Episode 6 The spring breeze does not pass the jade gate

On 21 April, the army column drove out of Lanzhou, and along the way the tanks and armored vehicles broke down continuously.

The army could only march during the day every day, and it must be stationed at night. Because of the bad road conditions, some sections are asphalt roads and most of the roads are dirt roads. Moreover, whether it is asphalt or dirt roads, they are all potholes, and it is easy to get into trouble when marching at night. And judging from the current situation, there are already too many breakdowns just for daytime marching, and if you march around the clock, the breakdowns will have to be doubled or tripled.

The current model is that the army marches during the day, and the repair company tries to pick the most urgent repairs first, so as long as it can make do with the road and not fall behind. At night, the repair company could not be idle, taking advantage of the presence of the army, to repair some of the problems that had been put on hold during the day. Often one busy is all night, and the next day you have to follow the march and repair.

From Lanzhou to Zhangye, the failure rate of armored vehicles and tanks has been as high as 70 percent on the more than 500 kilometers of sandy and dirt roads, and the failure rate of tanks has been as high as 85 percent, and almost every tank has broken down. Some tanks also broke down more than once. According to the advice of the repair company, Xiang Xiaoqiang ordered that all tank and tracked vehicles should not be driven continuously. Every 4 hours of driving, whether it is broken or not, it must be stopped for maintenance for half an hour. Otherwise, it will be more troublesome to repair it if it is broken.

In this way, the failure rate is greatly reduced, but in this way, the overall marching speed has not increased. The only benefit is an increase in the life of the tank.

From Lanzhou to Zhangye, the distance of more than 500 kilometers, if you take a car, even if you don't speed, it will take eight or nine hours. But such a huge armored division actually walked for six days. The division advanced an average of less than 100 kilometers per day. The failure rate of wheeled vehicles is very low, but you can't get rid of all the tanks and move forward on your own, right?

In the past six days, Xiang Xiaoqiang has been furious, scolding, and constantly urging reinforcements to the rear. - Reinforcement of the repair team. And all the officers and men of the army were also depressed. The continental climate has a large temperature difference between day and night, and during the day, it is covered in sand and sweat alkali, and the wind blows. At night, the temperature plummeted, and I shivered from the cold. There is no place to take a shower along the way. There are always some grains of dust and sand in the meals eaten. This can't be helped. But even the water to drink is there, no matter how careful you are, the sand and dust can always run into the kettle. I don't know how to get in.

Speaking of water, let alone bathing, even the basic water for the troops is almost not guaranteed. First of all, more than 10,000 people have to drink water, and they also need water to cook three meals a day. And the water is still small. The bulk is water for vehicles. So many tanks, armored vehicles, self-propelled guns, cars, motorcycles, in addition to consuming fuel and water every day, are not ambiguous. This is not as good as the Eastern Battlefield, where even if it is the North China Battlefield, you will always encounter small rivers and small ditches when you drive more than ten miles. And here, the Gansu Silk Road, is simply one of the most water-scarce places in China, at least. In the past 500 kilometers, there have not been a few rivers with water, and there are very few settlements, so it is normal to see no people for dozens of kilometers. If there are no people, that means you can't even find a well.

In this way, every time a village was discovered, the troops had to drive all the fuel and water trucks into it and pump water from the well. Not only was the water truck full, but Xiang Xiaoqiang also ordered the empty fuel tanker and empty oil drum to be filled with water. Although people can't drink it if it is mixed with fuel, it can be used for vehicles.

The groundwater along the way is often bitter and unpleasant, and the sweetness of the eastern groundwater is completely incomparable. Even if the water is boiling, there is a thin film floating here, so you have to pour it out carefully before drinking.

All this added up to the lowest morale of the whole division.

Thankfully, we were able to eat tropical fruits every day, and cigarettes were doubled, which boosted morale. Originally, Xiang Xiaoqiang wanted to give more chocolate to boost morale, but after a day of experimentation, he found that it didn't work: he was greasy after eating too much chocolate and drinking too much water. And the water was so tight that I had to give up.

……

From Zhangye to Jiuquan, dozens of kilometers north of the highway is the Tengger Desert. Every spring, strong winds from Inner Mongolia pass through the Tengger Desert, forming sandstorms that cover the sky.

This is a bitter pain for the 1st Armored Division of the People's Guard. The previous journey was just dust, ordinary wind and sand, but now it is a real sandstorm. When the sandstorm came together, the sun could not be seen, the wind was crying and howling, and there was a miserable scene between heaven and earth.

The light suddenly changed from day to "dusk" and then to "night". All the vehicles had their lights on, and they could barely reach the butt of the car in front of them. Originally, it was slow enough, with a speed of only a dozen kilometers per hour, but now it is stuck in a sandstorm, and the speed slows down again, and the speed is only a few kilometers per hour.

As a mechanized army, in the face of sandstorms at this time, the advantages and disadvantages are reflected separately. The disadvantage is that the failure rate is doubled, and the failure caused by sand and dust increases sharply. But the advantage is that the soldiers can hide in their vehicles and do not have to be directly exposed to sandstorms like ordinary infantry units.

Naturally, the military trucks were tightly covered with canvases, and the top surface of the armored vehicles was also covered with tarpaulins, and the soldiers hid under the tarpaulins, listening to the "crackling" sound of the side armor plates being hit by flying sand and rocks, as if they had been strafed by bullets. At this time, no one in the car could hear each other, but they saw the tarpaulin on the top of their heads slowly pressing down, because there was too much sand in the recess. At this time, the soldiers inside have to beat the tarpaulin to make the sand fly away.

The commander of the tank was also retracted into the turret. But the tank driver can't close the observation window, and then he can't drive. At this point, the driver's window becomes a passage for a large influx of sand. The Heavy next to him is responsible for cleaning the sand and covering important areas with a raincoat to prevent sand from entering the mechanical parts. Every once in a while, you have to throw the sand out of the car with your hand. But even so, there are still a large number of tanks that have broken down due to too much sand and dust entering and waiting to be repaired.

Whenever the sandstorm abates, the repairmen wear raincoats and carry toolboxes and trot all the way, shuttling through the obstacles like worker bees.

Whether it's a car, an armored car, or a tank, the appearance is terrible. The paint on the surface was so scarred that it was as if it had been beaten with sandpaper, and it was almost impossible to see the original color.

Fortunately, at this time, reinforcements from the rear of the repair unit arrived. This time, three repair companies came, which, together with the original repair companies of the 1st Armored Division, formed a reinforced "repair battalion". This can be regarded as relieving the shortage of repair manpower, and the whole division is moving faster.

……

The troops made a difficult three-day march through the sandstorm-ravaged section, and it was not until they reached Jiuquan on April 30 that they left the Tengger Desert behind. With the direction of the wind this spring, although there is still a lot of sand and dust in the wind, it will not be a sandstorm.

Escaping from the clutches of the sandstorm, coupled with the huge increase in repair manpower, the number of kilometers advanced per day is only more than 100. After Jiuquan is Jiayuguan. The 120-kilometer highway from Jiayuguan to Yumen Pass took one day.

Between Jiuquan and Yumen, there are still some oases, but after passing the Yumen Pass, there is a more barren scene in front of you.

There are clouds in ancient poems: the spring breeze does not pass the jade gate.

Xiang Xiaoqiang has only now realized the meaning of this poem.

The wheels of the car rolled on the highway full of saline hard soil, making a "click, click, click" sound. Xiang Xiaoqiang crossed his waist, wore goggles and masks, wrapped himself in a scarf, held the windshield of the chief's car, stood on the car with his head held high, drove all the way along the long queue, and raised his hand to greet the officers and soldiers in the car to boost morale.

Only the convoy on the right side, while the front, rear, and left side are all endless wastelands. The sunset ahead was blood-red, bleak as if it was about to drip blood. It is simply "the desert is lonely, and the sun sets on the long river". Except for the absence of the "Long River", there are all the others.

Desolation, desolation, desolation.

How to describe it? Xiang Xiaoqiang now has only one movie in his mind - "New Dragon Gate Inn". Now that's the taste.

While riding the car on the sandy road, against the wind and sand, he kept humming the desolate tone in "New Dragon Gate Inn", the kind of pipa and the killing spirit of the iron kite in his heart, imagining that the "Cao Gonggong's horse team" in Daming East Factory was wrapped in a black cloak and played a high banner, galloping mercilessly in the desert wind and sand, slaughtering the Longmen Inn and destroying Zhou Huai'an......

However, no matter how he looked back, he felt that his embarrassed armored division could not be compared with the "Cao Gonggong's horse team" in terms of momentum and marching speed.

Alas,...... Xiang Xiaoqiang comforted himself psychologically: A movie is a movie. If you really crossed the horse team of Gonggong Cao and let them run in the sandstorm for ten minutes, all those horses vomited blood and died.

……

After marching out of Yumen in the west for nearly four days, it has entered the Hami area. Finally entered the territory of "Huijiang". After passing through Hami, passing through Turpan, from Changji and U-Lu-Mu-Qi through the northern veins of the Tianshan Mountains, it entered the northern frontier.

Hami and Turpan are both in the south of the Tianshan Mountains and belong to southern Xinjiang. However, in the Ming-Soviet agreement, these two areas with a large number of Han Chinese and rich products were not ceded to the Soviet Union. Now the Soviets have occupied the rest of southern Xinjiang, but they have not entered these two areas. So far, the USSR has been the talk.

But Xiang Xiaoqiang didn't dare to take it lightly. He knew that Stalin was now like a bear, watching cautiously from the sidelines. If the Ming Dynasty could not fight this battle well and show Stalin in this battle that the Ming army could maintain a high combat effectiveness even if it was a labor expedition, then Stalin would have thought that the Ming did not have the ability to hold the Western Regions, and he would definitely further annex the northern frontier.

On May 8, the troops entered the Turpan Basin. On 9 May, the troops crossed U-Lu-Mu-Qi and entered the Changji area.

Now, it has officially entered the northern frontier. Now it has entered the rebels' sphere of influence.

And from the other side, now "the iron hooves of the Ming invading army have officially set foot on the land of the Ili Empire".