War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 495 Take it apart and cover it?
After a short rest, Wei Ran and Gail devoted themselves to the work of clearing the snow again, and even the two patients, Dorian and Kang Tan, came to help do some work within their capabilities.

"Uncle Kantan, something is wrong." Gail pushed out a bunch of dead branches from the bear cave, "There seems to be another layer underneath."

"There's another floor?" Kang Tan was taken aback, "The basement?"

"may be"

Gail said uncertainly, "Victor and I have been cleaning down the corner, but it's almost one meter deep, and there are still a lot of burnt wood and dead branches underneath."

"And a wall of charred logs appeared around it"

Wei Ran with a gas mask on his face responded in a muffled voice, "The stone wall is outside the log wall. It seems that there is really a basement here."

"Looks like we're in luck"

Kantan handed the dead branches and charred wood pushed out by Gail to Dorian behind him, and the latter put them into the sled trailer and sent them to the tent as spare fuel after collecting a car .

"Uncle Kang Tan, how about we remove the collapsed upper layer?"

Gail, who was already able to stand up in the bear cave, leaned out half of his body, pointed to the slope above his head and said, "If we continue to clean it down, it will definitely collapse. Why don't we just tear it down and build a new one on top?" As long as the roof is covered with snow, even if the Germans stand nearby, they may not find us."

"Recover a layer?"

Wei Ran and Kang Tan were stunned, the former finally knew the origin of the shelter, while the latter was taken aback by this huge project.

But soon, Kang Tan nodded, "It sounds okay, but."

"We have a lot of time don't we?"

Gail simply beckoned Wei Ran to climb out, then pointed to the slope on the wall and said, "It's not difficult to dismantle him, at most it's just a little more troublesome to clean up, then we can dig out half of it and use canvas Cover it, and then proceed to other work slowly, so at least you don't have to worry about the campfire being discovered."

"Victor, what do you think?" Kang Tan looked at Wei Ran.

"I think it's a good idea."

Wei Ran agreed without thinking, and then pointed to the two logs in the distance to remind, "Don't forget that we still have a chain saw, and there are two logs that are thick and long enough outside, just like Gail That being said, the hardest part might just be the cleanup."

Kang Tan looked up at the night sky where there were still no stars, and finally nodded, "In this case, we will demolish this place now!"

Hearing this, Wei Ran immediately breathed a sigh of relief, but Gail had already rushed to the tent and fetched two pickaxes.

"Still have the strength?" Wei Ran asked after taking the pickaxe.

"Of course!" While Gail was speaking, he had already poked the sharp corner of the pickaxe into the gap in the remaining stone wall and began to exert force.

Seeing this, Wei Ran followed suit, found a gap on the other vertical wall and began to exert force.

As the saying goes, destroying is always much easier than building. The two of them only took a little over ten minutes to remove a few stones, and the ruins of the building that had persisted for an unknown amount of time collapsed completely with a bang.

After the dismantling work was completed, everyone returned to the warm tent, each carrying a lunch box containing broth to fill their bellies.Then they sat on the thick, soft and warm bearskin, and discussed the next construction plan with great energy.

Compared with Wei Ran, who is full of physical strength and spirit, these few mouthfuls of broth are absolutely crucial to Gail and others who are in urgent need of nutrition. This job of building a shelter seems to have become the three of them invisibly. The driving force for people to live, and the substitute for Quentin's worries.

In the following time, Wei Ran followed the three weak but energetic Frenchmen and devoted all their energies to the cleaning work.

Clean up building debris, sleep and rest, drink broth, eat baked potatoes, and even change kantain's medicine.After the hour hand of the captured watch on Kang Tan's wrist turned four and a half times, most of the foundation had been cleaned up.

Today, around the foundation, which is about four meters wide and five meters long, there remains a circle of stone walls less than 30 centimeters high. Inside the stone walls, there is also a circle of wooden walls lined with logs that go deep into the ground.

Further inside, there are all kinds of charred wooden beams, planks, and even some pieces of furniture that can barely be seen.

"I'm more and more curious about what happened here at that time." Gail bent down and picked up the barrel of a double-barreled shotgun, looked at it, and threw it far away with his hands.

"Decades later, some people will wonder what happened here"

Wei Ran muttered to himself, cleared his throat and asked, "Uncle Kang Tan, how long do we have to rest?"

Hearing this, Kang Tan rolled up his cuffs and looked, "Half an hour, in about half an hour, we can rest for 10 minutes."

"Speed ​​up." Before Wei Ran finished speaking, he had already hugged a bunch of dead branches that brown bears used as bedding and handed them to Dorian.

"Your physical strength is really good." Gail muttered enviously, panting, picked up a bundle of dead branches and handed it to Kang Tan.

Under the busyness of everyone, the pine branches laid by the brown bears for hibernation were gradually cleaned up. Immediately afterwards, a mixture of frozen soil and charcoal began to appear below.

"Look what I found!"

Gail let out a cheer after lifting a scorched wooden board. Under the dim beam of the flashlight, a rusty iron bucket half a meter high and thick as a washbasin was buried in the frozen soil.

The end of the iron bucket exposed the dirt, and there is also a rusty handle, which can obviously be opened.

"Lift it up, it can just be used as a fireplace." After Kang Tan finished speaking, he said regretfully, "Forget it, you don't need to lift it up, just put it there and see what else is around."

"Let me open this iron bucket first and see what's inside."

Gail handed the flashlight to Wei Ran, grabbed the handle with both hands and pulled it hard, and took off the lid with a bang.

When Wei Ran pointed the beam of the flashlight at the inside of the iron barrel, what he saw were tools such as rusty nails, axes and saws.Just from the carbonized ax handle and saw handle, these things must have been burned in the fire for a long time to become like this.

"It doesn't look like it's useful." Gail dropped the cover in disappointment.

"This iron bucket is the best harvest"

Wei Ran looked around, looked up at the snowflakes still flying above his head, and suggested, "Can we take a rest first, and discuss adding a cover to this basement to move in? Then we can hide Slowly clean up the dirt and coke inside."

"Victor is right"

Kang Tan didn't care if it was the rest time they had agreed upon before, he greeted Wei Ran and Gail to leave the foundation, and returned to the tent not far away together.

When Dorian poured everyone a cup of hot pine needle water, Kan Tan had already used four small wooden sticks to make a "kou" character in the snow, "This is the remaining basement of that house, and it is also the future Our home all winter."

Everyone looked at each other and smiled, Kang Tan picked up the fifth wooden stick and put it on, changed the word "mouth" into "day", and continued, "As Victor proposed, we have a chain saw, and there are two sticks next to it. Logs. I was thinking about it just now, we can saw the relatively thin one vertically in half, and put one half in the center of the foundation as the main beam."

"Why don't we use a whole one? It must be much stronger." Dorian asked, sniffling.

"I can't lift it"

Wei Ran, Gail, and Kang Tan gave the same answer in unison, and Kang Tan even took the initiative to explain, "Even if the thin one has a thick waist, even if we only use half of it, we can get it over if we want to It’s also physical work.”

"That's right." Dorian rubbed the back of his head.

Kang Tan smiled and continued, "The remaining half, we will divide it into two and use it as a sub-beam."

Before he finished speaking, Kang Tan added two more horizontal lines to the word "日" placed on the ground with wooden sticks, "Then there is the thickest log. We saw it into planks and lay it on top, and finally put the top of the log on it." The tent was disassembled and spread on it as a waterproof, so that even if we keep burning the stove in the future, we don’t have to worry about water leaking.”

"And the branches we cleared out before can also be spread on it to keep warm." Gail suggested on the side, "After we move in, we can slowly dig out the soil and charcoal in the basement and spread them on it. "

"I have a question," said Dorian, the youngest, again. "Gentlemen, have we forgotten the need for a door?"

"It does need a door, I almost forgot."

Kang Tan took a sip of the warm pine needle water, "We can reserve a place first, and after we move in, slowly dig out the door. Before that, it's enough to leave a temporary entrance and exit."

The next construction plan was agreed upon in a few words, and everyone rested around the stove for a while. Gail immediately moved out the double chainsaw, and was the first to walk towards the two crossed logs not far away.

Kang Tan took a dead branch and measured the size, and then used an ax to cut in the middle of the log that was as thick as a 200-liter oil barrel. "Saw it from here, this length is enough."

Hearing this, Gail immediately started the chain saw, and with the help of Wei Ran, he saw it in half easily.

After getting acquainted with the usage of this antique chain saw, the next work is much easier for Wei Ran, who is getting started for the first time.With the cooperation of him and Gail, the two cut logs were sawed into three to four centimeter thick boards.And the slightly thinner log at the bottom was also split into two vertically, and one of them was sawed vertically again into two equal logs.

While the two of them were working as carpenters, Kantan and Dorian, the two patients, were not idle. They had already used an ax and a pick to carve out a depression in the stone wall around the foundation to fix the three main beams. .

(End of this chapter)