Arrived for many years｜Nicaragua, sweet heat and military service

"Well, guess what page is in the Nicaraguan newspaper this time?"

"Front page? The last one in El Salvador was given so many pages of special reports!"

You have tasted the marrow. Complete the fourth overseas performance, your fifth service, remove the needle badge pins of the navy white armor-style uniforms -- four pins on the left shoulder, two pins on the left chest, and four small sea anchors on the right chest plus the famous brand. The needles and the white leather of the legs were added two more needles each. After the clothes were washed, the atmosphere was loosened.

The fleet crossed the equator, crossed the Pacific Ocean, and reached Central America. A few days ago, the organization you belonged to set a record for the longest unloaded supply in the history of the Republic of China's navy. Although it is not up to you at all, just like this road and the waterway ahead.

And you almost forgot that a few hours ago, someone almost passed out.

Corinto Port ¹ , Nicaragua, 46th day of sailing.

"Hey, are you feeling better?"

"Fuck you don't know, I was really dying just now. I kept whispering for help and no one answered."

"I did, fuck, I secretly sent a message to the platoon leader, but like a ghost hitting a wall, Peter Pan refused to pass it on, and kept sending it back to ask 'what? What's the matter?' Damn , what can you do when everyone is about to fall?"

"Yeah, I've been saying beside you, 'Breathe, breathe!'" A said, smiling brightly, like the warm-hearted attitude of this warm climate in the Broken Isthmus of Central America.

"Fuck me, I just kept taking a deep breath, hoping to survive, but the fucking national anthem has been playing for me for so long..."

"Did you know that your face was pale after taking over. It's terrifying."

"I don't know what would happen if you really fell down?"

"Hahaha it will probably make the headlines, and you won't have to get off the ship for the next two months."

"Maybe the Master Chief will want you to hold ² until the next country."

"You're still breathing heavily, are you giving birth to a child?"

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

A group of soldiers of honor corps gathered in Mingchang's Sailor Restaurant.

We arrived at the port. We changed into standard blue work clothes as required. The light blue shirt has an inconspicuous ironing line. The left sleeve has a class badge, which represents the first bar of the second soldier. It is the armband of the wing to which it belongs ("Naval Corps of the Republic of China", white characters on a black background, with a scarlet sea anchor sandwiched symmetrically), and the color of the trousers is a dark denim blue that can completely hide the steel cable stains, with a bright surface. The fake leather black shoes were covered in a sticky ash.

It's hard to imagine that half an hour ago, we were dressed in shades of pure white that could teach slender, susceptible people a nervous breakdown.

As usual, the lunch after a performance in Hong Kong is the white rice that nakedly teaches people's desires, sticky and boring, and is poured with steam-heated conditioning packets; the taste is black pepper beef brisket, Dongpo pork, and curry. There are three choices of chicken, but in terms of taste, at best, it is a reconstituted piece of meat with varying degrees of softness and rottenness, and a combination of various flavors, spices and chemical products.

We have completed the public performance and the ceremony of welcoming foreign officials to the ship, and we are waiting for the collective leave of absence permission to disembark and release the wind; we can freely go up and down the deck, and we can lean on the railing to try to see the boundary between land and tide and outside the port gate. The villages and towns and the foothills of the mountains are full of landscapes that have not been seen for a month and a half. The berthed warship was so close to the land, so steady, that although it swayed slightly with the waves, it was unbelievably steady, and it made us feel at ease and happy.

There is a lingering smell of honey in Port Corindo, and there are turbine exhaust gas, seawater scouring filth, and anti-rust compound paint that have emerged from the top of the ocean, but have also subsided. The calm and enveloping smell may be exported sucrose, refined flavors, or chemical materials that are fascinating but poisonous. Soldiers in the ocean do not know what it is, but only know that it is a smell that can only be found on land. The land mass is static and unfloating, just like the air above the land mass, it is stable. Only the smell of land can linger.

Equally lingering is the humid heat of Central America's sticky skin.

The service information received earlier in the day was that the military ceremony in Nicaragua was not open to the public, only a welcome performance was held at the pier, and then visiting officials and expatriates were invited to visit. The highest-level official in attendance was Vice President Omar Halleslevens . For the gunmen of the ceremonial team, it is a standard service of a performance exercise and a military salute.

Dressing (white armor, belt, white leather, upper needle, leather shoes, duty gloves), taking gun, confirming equipment (steel helmet buckle, sea anchor emblem, bayonet, gun ear, gun sling, buckle belt, butt bottom plate), wearing On the deck (“If you get any oil stains, you will die!” the cadre said), landing, the port fell behind the huge crimson cargo hold, the spearmen warmed up and rehearsed, but what they didn’t expect was that the ceremony was delayed, enough It took about an hour and a half to officially go on the field to play the gun. There may be flaws in the performance process, but Tai Ban is a sporadic error such as inaccurate marksmanship. After the performance, board the ship directly, form a team at the entrance, and prepare to receive officers in a double-column formation of military salute. At that time, the navy band will play the national anthems of the two countries.

With a temperature of more than 30 degrees, airtight white military uniforms, rehearsal and high-intensity performance exercises, this group of people has not drunk water for nearly two and a half hours.

I stood in the first row and came third from the front. The platoon leader who was also a knife officer did a rehearsal at the front of the queue and gave complete instructions: after the password is broken, three-action gun salute, the national anthem will be played in the middle, and the salute will be maintained. , After the meeting, the password was cut off, patted, stomped, and shot. Everything was business as usual, but the heartbeat in my chest was a little too loud. The administrator of the fleet in charge of the on-site process gave a reminder, and the vice president was ready to board the ship.

"Don't move, the duty begins!" Under the command, the spearmen kept silent, locked their eyes, stood at attention, and entered the meditative world of the subtle interaction and pulling of their own muscles. The smell of honey on the land was itching, the weather was humid and stuffy, and bundles of sweat converged along the texture, cascading down my back vertically, shunting, passing through the lumbar fossa pressed by the belt, and flowing through my abdomen.

He straightened his chest, held the military salute with his right hand, and stared at the giant cargo hold in front of him with glued eyes, reducing the number of blinks, amplifying the sharpness of hearing, and waiting for the password. There was a commotion in the lower left corner of the fixed line of sight, and sweat was profuse. Several groups of reporters rushed to take their seats with the cameras on their shoulders, their eyes fixed, and the intercom of the non-commissioned officer of the Secret Service with an automatic rifle beside him rang a few words, bit by bit. His sweat was steamed out of his body, "One more time, it's coming, it's coming...", there was more and more commotion at the left end of the line of sight, and the officials gradually positioned themselves, "What sound? Someone is stomping a gun. ³ ?"

I thought I heard it wrong, but there were indeed two stomps from the left, "What are you doing, stomp, the vice president is coming soon." I cursed inwardly, but the slight stomps continued, In groups of two, "Come on, no way."

Before going to sea, the fleet berthed at Zuoying Port, and the cadres above warned the spearmen that if they were unwell at the time of duty, the warning signal was to stomp the gun. After cutting the gun, wait for the order, do not move rashly, and do not faint.

"What's the matter?" I hissed with the corner of my left mouth, staring at the giant storage compartment in front of me. "Call me the platoon leader..." The voice came from the spearman on my left, the senior who was one step ahead of me in the Marine Warfare, "What's the matter?" Go to the front of the platoon and tell the platoon leader that C is suffering from heat stroke.” Staring at the giant cargo hold in front of me, several reporters passed by carrying cameras, and I hissed and growled with the corner of my right mouth. There was no response, "Call the platoon leader!" "Why, what's the matter?" Peter Pan on the right asked in a low voice, "Call the platoon leader, C is about to collapse, pass the word on."

The message rustled to the right. A moment of silence.

"It's going to die..." The cry on the left turned into a subtle low-frequency wailing, "Take a deep breath, take a deep breath." "Hold on!" "The (word) has passed." The front stood upright and added in a low voice to comfort, "It's really going to die..." I glanced at C, a terrifying death white, "Is (the words) passed on? Go! " rustling, "it's too late, hold on."

"what?"

"The platoon leader said, hold on!"

The sergeant of the Secret Service, who was in charge of the boarding gate, stood by with an automatic rifle with a sight, heard the commotion among the spearmen, and after looking at the situation under the ship, he only said: "It's too late to change, deputy. The president is here, hold on." Honey sweat and deathly silence mixed into the procession, and the spearmen's hope that their comrades would be spared suffering came to nothing. But the heart is also set, can only carry on.

Intensive shutter flashes covered up the sound of leather shoes stomping on the steel ship ladder, reporters were running around, and the secret service walkie-talkie was chattering frequently, and the diplomatic envoys and government officials were greeted and positioned, and the ceremony began. The platoon commander gave the salute password, cut off the final sound, drew his gun, and saluted, "It's starting, you have to hold on.".

The navy band played, Nicaragua's national anthem "Salve a ti, Nicaragua" for one and a half minutes, the national anthem of the Republic of China for one and a half minutes, and the M1 Garand salute in the left hand. The sweet and greasy wind swayed and caressed, the golden spears were sprinkled and fluttered, and the unsheathed bayonet polished before playing, infinitely overwrote all the bright edges. And we also listened carefully, listening to Companion C's slightly mixed breath, each other's fine breathing, and the continuous intrusion of shutter and vocals.

Nearly 100 officials, officers and foreign nationals passed by one by one, and the gunmen of the ceremonial team displayed pure white clothes, snow-white and mentally tight gun slings, reflective team badges, small sea anchor team emblems, gunmen nameplates, and iron gun sling buckles. , the straight line of the gun salute, the lacquered and polished military helmet on display, and the black military salute gun; and there, and us.

From the first day of training for the mission, they always instilled that when we were on duty, we showed the voyage fleet, the navy, and the country; but at that moment, I don't know what we showed. We were dehydrated and dripping water. We stared straight ahead like blindly, without thinking much. We evened the breath in our chests and steadied our left arm, which was trembling slightly from holding the gun in the air for a long time. We showed our anger, and we also tried to support each other by our side, survive the heat, and complete our duties.

Afterwards, in the dining room, we could use this to ridicule each other ("What the fuck is the ⁴ ? You'll fall if you get an official." "Breathe, are you giving birth to a child?"). During the month's voyage, there will definitely be a bunch of jokes about heat stroke among the ranks, but that's because we all remember the day we were on duty, "Help me call the platoon leader, help me call the platoon leader!" Whispering, and the unresponsiveness of being able to look straight ahead, we know that in that duty, the sense of powerlessness and the sense of solidarity that supported each other was so truly diffused in the gunmen array.

Because of knowing this, laughing and laughing, but no one regards C as weak, only we know how intense the pressure of being on duty for a few hours is. Moreover, when he was about to faint from heat stroke, he survived the test of two national anthems and countless camera lenses with a gun, and completed the task without any flaws.

We remember the terrifying moment that we managed to get through together with a joke.

There aren’t many images of taking over officers in those months, but after returning to China, I found a photo taken by the media in El Salvador (now cut off diplomatic relations). Although it wasn’t the one where Nicaragua was full of sweet and greasy heat, the overall atmosphere of the scene was quite different. Far.

Seriously, all the corps of ceremonies look the same, but I just can recognize it at a glance, I can't say why, even though I already don't recognize which of us is them and which is me.

We were very young at that time, in our early twenties, we went to sea together for training, slept on a boat for several months, and left many memories. The so-called youth of compulsory military service is probably like this. If it goes well, I think it may be an opportunity to write down the days of sailing after arriving ashore for many years.

Notes

1. The official Chinese translation of the place name seems to be " Corinto ", but it still follows the transliteration used to write voyage diaries at that time.
2. Due to the fact that the duty requires a long time to hold a gun and perform actions, arm strength is the focus of daily training of the ceremonial team. On weekdays, punishments are mostly calculated and executed by pushing up. Do a long support in the push-up prep position.
3. The bottom of the butt of the military salute is covered with a layer of iron bottom plate, so it is only necessary to lift the salute lightly and stomp it down to make a metal collision sound.
4. The ceremonial team had a special training in heat resistance. They stood at attention in the sun for an hour and a half wearing full winter clothes and full clothes to simulate the extreme heat and heat that might be encountered on duty.