Our group of recruits were divided into three platoons and nine squads, and together with the company headquarters, they lived in a row of bungalows facing due south, which was similar in structure to the bungalows where the intellectual youth lived in their hometown, but they were more solid, with red bricks stacked on top of each other, thick cement floors, and the walls were plastered with lime, which had been yellowish and white, and I don't know when it was built, and I don't know how many soldiers had lived.

The company headquarters is in the westernmost part, there are company commanders, instructors, deputy company commanders, the residence and the office are together, the next nine squads have been lined up, the recruits sleep on the ground, a slip of the paving board put together, against the wall on both sides of the room, so that the setting is for the convenience of up and down, if it is set up, when the emergency assembly, several tosses will fall apart.

There are many small people in the room, a row of three shifts squeezed into two rooms, the platoon leader and squad leader live with us, but their beds are propped up, although it is a cement floor, but Jiangnan is damp, so as to avoid moisture.

At that time, the conditions of the troops were actually quite difficult, there were not many marching beds, more of which we slept on, supported by wooden benches below, and only a few veterans could have marching beds, which was considered a high-end product.

The planks of the recruit company were made up by various companies, and there were not many intact ones, and the planks were broken, deformed, and exposed nails, and they were still of different thicknesses when put together, and it was very uncomfortable to sleep between the two planks.

There are usually eight or nine recruits in a class, and the eighth class I am in has nine people, and the ninth class sleeping on the bunk opposite is eight people, and the ninth class is divided into two rooms, one part lives with us, and the other part lives with the seventh class in the other room.

We belong to the third platoon, the platoon commander is an officer surnamed Chen, who has just graduated from the military academy, and like other company cadres, they are all compulsory soldiers who were admitted to the military academy and became officers.

The company headquarters used to be a cooking class, a row of bungalows facing due east, the south side was the kitchen, the middle was the canteen, and it was also the place where we took political classes, and the north side lived the veterans of the cooking class, and the cooking class used to be a toilet, a cement road more than a meter wide, connecting several places, all the way to the car company and the battalion headquarters in front.

Life in the recruit company is hard, and since the first lunch has been a little warm, the next thing is to feel it in full swing.

The first thing I feel is depression, always under the supervision of veterans, the squad leader of the squad can be managed, other squad leaders can also be managed, and even the veterans of logistics support can also be managed, not to mention the company cadres, they have to listen to everything they say and do everything.

Everything is coercive, there is no reason, only obedience, coercion to the point that there is no freedom, no privacy, every move must comply with the company's regulations, no noise or trouble, everywhere you go you have to report to the squad leader, and you have to ask the squad leader for permission to do anything.

Walk to run, go to the toilet for a few seconds, eat at a specified time, except for thoughts, everything is imprisoned, everything is exposed, the whole body, no items can be hidden, luggage must be checked at any time, as long as the squad leader thinks that things should not be carried with him, they must be handed over to him for unified safekeeping, if it is a knife pipe, it will be confiscated by him.

Monotony and boredom followed, the first meal was over, all the recruits were asked by the squad leader to press the quilt, spread out with both hands and press with their arms, the strength was not enough and the effect was not obvious, and then the small bench was pressed, and the quilt was folded into the shape of a tofu block, one of the important contents of the housekeeping inspection and evaluation, without pressing out the shape, it was difficult to do it in a short time.

I can't rest at noon, and I have a small bench where I can sit and read political textbooks, write letters, and of course press quilts, and I can't do anything else, not even walking.

At this time, if you want to go to the toilet, you have to ask the squad leader for leave and agree, under normal circumstances, the squad leader will raise his hand to look at the table, and then say "thirty seconds", run away and rush back, if you say "fifteen seconds", like a 100-meter sprint.

Recruits are most afraid of their spare time, whether it is a lunch break or before the lights go out at night, or on weekends and holidays, or even ten minutes between classes, as long as it is spare time.

It's because you can't move around casually, you can't talk at will, you have to be careful when whispering to each other, for fear of being discovered by the squad leader, you can only sit on the small bench in front of the bed.

I am afraid of taking off my spare time, or because this is not my own time, but the time of the squad leader, if the squad leader does not interfere, or the time of other veterans, I don't like it when I see it, I feel dissatisfied, and I will punish the military posture, long-distance running, and emergency assembly, which may happen at any time, and sometimes I will be beaten and kicked.

When it comes to eating, it feels even more bitter, the dinner meal has changed that day, a large pot of cabbage, almost no oily, a large bucket of soup except for some oil flowers floating on the surface, there is nothing in it, the days to come are like this, one meal and one dish, the rice tube is full, the dish is only the same, and then there is a big pot of soup that cannot see anything.

Vegetable varieties often change, cabbage radish is the main dish, cabbage is boiled miserably white, the rotten cut pieces are very large, and often not cooked thoroughly, the surface is cooked but the inside is still stiff, and raw food is no different.

In addition, cauliflower and sweet potatoes are often eaten, which have never been eaten at home, and they do not have the freshness of tasting for the first time, and the taste of boiling is difficult to swallow. Especially sweet potatoes, the kind of raw red that can't be bitten by boiling, is still clear when I think about it.

Because I haven't eaten it before, I think it's this taste, sweet potatoes may just be a specialty of Hangzhou, and I rarely eat them since then, but cauliflower can be seen everywhere, and I have seen cauliflower on the table for many years, and I never stretched out my chopsticks.

Breakfast was relatively poor, usually rice, and the veterans would not make steamed buns for us, so they had to get up very early to make noodles, and the company never asked them to make them.

But the dish is a small dish, there is only one kind and the quantity is very small, peanuts according to the number of grains, generally seven or eight grains, Luo Strip or Assorted vegetables according to the number of roots, Luo Strip two or three, assorted vegetables seven or eight, tofu is more pitiful, only a small half.

There are requirements for meal time, basically a few bites to swallow, slow will be criticized, if there is an emergency assembly training, the rice bowl should be put down immediately, no matter how much a meal is eaten, even if it is over.

I remember once making soup after a meal, I saw a piece of fat floating on it, and the meal was eaten quickly, and when I found out, there were already a few recruits gathered around the soup bucket, and without hesitation, several soup spoons in the bucket were immediately grabbed and scooped towards the piece of meat.

When I eat fatty meat at home, I will vomit, but that time I saw this piece of meat and felt very kind, I didn't hesitate at all, I reacted very quickly, and I grabbed it very decisively, but there were still people who were faster than me and couldn't grab it.

It is also strange to say that it is such a meal, coupled with hard training, that several fellow villagers in the countryside have grown fat and taller, and it can only be said that their family life may be even more difficult, and they have not yet fully developed at the age of eighteen or nineteen.

I joined the army late, two or three years older than them, when I graduated from high school, I was basically fully developed, the recruit company ended, and my height and weight did not change at all.

Due to the social atmosphere, the veterans' requirements for us recruits have brought some personal factors, which makes the life of the recruit company a little hard, but on the whole it has not deviated from the track, otherwise several of my fellow villagers would not have gained weight in adversity.

Adversity makes people grow, perhaps it is this kind of slight hardship that makes us realize how valuable the care of our parents is from childhood to adulthood in the shortest possible time, and understand how important it is to be self-reliant.