glanced at the back of the other party, and then at the potato field next to him that was bathed in the sun, then took a step, walked towards the distance empty-handed, and kept secretly Ivan who is looking this way.

The latter didn't seem to be surprised that Wei Ran didn't help him get the boat cap back, and after such a short time, he seemed to have adjusted his mentality, and at this time he was assigning tasks to the few friends under him.

"What are you going to do?" Wei Ran asked curiously, looking at the engineering shovels in these people's hands.

"Digging cellars and shacks"

Ivan immediately replied, "We need to dig out as many cellars and shacks as possible before the land freezes."

"How about I help you?" Wei Ran asked with a smile.

"Are you here to help us?" Ivan thought for a while, then turned to his companion and said, "Sergey, go find a shovel for comrade reporter."

"Use mine!" The young man named Sergey directly handed the engineer shovel in his hand to Wei Ran, then turned around and ran to a shack in the distance, and took another engineer shovel back soon after. .

"Ivan, does anyone still live without a hut?"

"Everyone has it"

Ivan, who led the team down the creek, explained, "Uncle Slava asked us to prepare a backup camp, so that we won't even have a place to hide after the Germans find this place."

"Can the Germans find this?"

"They often send planes flying overhead," Ivan said with a bitter face. "Once they find out, they will drop bombs, and sometimes throw incendiary bombs. One of my good friends and his mother were burnt." dead."

"But we won't make it easy for them!"

The boy named Sergey said, "As long as they dare to drop bombs, we will tear down their railroad tracks. As long as they dare to chase into the forest, they will never want to go back!"

Hearing this, Wei Ran couldn't help but shook his head, don't look at the high-spirited and swearing words of this little guy who is at most fourteen or five years old, but as an adult, he knows how big the danger is, and he can easily guess What a price they pay every time.

In the chatting with each other, Wei Ran followed Ivan and others along the stream downstream for more than an hour, and finally stopped near a slope.

To his surprise, there were already several people of the same age as Ivan here. These small guerrillas piled up chopped firewood on a small flat ground, and a few men in shabby clothes At this time, the little girl requisitioned ropes woven from bark, bundled the dried firewood into bundles, and then hung them to a pine tree for fixation.

And the little boys a little further away were using an ax to peel bark from several pine or oak trees, stacking them neatly together, preparing the necessary building materials for building the shack.

"Let's dig here!"

Ivan pointed to the shallow pit already dug on the ground and explained to Wei Ran, "Just dig it like the shack you lived in last night, and it doesn't matter if you can't finish digging today, we still have a lot of time. "

"Did you dig these out?" Wei Ran asked curiously. There are more than a dozen half-dug shallow pits distributed on this sunny slope, and some farther away, there are even some shacks that seem to have been built.

"Of course!" Ivan said proudly, "We built this backup camp together!"

Having said that, he pointed to the almost withered yellow flowers in the small area at the bottom of the slope where the sun can be seen with the shovel in his hand, "We also planted those Jerusalem artichokes in summer, wait half an hour The moon will probably mature, and we plant a lot of Jerusalem artichoke and potatoes in this forest, although their yield is not much, but at least they can help us survive the winter."

"Isn't this ghost ginger?"

Wei Ran secretly slandered, the so-called Jerusalem artichoke that Ivan said was the ghost ginger that his grandma's family used to pickle pickles every winter.

In the words of Grandpa Wei Ran, when you shit in summer, you can wipe your butt with a piece of ghost ginger and throw it against the wall, and you can pickle a large vat of pickles in winter.

Although this description made Wei Ran feel disgusted when he heard it for the first time, it also proved its high yield from the side.

And not to mention the war-torn era, even in the time and space where Wei Ran is located, this thing is almost flooded in Europe, and because it is easy to grow, there is almost no cost, and many sunflowers sold in Russian flower shops are not lacking. Toy flowers to pretend to be.

"Don't look at them, it's not time to harvest them yet." Ivan said something that Wei Ran had only heard from Teacher Jaina not long ago, and then he waved the shovel in his hand and started digging vigorously .

Seeing this, Wei Ran didn't ask any more questions, chose a shallow pit at random and started digging.Digging this shack is fairly simple, basically a three-meter square plus a ramp that is one meter wide and two meters long.

If you look at it from the top down, it looks like an "A". As for other requirements, the deeper you dig, the warmer it is. Other than that, there are no technical requirements. Even for a child like Ivan, as long as he is willing to Work hard, and you can dig it out slowly.

As shovelfuls of slightly damp soil were thrown out of the shallow pit by Wei Ran, the little girls who were busy bundling firewood and putting them on the tree also came to help, silently using the firewood, who did not know where to find it. Put the excavated soil into the sacks, and then spread them on the edge, increasing the excavation depth in disguise.

Compared with these half-grown children who have not had enough to eat for a long time, Wei Ran's digging speed is undoubtedly much faster.But even so, after more than an hour of continuous digging, he was already out of breath, and even beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.As for Ivan and others, they basically dig for half an hour and then rest for ten minutes.

Seeing that Wei Ran finally poked the engineer shovel into the pit, Ivan and the little boy named Sergey immediately pulled him out together.

"Drink some water!"

Ivan took out a German kettle from his bag and handed it over, while the little boy named Sergey took out a black bread the size of a face from his sack, broke it, and gave it to Wei Ran And Ivan shared a piece each.

The action of this distribution of bread was like a signal, and the rest of the guerrillas also surrounded them, some took out a few boiled bird eggs from their bags, and some took a few apples or some health food. Some unrecognizable wild fruit, or simply a handful of pine nuts, and a little blond girl took out a roasted and burnt snake from her bag.

"Victor, you caught that snake last night." Ivan took the initiative to introduce. After more than half of the morning's physical labor, he finally stopped calling Wei Ran a comrade reporter.

"Would you like to try it?" The little girl took the initiative to tear off a long piece of snake meat from the cigarette and handed it to Wei Ran, and said rather ostentatiously, "I added salt when roasting."

Looking at the drooling children around him, Wei Ran declined the animal protein in the opponent's hand, wiped the mud off his hands, opened his canvas bag and took out the only four boiled potatoes, "Eat it, I don't like meat, but this bread tastes good."

"Ms. Jaina made it with ground acorns and pine nuts, and added mushrooms!"

The little girl in charge of distributing the snake meat kindly reminded, "Although I admit that it tastes good, you'd better not eat too much, or else you won't."

"Otherwise, I won't be able to poop." Seeing the little girl's confused face and not knowing what to say, Ivan simply answered the truth as if rushing to answer.

"Ivan, you are disgusting!" While speaking, the little girl broke off the scorched head of the snake and threw it to Ivan.

"I am telling the truth"

Ivan didn't notice anything wrong, he took the ferocious snake head without even looking at it, and threw it into his mouth, chewing it with a loud clicking sound.

"Do you usually eat these things?" Wei Ran laboriously tore off a small piece of dark brown hard bread and asked, "Where is the fish you caught in the morning?"

Seeing Wei Ran struggling to chew the bread with an exaggerated expression, these little guys all laughed out loud.Ivan also tore off a small piece of bread and threw it into his mouth. Then he explained, "Those fish are eaten by brothers, sisters and the wounded, but at night, everyone can drink fish soup, and sometimes You can have mushroom soup or broth."

"Brother Shula caught a wild boar last month." A little girl couldn't help but smile when she spoke, "That pig is really delicious, I've never eaten such delicious meat. "

"The fox caught last week is also delicious, but the smell is a bit big." Another little boy whose name Wei Ran didn't remember said, "And the rabbit my father caught the day before yesterday!"

"forget it!"

The little guy named Sergey shook his head quickly, "The rabbit your father caught was not as big as the mouse I crushed to death last night, so I was given a bowl of soup, not to mention meat, not even bones."

The little girl who was in charge of distributing the snake meat before said solemnly, "The meat is for the younger brothers and sisters and the wounded."

Looking at these little guys who were about to quarrel, and seeing all kinds of wild fruits and hard, almost unpalatable bread as their arguments were quickly wiped out, as well as those four boiled potatoes the size of eggs, Wei Ran became more and more angry. It's a pity that the metal book couldn't take out the food box full of chocolates, and at the same time, I was thinking about whether there was any way to get some meat for these starving little soldiers.

(End of this chapter)