Hearing a very touching revolutionary story

During the Long March, I served as the chief of staff in a company of the Third Army Corps. There are only nine cooks in our company. The cook's squad leader is surnamed Qian. He is short, dark-skinned and doesn't talk much. He is from Ji'an, Jiangxi. The deputy squad leader's surname is Liu. He is of medium build and easy to tell jokes and is from Xingguo, Jiangxi. Lao Wang, who carries water, is also our fellow villager. Unfortunately, I have forgotten the names of the other people.

At that time, we were marching and fighting every day. In order to reduce the burden on the cooks, the superiors stipulated that each person could only carry forty kilograms. However, they all laid an ambush and put the food in copper pots. Everyone weighs sixty or seventy pounds. During the party group meeting, they also gave me advice, saying that I only cared about the cooks and did not care about the soldiers. If we could not get food at the front, what would the troops eat? They were all thinking about the soldiers. I had nothing to say, so I had to let them choose more.

On the march, the cooking class was the most lively: pots clashed with bowls, knives clashed with pots, and there was a loud clanging sound; deputy squad leader Liu also told jokes and sang folk songs from time to time, making everyone laugh. . As soon as the soldiers saw it, they said, "Look, our troupe is here!" They were so happy that they even whistled and ran away, as if the sixty or seventy-pound burden was not placed on their shoulders.

However, the cooking squad was the hardest during the march. When the troops rested in the middle of the journey, they had to boil water for the commanders and soldiers to drink; when they were camping, they had to set up stoves, chop firewood, wash vegetables, and cook, and only slept two or three hours a night.

After the troops entered Guangxi, there were few families in the mountainous areas and food supply was difficult, which made the work of the cooking class even more heavy. They often have to climb several mountains and go to the front of the army to buy millet. The skin of millet must be ground before it can be eaten. Once, they found a small stone mill from somewhere. The squad leader was afraid that he would not find the stone mill in the future, so he spent money to buy it from a fellow villager. So the cook added this stupid guy weighing 130 to 40 pounds. Later, the deputy squad leader picked up a broken sieve and a broken dustpan on the road, and also picked them up. From then on, the cooking troupe was no longer called a theater troupe, but was called a "little mill" by the soldiers.

Soon, the troops blocked the enemy on the southeast mountain of Tucheng, Guizhou, and our company stood firm on the forward position. The cooking team was separated in the back, and several times they sent people to deliver food but were beaten back by the enemy. The soldiers had not eaten all day and night, and the deputy squad leader was so anxious that he circled around the stove. He murmured with several cooks for a while, and then said to me: "Chief Secretary! Let me and Lao Wang deliver it again!" He carried the rice on his back and left with Lao Wang. We stood on the top of the hill and watched them. We saw Lao Wang in front and the deputy squad leader behind, running quickly past the enemy's blockade. Just as we were about to applaud, the enemy's light machine gun rang out, Lao Wang fell down, and then the deputy squad leader also fell. The sergeant and I felt sad for a while, thinking that they had died. Unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, they came back again. The deputy squad leader joked: "We went to the Lord of Hell to report, but the kid wouldn't let us in!" It turned out that they fell on purpose to deceive the enemy. Thanks to their vigilance, they finally delivered the food to the position, ensuring victory in the battle.