War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 529 The T-34 Rediscovered
During the probing chat, the off-road vehicle pulled Wei Ran and others to the sugar beet field where he had been.

Although it was midnight, the place was brightly lit by high-power camping lights. More than [-] soldiers were lining up in a horizontal line with an interval of two meters, holding metal detectors in this vegetable field, and went back and forth. Shuttle back and forth.

As far as the eye can see, many triangular flags more than one meter high have been planted around the muddy pond.On the side of the road, in addition to a few trucks and two crawler excavators parked by the side, there were also many locals who stayed up late at night and came to see the excitement, pointing and chatting.

"Those little flags mean there's a metal reaction under the dirt"

Battalion Commander Kirov in the co-pilot position explained while pushing the car door, "The darker the color of the flag, the deeper the burial."

"Your actions are really fast." Wei Ran sighed sincerely.

"After all, it is our job," Kirov said bluntly, "and someone helped us pay the compensation for the owner of this land."

"There should be a price for these, right?"

Wei Ran, who was also standing beside the car, lowered his voice slightly. Since the other party just said so clearly, he didn't intend to hide it.

"certainly"

Kirov seemed to be addicted to cigarettes. While responding to Wei Ran, he lit a cigarette again, "Our main task is to find the Soviet Red Army soldiers and their combat weapons left on the battlefield. The former was buried, and the latter Send it to the museum. But every time you dig up some scraps left by the Germans."

"It is indeed a win-win situation." Wei Ran gave a pertinent evaluation, and then continued to ask, "When do you plan to start digging?"

"Excavation work will wait until after dawn"

Kirov glanced at his watch, "It's [-]:[-] in the evening, and the excavation work will start in about eight hours. What we have to do is to collect as much detail as possible during the last eight hours." Check it out, and make preparations for cleaning up unexploded bombs by the way."

Speaking of this, Kirov paused, glanced at Wei Ran, and then at the silent Siwa next to him, "What about you? Stay or go back to rest?"

"stay"

Siva, who didn't talk much along the way, said in a rare way, "Mr. Kirov, no, Comrade Kirov, is there anything I can do? I can drive an excavator, use a metal detector, and even help out. Meals, any job, and whether my grandfather is here or not, I want to do something."

"Can you drive an excavator? Can you use a metal detector?" Kirov asked in surprise. "Are you a digger?"

"I'm not a digger"

Siwa couldn't help showing a bitter smile on his face, "I learned about excavators and metal detectors when I was working in the mine."

"What about you?" Kirov didn't rush to respond to Siwa, but looked at Wei Ran again, "Do you decide to stay and wait, or return to the city?"

"Stay here"

Wei Ran secretly pointed his middle finger. The other party came all the way in the middle of the night. The other party must not have just wanted to let him see the excavation site. Even if he wants to go back to the city at this time, the car will break down in the next moment.

"Since you are all willing to stay, let's rest in the tent over there."

Kirov patted Siwa on the shoulder affectionately, "As for the things you want to help, there is no rush. After dawn, I will let you be in charge of driving an excavator."

With doubts in his heart, Wei Ran got into the tent by the roadside, randomly found a folding bed and sat down, and Battalion Commander Kirov, after making arrangements for the two of them, simply turned around and left. Where did you go.

"Mr. Victor, thank you for your help." Siva who was in the same tent said abruptly.

"You're welcome, it's an honor to help Mrs. Valentina."

Siwa fumbled out a stainless steel wine jug from his pocket and took a sip. After a moment of silence, he asked, "Is my grandfather really here?"

"Probably right here." Wei Ran gave an ambiguous answer.

"She's dying soon." After Siwa finished speaking, he took another sip of wine.

"Mrs. Valentina?" Wei Ran looked at the other party in surprise.

Shiva nodded, "She was trying to hold on. The second afternoon I met her, she was sent to the hospital. The doctor said that the analgesics had little effect on her. Maybe she persisted. It won't be long before"

"You should have gone to see her sooner." Wei Ran finally told the truth that made the other party regret it.

"I really should have gone to see her sooner"

Shiva rubbed his face, "I wanted to visit my mother after she passed away last year, but my own life is also a mess, I always think about waiting."

The tree wants to be quiet but the wind keeps on
Wei Ran sighed half a sentence in Chinese that the other party didn't understand, but he didn't mean to explain. Instead, he lay on the folding bed with his head up, and under the cover of his coat, he took out the hip flask in the metal book and took a sip.

In the blink of an eye the next morning, two more military trucks pulled more than a dozen soldiers and several civilian excavators over to replace the companions who had been busy all night. After a quick breakfast, Xiwa got the driving excavation machine work.

Amidst the roar of the excavator, buckets of mud were lifted from the place where the flag was planted around the mud pond, and the drainage pump started working immediately, pumping the smelly sewage to the flood drainage ditch on the opposite side of the road.

Similarly, the position where the flag was planted in the beet field beside the busy mud pond was also dug up bit by bit by the soldiers who rushed over.

Contrary to Wei Ran's expectations, the first thing to be dug out was the wreckage of a No. 4 tank, and even the location where it was unearthed was a hundred meters away from the mud pond.

Just looking at its location, Wei Ran knew that it was exactly the tank that was destroyed by Roman at the beginning, and then used as a cover by the stretcher soldiers.

Before the tank was completely dug out, the Leopard tank also revealed its clues.

However, with the expansion of the excavation area, everyone can see more clearly that the condition of this Leopard is not even as good as the Panther [-] tank that was discovered first. Not only is the turret gone, but even the road wheels on both sides of the chassis are incomplete. Incomplete, even the engine only has a rusty main frame left.

Seeing this, the soldiers who were busy here immediately gave up their work. Under Kirov's command, they moved their positions to the direction of the mud pond, and their work was excavated by the civilian vehicles that came with them in the morning. Machine takes over.

Around noon, less than 10 meters away from the edge of the mud pond, a nearly complete No. [-] assault gun exposed the top of its head.

Kirov glanced at the printout of the application report that he had been holding in his hand, and immediately called the surrounding soldiers and Siwa to start digging around the No. [-] assault gun.

Soon, a No. 34 tank with remnants of paint also showed its small head.Not long after, they finally saw the tank turret of the T-76-[-]!
"Hatch wrench!"

A soldier yelled at the top of his voice, and immediately someone handed over an L-shaped wrench that Wei Ran was very familiar with.

An additional reinforced steel pipe was put on, and under the watchful eye of Wei Ran, two strong soldiers unscrewed the rusty hatch cover together.

"Corpse! There are two corpses!" The soldier who had just shouted for a wrench looked inside, and immediately gave the most critical information, "There is no remaining ammunition within the visual range."

"That's right!"

Kirov stuffed the information in his hand into Wei Ran's arms, and issued an order while clutching the console, "Draw this T-34 out in an hour, and pay attention to whether there are scattered parts around, Peter, get ready for the coffin and Mass ceremony."

"Received!" On the radio channel, a magnetic voice responded.

Soon, more soldiers gathered around. Amidst the roar of excavators, the soil around the T-34, which had not been repaired until its death, became less and less, and a neat slope appeared behind it. And all the way to the country dirt road.

Soon, two army green bulldozers rumbled down from the truck, using a complex pulley force splitting device to connect the tank with their rear towing hook and an excavator as an anchor together.

"beep--!"

Amidst the sharp whistle, the surrounding soldiers immediately left the excavation site, and by the way cleared away the surrounding crowd. Even the excavators creaked further away under the command of a platoon leader.

Soon, the two bulldozers began to exert force at the same time, and in the black smoke from the exhaust pipe, they easily dragged the T-34 tank buried nearly two meters underground to the country road.

Almost at the same time as one soldier released the steel cable used for dragging, the other two soldiers had already turned on the long-awaited high-pressure water gun and began to clean up the soil contaminated on the outside of the tank.

Under the strong water flow, the soil attached to the tank turret was peeled off, followed by the soldiers who were busy around, or the ordinary people who were watching, all saw the remaining white paint slogan on the turret—" In order to take back the Soviets U can rot".

When the high-pressure spray gun stopped working, Wei Ran deliberately went around to look at the front. As expected, there were two bullet marks overlapping the shield of the heading machine gun, and even the barrel of the heading machine gun was gone.

While he and Siwa waited patiently, the locked hatch of the driver's seat was opened by the soldiers, and a bright light was hung on the hatch of the turret.

With the light and sunlight, Wei Ran and Xiwa saw the skeleton sitting in the driver's seat at a glance.

For more than half a century, his lower body has been completely buried by the mud accumulated in the tank, but even so, the tank cap on his head is still intact.

In addition, near Vajim's neck, there is also a Moscow brand vodka bottle suspended by a heavily corroded thick wire.The mouth of the wine bottle was tightly sealed with wax oil, and there seemed to be something vaguely inside.

And behind this corpse, in the center of the turret, Wei Ran can still see the corpse of the commander Roman, beside him, there is also a wine bottle hanging, the only difference is that the wine bottle is fixed on the wire , just two more medals.

After getting the permission of Battalion Commander Kirov, Siwa carefully removed the glass bottle near the driver's seat, wiped off the dirt on it with the hem of his T-shirt, and immediately saw a group photo in the bottle.

"This is a photo of my grandfather Vajim and my grandmother Valentina!"

Siva pointed to the photo in the wine bottle, and said quickly, "I saw this group photo at her house! I saw it when I was very young! When she was sent to the hospital a few days ago, she asked me to go home Send her this photo! She said that this photo is usually placed by her bedside!"

Battalion Commander Kirov and Wei Ran looked at each other, then raised their voices and said, "Please get Comrade Vajim out of the tank!"

(End of this chapter)