War Photographer's Notebook

Follow Sophie back to the room with glass windows outside. At this time, the two sides of the long table are already full of children who are singing along with Qiqi.

At Sophie's sign, Wei Ran sat down next to the oldest child, and waited patiently for everyone to finish singing. Then Sophie picked up a fork and tapped the lid of her lunch box lightly. "Partners, I believe everyone has noticed that we have a new friend."

"I know! He's Victor! Dominic's older brother!" A little girl who was in the teething period replied with a smile on her face, "Dominic told us just now."

"That's right"

Sophie put down the lid and the fork in her hand, "Victor is indeed Dominic's brother, and he is also an experienced fighter, so from today onwards, the boys will be under the command of Victor, do you have any opinions?" ????

"no!"

The big blond boy sitting next to Wei Ran was the first to agree, and then extended his hand to Wei Ran, "Hello, Brother Victor, I'm Horst, and I'm from the same school as Dominic, but I Two grades above him."

"Hello"

Wei Ran shook hands with the other party politely and solemnly, without any thought of treating him as a child.

"Before you came here, Horst had been instructing the boys to work." The girl named Heike sitting opposite helped explain.

"The girls are directed by Heike"

The girl named Qiqi smiled and introduced, "Also, Horst is Heike's boyfriend. They have been dating for more than a month. We are even considering whether to arrange a separate prison for them..."

"Qiqi! Shut up!" The girl named Heike stopped Qiqi's gossip in embarrassment.

"I don't have any objections," Horst replied with a smug face.

"Shut up too!" The girl named Heike grabbed the rag from the table and threw it at the little boyfriend sitting opposite.

"Okay, stop arguing."

With a helpless expression, Sophie picked up the fork and the lid of the lunch box and tapped it lightly. After everyone quieted down, she continued solemnly, "About whether to arrange a separate cell for Horst and Heike, etc. tell you later."

After intentionally waiting for the young men and women sitting on both sides of the long table to laugh, Sophie continued, "In short, starting today, all the boys will be under the command of Brother Victor."

"Yes!" All the boys including Dominic responded in unison.

Seeing Sophie looking straight at him, Wei Ran thought for a while, and said in a joking tone, "In a short time, Horst's command will be the main one. Horst, don't try to put all the Leave everything to me to go on a date with Heike."

"You make fun of me too." Heike, who was sitting opposite, rolled his eyes helplessly, obviously already used to such a situation.

After the simple joke, everyone began to eat our meal together. During the dinner, Heike and Horst also introduced all the boys and girls present to Wei Ran.

Although Wei Ran could barely remember everyone's names after breakfast, he at least remembered the appearance of a little boy named Jonas. Kan, ask yourself to bring him a birthday present.

...

Of course, it is undeniable that after just one breakfast, everyone completely regarded Wei Ran as their friend.By the way, each of them introduced the work they are responsible for.

A total of 22 children over the age of 10 are considered to have a clear division of labor.In general, the youngest children are responsible for tending the flowers and plants they plant in the helmets and picking up eggs and taking out the trash.

The older girls led by Heike are responsible for washing clothes, preparing food, cleaning and other tasks.The older children led by Horst were responsible for "manual work" such as fetching water, carrying fuel, milking goats, and catching fish.

As for Sophie and Qiqi, the two youngest girls are no more than 19 years old, one is in charge of external communication, and the other is in charge of taking care of the fire for heating.
With the task of cooking.

Of course, at the breakfast table, Wei Ran was also assigned by Sophie to his job - guarding and patrolling, as well as protecting everyone's safety.

After breakfast, the children cleaned their lunch boxes spontaneously without any instructions, and then got busy with their respective jobs.

According to what Sophie just said, the whole morning is working time, and only after lunch until the sun goes down, everyone has time to rest.

After some inquiry, seeing that there was nothing he needed to help with, Wei Ran simply put on the Soviet cloak again, and wandered around the ruins of the castle surrounded by the moat and the periphery of the moat.

It was also this wandering around that made Wei Ran more aware of the horror of the quartermaster Captain Letz.

Just above the basement used for living, on the edge of the ruins of the main building of the castle, in a chicken coop surrounded by a fence woven with branches, on the thick and soft reeds lay six old hens busy laying eggs.

In addition, beside the chicken coop, there is also a goat that I only saw for breakfast, and a half-sized lamb that can move freely.

But compared to these living creatures, the most important thing is that in this piece of ruins covered by weeds, dead vines, and shrubs, as long as you lift a piece of wood or a pile of reeds, you can see an oil drum.

On these 200-liter oil drums, conspicuous bright yellow paint is used to carefully write whether they are filled with flour or vegetables, or bacon or sausages and seasonings.

Even, under the cover of a piece of reed, he saw enough coal to burn for a whole winter!
And under the half-broken wall that was less than ten meters away, when he lifted a khaki tarpaulin, there were at least fifty or sixty boxes of German canned pork piled up here.

Thought this was the end?Far from it!

When he noticed that he was "taking stock" of the material reserves, the 16-year-old boy named Horst immediately took him for a walk in the forest along the bank outside the moat, and unreservedly took the needle next to the sluice. A small half-buried stone house in the woods is revealed.

There is nothing else in this stone house without windows. In the cold and dark space, the two floors are filled with 200-liter oil drums!
"Here... how many are there?" Wei Ran asked dully.

...

Hearing this, Horst pointed to the number written in chalk on the wooden door and the manual oil pump hanging on the door and explained, "There are 57 barrels in total, all of which are full. Listen to Miss Sophie, Letz Uncle has been preparing these fuels since 42, when he was the quartermaster of the Labor Corps."

This is such a veteran oil guzzler...

Wei Ran couldn't help grinning, 57 barrels of fuel oil, 200 liters per barrel, is that much? It's really a lot, liters of fuel oil, it's estimated to have caught up with the reserves on the fortress.

But think about it the other way around. For that fortress alone, Captain Letts can get out a barrel of fuel every three days. It just started, and now it is late November, these 9 barrels of oil are probably not much to him as a quartermaster.

Seeing that Wei Ran was dull and silent, Horst closed the wooden door and led him back while saying, "Uncle Laitz also helped us store a lot of medicines, but the Americans bombed us two months ago. Although the medicines are still there, Sister Qiqi???s mother was also killed. She used to be a nurse and knew how to use those medicines. Now that she is gone, we dare not get sick.???

"Medicine? Qiqi's mother?" Wei Ran was stunned for a moment, then stopped and asked, "Houster, do you know where those medicines are?"

"You have to ask Miss Sophie about this."

Horst said with a bitter face, "Since a new idiot hid a bottle of Pervitin last month and almost ate himself to death, Miss Sophie put away all the medicines."

...

Wei Ran grinned, keeping the matter to himself, changed the subject, and walked back with Horst, chatting about what they were doing here.
life here.

Although it was unavoidable to be fed a mouthful of green dog food by this half-sized boy, Wei Ran also found that the life of these young men and women here is quite like a peach blossom garden. It seems that after passing through that waterway, they Has left the war forever.

But correspondingly, these children living in the "Peach Blossom Land" inevitably worry about their friends and family members who are still in the flames of war.

However, the only thing they can do to help this war and their families in the flames of war is to try to survive until the end of the war.

Walking to the edge of the stone bridge across the moat, Horst gathered another partner, each carrying a tin bucket, and went to the forest not far away to chop firewood.

After wanting to help but was declined again, Wei Ran simply took advantage of their ax to chop some pine branches and took them back to the room where he rested last night before the other party left. something to do.

First clean up all the ashes and cinders accumulated in the fireplace, Wei Ran bundled pine branches together as a broom, and carefully cleaned this not-so-big room.Even the black and dirty Dutch pot and the two greasy American gasoline stoves were scrubbed clean with sand and plant ash, and brought to the river, where they were carefully brushed with reeds dipped in water. .

Taking advantage of the opportunity of cleaning, Wei Ran locked the door of the room, stepped on the table and pushed the wooden roof.

...

As expected, almost the same design as the mill floor.After he put his finger into the gap between the two planks and moved a block of wood, the planks that sealed the roof did push up.

However, when he climbed up to the roof with a flashlight, he found that in this tight space that was also blocked by wooden boards above his head, except for a single bed and a chair, there was a table next to the wall. , There are still two sets of radio stations!

One of these sets is a set of radio broadcasting systems with the German .b1 radio station as the core and various components.The thick antenna sticks to the wall and extends all the way up through the wood above the head.

Although I don't know which radio expert came up with such a set of things, this thing can also be called a black radio station.

In later generations of China, this kind of equipment was usually used by crooks to set it up on the roof of the building for illegal broadcasting. Under the name of Midnight Emotional Channel, it illegally sold various counterfeit medicines with cornstarch as the main ingredient.

But obviously, the set of black radio stations hidden here is definitely not just a tool for selling wild medicine.

Look at another set that is also placed on the table next to the wall, but it is a bc1000 radio station used by the US military company for communication!

But without exception, these two sets of radio stations were all kept disassembled. On the not-so-large table, there were also some tools and a few scrapped electronic tubes scattered around, plus several disassembled "National Radios" .

Looking up at the top of his head, Wei Ran hesitated for a while, put the chair on the single bed, stepped on it carefully, and tried to push the roof.

But this time, the ceiling above his head remained motionless, and even after he got closer, he could vaguely smell the sour smell of fermented bird droppings.

Decisively gave up the idea of ??????continuing to find out.After Wei Ran restored the chair to its original shape and wiped off the footprints, he continued to rummage through the room without giving up.

Unfortunately, apart from a set of human generators under the bed, the only thing he found was two packs of cigarettes and a kerosene lighter under the blanket.

Not daring to delay further, Wei Ran returned to the downstairs room the same way, and carefully locked the ceiling above his head.

After wiping off the footprints on the table and moving them back to their original position, he opened the door, then drew the curtains and opened the window, letting the bright sunlight shine into the already temperatureless room.

After such busy work, the not-so-big room was cleaned a lot, the secret on the roof was also discovered, and it was noon.

By the time he walked into the room with the long table at mealtime, the children who had been busy all morning had already sat together again

And the lunch boxes in front of everyone are already filled with food.

In contrast, the meal at noon is relatively good. The lunch box contains a hot traditional German stew, but the pork is replaced with fish.

On the tray were a few slices of bread and a little jam, as well as the usual slices of bacon and half a sausage.

After talking and laughing like breakfast, the children finished their fairly sumptuous meals. These children spontaneously packed up their own tableware, and then some took out a book from the bookshelf, and some took out a game of chess. Call your best friends, sit at both ends of the long table, and enjoy the warm sunshine in the afternoon leisurely.

...

And at the position by the window, the girl named Qiqi is skillfully manipulating the sewing machine, and amidst the clicking sound, she is concentrating on processing a piece of fabric whose outline has not yet been seen.

Beside another window not far from her, Sophie also set up an easel, holding a palette in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, continuing to outline the kneeling lamb on the canvas with a concentrated expression???even though there was no No goats.

"Sophie, do you have time?"

Wei Ran leaned over to the window, looked at this young girl with a Prussian hazelnut hair and a youth league uniform and asked in a low voice.

"Of course, what's the matter?" Sophie asked back, without stopping the paintbrush in her hand at all.

"Let's chat alone?"

"Go to your and Dominic's room." Sophie raised her wrist and looked at the dial. "Ten minutes, how about ten minutes?"

"I'll wait for you at church"

After finishing speaking, Wei Ran got up and left the warm room, turned around and walked towards the collapsed church.

Through a window, Sophie glanced at Wei Ran's back. After a moment of contemplation, she continued to use a slender brush dipped in paint to paint the rising butt of the little lamb.

In the collapsed church, Wei Ran walked into the room that was cleaned up before dinner, lighted up the gasoline stove that had been scrubbed unhurriedly, and then put the kettle filled with water on it.

Almost at the same time as the pot of water was boiling, Sophie also knocked on the door and walked in.

"It's getting cleaner here." Sophie was already sitting on a chair while speaking, putting her hands towards the gasoline stove in the center of the table.

"Always find something for yourself to do." While speaking, Wei Ran picked up the scalding kettle and poured a cup of hot water for the other party.

"Come on, what do you want from me?" Sophie asked, holding the enamel cup with both hands.

After a little hesitation, Wei Ran asked carefully, "In the morning, Horst told me that there used to be a nurse here?"

"right"

Sophie sighed, "It's Qiqi's mother, and also the school doctor of the university where my mother used to work. Of course, she is also a member of the White Rose. Two months ago, the American plane lost to this church A bomb and she was killed trying to save a child."

"So what about those medicines?" Wei Ran also asked while holding the cup.

"What are you going to do?" Sophie looked up at Wei Ran, frowning and asked, "You want to find Bo Fei Ding? Don't waste time, those things have been lost by me..."

"I will do some simple wound dressing," said Wei Ran. "Of course, if the tools are complete, surgical sutures will be fine."

Seeing the girl sitting opposite looked at his mutilated right hand suspiciously, Wei Ran lifted it up and shook it nonchalantly, "I sewed this up myself."

"The craftsmanship is really not that good." After Sophie finished speaking, she suddenly couldn't help laughing.

"At least I kept my other four fingers"

Wei Ran held the cup again, "Take me to take a look, so that if I need to use it, I can at least know what medicine we have."

"Okay, in my room, come with me." Sophie stood up happily holding the cup.

"don't worry"

Wei Ran pointed to the top of his head, "When I was cleaning, I accidentally found a broken radio broadcasting device on it."

...

"Can't you leave us some secrets?"

Sophie rolled her eyes,
As he walked out, he explained, "We were going to do something by broadcasting, but we just learned how to use those things, and the damn Americans dropped a bomb, and those devices were blown up. Now We'll just have to wait for Uncle Kasten to come, he's the only one who can fix those things."

"It's dangerous to do this." Wei Ran picked up the medical bag he had picked up earlier, and reminded him as he followed the other party, "You will be located and found within a few broadcasts."

"Uncle Kasten said the same"

Sophie sighed, and explained while opening the locked door, "But we have to do something, in this forest, no, the entire Siegfried Line, do you know how many people are as big as Dominique?" Children are fighting this war. If we don't do something, they'll all end up here without a name."

"Let's take a look at those medicines first"

Wei Ran wisely changed the topic, he didn't want to try to prove whether the method of these young ideal attention can really save those young people who are still in the forest, but history can always prove something.

Sophie opened her mouth, took a step aside, and pointed to the single bed against the wall, "Remove the bed and the box under the bed, and lift the floor, so you can see the medicines. "

Hearing this, Wei Ran stepped over, pulled out the box under the bed, and then moved the single bed with Sophie's help.

Finally, the floor that was the size of a door panel was lifted, Wei Ran glanced at Sophie who was standing at the door, and then walked down holding the flashlight.

"Is this an operating room?"

Wei Ran asked without turning his head. Compared with the abundant living supplies outside, the medical supplies stored in this space are really pitiful. In the not-so-large stairwell, there are only two large medicine boxes in total. , plus a few medical kits with the US Army logo on it.

"I guess"

Sophie, who didn't follow, replied, "We had a lot of medicine reserves, but they were all blown up by American planes, so there's only so much left."

After carefully looking through the medicine boxes and medical kits hanging on the wall one by one, Wei Ran finally hung his own medical kit on the wall.

Stepping on the stone steps back to the room, Wei Ran covered the floor, and with Sophie's help, he put the single bed and those boxes full of various things back to their original positions.

"All curiosity satisfied?" Sophie asked jokingly.

"At least I can help after someone gets hurt"

Wei Ran spread his hands, "There is one last thing, should we inform Mr. Letts about the two chain dogs last night?"

"Don't worry, I've already informed him."

Sophie said confidently, "Okay, please come out, I'm going to lock the door to draw, this is my rare time in a day that belongs to me."

Hearing this, Wei Ran wisely did not continue to ask Captain Letz when the other party would notify him, and simply walked out of the other party's room.

"Only Qiqi and I know about the radio station." Sophie leaned against the locked door and whispered, "You also need to keep this matter secret."

"Don't worry, I won't let anyone go up, let alone tell anyone." Wei Ran also lowered his voice and made a promise.

"Thank you." Sophie paused and continued, "Also, don't mention those medicines in front of Qiqi."

"I know." Wei Ran nodded again.

"Our safety is in your hands"

As Sophie said, she took out a bottle of phenytoin from her pocket and stuffed it into Wei Ran's hand, "This is Dominique's epilepsy medicine. If you live with him, help me take care of him."

War Photographer's Notebook