Village chief Luo Ya, who is in her early 40s, less than 1.6 meters, is a mother of eight children. Like all the natives here, she has brownish-black skin, a swarthy face, is always barefoot, and her legs and belly are covered in filthy black mud. But she was very prestigious in the village, and women and children held her in great respect.

"Tell me something...... "Hunger makes her face yellow, but you can always hear her laughing. After the team entered the Pug camp, she liked to go to the wooden house where the brothers lived to chat after finishing the village chores. She always carries a cigarette rolled from leaves in her hand, and she is very talkative, and she has a smile on her face when she speaks.

She was extremely skillful and capable in playing flint and light a cigarette, took a deep breath, and according to Lingyu's request, she chatted with everyone about the situation of Songge Mountain.

Before the war, in order to get more food, the whole village was concentrated in the collective farms of the town of Ekan across the mountains, and the men and women lived separately. From the age of seven or eight, children must participate in collective labor. Although the labor was hard, I was able to eat enough at that time. But the war destroyed a few raids by the Annam army in the Songgo mountains, destroying collective farms and destroying peaceful life.

The men went to war, and some of the women, with their children and the elderly, took refuge in the mountain stream. Now, all men over the age of fourteen and fifteen in Pag Village must join the army. There were only women and children in the village, and the old people of the village were all killed in a sweep by the Annam army, which blew up the cave where they were hiding.

"It's a mistake!" Luo Ya threw the cigarette butt into the fire, rubbed his hands, rolled another cigarette with leaves, and lit it with a "click" before solemnly emphasizing, "The people of Annam are not bad to the common people, they are really not bad." Several guerrillas hid in caves, and the Annamites did not know that there were all the old people of the village......"

After a few days of food shortage, Luo Ya went to the village to reassure the households, and the village was relatively quiet. After the Island Guard brought food and equipment from Chanthaburi, the women and children were able to feed their bellies, and the villagers were in trouble again.

That night, the rain suddenly stopped, but the wind blew all night. Ivanov's Island Guard was on duty. When Yu Song got up from afar to inspect the post, he saw more than a dozen guerrillas coming down from the mountain, "grunting" and stepping on the mud and sneaking into the wooden houses. In a short time, the whistling wind was mixed with the faint moaning of one after another, the shaking of the bamboo bed, and the sound of men and women playing trumpets......

"Isn't it forbidden for men and women to have sexual intercourse? No wonder every family has so many children......"

Ivanov shook his head inexplicably, gave Yu Songyuan a cigarette, and the two lit it together. "Don't listen to rumors, the Khmer Rouge has never forbade people to live as husband and wife......" Yu Songyuan did not feel anything wrong, during the war, these natives were left with women and children, and without the help of the mountain people, they could not survive at all.

The next morning, the sky was clear and the air was fresh, which was a rare eye-catching day. Ivanov sent two members of the team to wait for Lingyu to ride the elephant and protect her from the elephant. Ten members of the Island Guard and eight elephants were left behind to build the camp and be in charge of guarding the camp.

As soon as Lingyu left, Xiao Niu'er and her sister Niu Rao were responsible for taking care of the lives of the brothers' squad and the Island Guard. Jinxiu and Xiao Xiangyue's complexions gradually improved, and as soon as they had the spirit, they couldn't stay idle. Huang Jinxiu is responsible for cooking, and also teaches Niu Rao and Xiao Niu'er to cook Chinese food. In the war-torn years, there was no one growing vegetables in the basin. Huang Jinxiu took more than a dozen women to the mountains to pick tender leaves.

"You're not fully recovered, don't be tired." Li Haichao saw that Jinxiu's face gradually became bloody, and he was in a good mood, so he kept admonishing.

"There's nothing here, you can't eat without food. I found a small yellow apricot tree on the hill with bitter leaves, and the locals did not dare to eat it. But scalding it with boiling water to dry, it's very delicious...... "Huang Jinxiu always felt that the mother and daughter were dragging everyone down, so she wanted to make a good job.

Li Haichao was very surprised, Songge Mountain belongs to the tropics, and there are also ginkgo biloba. was not sure, so he asked Zhuang Yushu to do a special test. It turned out that this small yellow apricot tree is indeed a type of ginkgo. The leaves are completely edible after processing, and they are dried after being blanched, and the taste is not bad, a bit like dried Chinese beans.

After breakfast that day, Zhuang Yushu commanded the soldiers of the Island Guard to carry small diesel engines and chainsaws into the mountains to cut wood and bamboo. Liu Guodong and Zhuang Yushu chose a flat plateau about seven or eight hundred meters from the village, and Ivanov organized the soldiers of the guards to clear the bushes and decided to build a new camp here.

It is smooth and level, about a metre higher than the village, far from the creek, and has an all-stone floor, so the villagers could not afford to build wooden houses here. Lin Tao, Zhang Wuchang and others commanded the soldiers of the Island Guard to cut down bamboo to build waterways according to the "drawings" designed by Liu Guodong and Zhuang Yushu. The village of Pag used to drink water from a creek in the middle of the basin, which has been polluted and is not drinkable at all.

Yu Songyuan, Li Haichao, and Liu Guodong walked on the muddy and slippery jungle land towards the main peak of Songge Mountain.

In this humid forest, blood-sucking leeches are everywhere. The team's combat uniforms were soaked in medicine, and they were still scared. Although it was during the war, both sides may have been tired, and the Annam people did not cross the Songgo Mountains to clear the siege throughout the winter. The guerrillas also did not attack the stronghold in Taorat, and the two sides formed a state of confrontation across the mountains.

The jungle is dimly lit, and the ground is covered with moss, making it slippery and difficult to walk. Although the whole of Khmer was covered with hunger during the war, it was a paradise for plants. Tall pine and cypress, red sour branches, red sandalwood, tsubaki and other precious tree species can be seen everywhere. In addition to cardamom and all kinds of exotic trees, there are more kinds of ferns.

In the jungle, except for the sound of forest waves, there is a dead silence, and you can't hear the noisy sounds of animals and birds murmuring in the Lancang rainforest. Because, almost everything that can be eaten has been eaten by people.

They climbed from the dark jungle to the top of the mountain, and it was not until almost noon that they reached the top of a small hill seven or eight hundred meters above sea level. The clothes were already soaking wet, and they were soaking wet. From here, he was already able to observe which side of the mountain, Liu Guodong climbed a large tsubaki tree that was several people thick, and established an observation position. After confirming their safety, Li Haichao and Yu Songyuan also climbed the canopy.

White clouds and mist rope around the jungle, and you can faintly see a small town hidden in the jungle among the mountains on the eastern edge of the distant Songgo Mountain. On a cliff at the back of the town, there is a group of white buildings. According to intelligence, this white building is the fortress of the Annam Army on the front line of Songgo Mountain - Minh Ratchasima!

Under the main peak of Songge Mountain, there are dozens of large and small peaks. The peaks of these peaks hide countless observation posts on both sides of the mountain. This mountain is a guerrilla zone between friends and foes, and it can really be described as a dog's tooth. After marking the target, the three of them quietly slid down the tree. It was already evening when I returned to the village of Pag from the jungle in secrecy.

The construction of the camp is progressing rapidly. The stomach was no longer hungry, and the new camp soon had a new atmosphere.

In just a few days, Ivanov's team cut down more than 100 trees from the jungle behind the bamboo forest, and with the help of elephants, transported them from the edge of the village to the high ground in the basin. Zhuang Yushu used the big bamboo to open up the intersecting section and magically built an aerial canal, leading the spring water from the mountain directly to the new camp. When the "whooshing" spring water gushes out endlessly from the big bamboo, it is really delightful for the women and children of the village.

For half a month, Liu Guodong and Zhuang Yushu commanded everyone to build a large number of buildings. Ivanov and Loya organized women and children to participate in the construction of the camp. Thanks to the help of elephants and the tools brought in from Siam, the project progressed quickly.

When Lingyu and Yang Mingtao arrived again two weeks later with a large amount of equipment and supplies, Pag Village had already taken on a new look. A tall fence was erected, and the gate was tall and imposing, with two large wooden plaques written in English and Khmer with the words "United Nations Working Group Camp". A watchtower was also erected inside the camp, and the soldiers of the Island Guard stood guard at the gates and towers with guns.

It has become a military exclusion zone, and unrelated personnel are not allowed to enter.

The rain still falls from time to time, every two or three days, or torrential downpours or drizzles. However, the heavy rain could no longer drench the team members and villagers, and the new camp was divided into two parts: the village and the team station, about 100 meters apart. The villagers' dilapidated wooden houses were all demolished, and each household was given a brand-new simple wooden house on stilts in the new village, which was both sheltered from the wind and rain.

The biggest change is a big improvement in hygiene. Four public toilets have been built along the creek behind the village, and everyone must defecate in the toilets and not wipe their buttocks with their hands. The excrement was washed away by the stream in time, and the filthy scene of feces everywhere was gone. It is said that in order to change the habit of the villagers wiping their buttocks with their hands, Luo Ya also spent a lot of brains.

Another major change in the course of the week was that the adult villagers and all the children were put on straw sandals. Liu Guodong and Zhuang Yushu picked a kind of extremely tough fine rattan grass from the mountain and woven it into straw shoes. As soon as the women learned, within a few days, most of the people in the village were no longer barefoot. And the Luo Ya family even learned to use chopsticks with the team.

The team also built more than a dozen simple wooden huts on stilts and fenced them off to form an independent camp. The team lived in a tall three-story wooden house on stilts in the center, with the reception room, headquarters and war room on the second floor, and two bedrooms on the top floor.

The large bedroom is for the team to live in, and the small bedroom is where Lingyu and Niu Rao, Xiao Niu'er, Huang Jinxiu and Xiao Xiangyue live.

The day Yang Mingtao and Lingyu arrived happened to be a rainy day, and the light rain was as thin as a cow's hair, endless. They saw that the new camp was new inside and outside, and the epidemic diseases in the village were also controlled. The whole thing was going according to plan, and the couple was very happy.