Chapter 17: Every Soldier Is A Jack-of-all-trades
There aren’t many buildings in the barracks area, but they are all oversized.
This can be considered a characteristic of the armored tank company barracks area.
Gao Cheng has a relatively impatient personality and does things only quickly, never slowly. Even though he said they could start cleaning before tomorrow afternoon, he brought the people over today.
As the first batch to arrive, they could only start working first.
They had no choice but to work.
After nine months of “rest,” the entire barracks area was covered with leaves and weeds everywhere, and the rooms inside the buildings weren’t much better, all covered in a thick layer of dust.
In order to have a place to rest tonight, Chen Jun and the others could only hurry to start working.
At this point, everyone finally reacted to why the company commander had the quartermaster specially procure cleaning supplies and brought them over together today.
It was obvious that Gao Cheng knew the situation here and had made special arrangements in advance.
The sixth squad leader Jin Dashan and Wu Liu Yi who came were not visiting the new recruit company to lead troops for the first time, so they were already accustomed to all this in the barracks area.
Without needing the company commander Gao Cheng to make arrangements, they skillfully began cleaning.
And their goal was very clear.
They ignored the leaves and weeds on the parade ground outside and the dust in the other large rooms for now, heading straight for the only dormitory building to clean the rooms here first.
There aren’t many people in the armored tank company, and there is no distinction between a cadre building and a dormitory building.
It’s just a two-story small building where both officers and warriors live, and the office, telephone room, library, etc., are also all concentrated here.
Adding up all the rooms in the small building, there are only 11 rooms.
The quartermaster responsible for daily procurement definitely needs a separate room, and the company commander and political instructor, not to mention, also need separate rooms.
The three platoon leaders also need rooms to live in, rooms to serve as the armory for storing guns and ammunition, and a telephone room for receiving and sending notifications and making calls.
This way, eight of the eleven rooms are used up, and the remaining three are also needed for training.
For example, the infirmary.
During training, various minor accidents are inevitable, such as the most common small wounds needing stitches, dislocated or sprained hands or feet, colds, flu, poisonous insect bites, etc.
An infirmary must be prepared to ensure that training proceeds normally.
Another example is the small conference room.
The new recruit company holds training summaries every week, where the company commander gathers the squad leaders of each squad in the conference room to summarize and discuss the situation of the new recruits.
Problems are solved in advance, and any signs are nipped in the bud to ensure the stable safety of new recruit training.
All the rooms in the dormitory building are occupied, so where will the three platoons and nine squads of the new recruit company, nearly a hundred people, sleep at night? This became a big problem.
Fortunately, when setting this place as the new recruit company camp, this problem had already been well solved.
That is, to set up communal bunks!
As the barracks area of the armored tank company, tanks are the most space-consuming existence in the camp, and the troops cherish their equipment and won’t leave them outside to the wind and rain.
So there are many warehouses in this barracks area, specifically for parking tanks.
Several meters wide left-and-right sliding large iron doors lead inside to a super large space five or six meters high, over ten meters wide, and dozens of meters deep.
From outside to inside, they are orderly filled with double-person iron bunk beds, with each squad assigned a block area, enough to easily accommodate over a hundred people.
However, it’s been over half a year since anyone lived here, and on the bed boards of these dozens of iron bunk beds, there is a visible layer of dust at least two or three millimeters deep.
Organizing so many beds would absolutely be a massive project.
Chen Jun’s group has only five people in total, and it’s impossible to handle the hygiene of large areas, so they could only consider themselves first and ensure they have a place to stay tonight.
Under Gao Cheng’s personal arrangement and communication, everyone threw themselves into their respective tasks.
As the company commander bridging superiors and subordinates, Gao Cheng first communicated with the regiment to get logistics in order, sent people to fix water and electricity, prepared the cookhouse personnel to enter, and handled the armorer and weapons entering the armory, etc.
The communicator helped the company commander prepare his room and organized the housekeeping for the things brought.
Wu Liu Yi and Jin Dashan, as new recruit squad leaders, would later live in the large communal bunk warehouse with the new recruits, but today it was impossible to set up the large communal bunk.
So according to company commander Gao Cheng’s arrangement, they went together to work on the political instructor’s room.
The political instructor would bring a clerk, and the clerk needs to set up the telephone room, but time is not very ample, so usually the company commander sends people to help.
By preparing the political instructor’s room in advance, Wu Liu Yi and Jin Dashan both completed their work and had a temporary place to rest tonight.
It was killing two birds with one stone.
The two of them could clean one room relatively quickly, so they also went to help check the equipment and facilities.
Whether water pipes were burst, light bulbs damaged, faucets rusted, solar water heaters broken, boilers usable, etc.
The check results all needed to be listed and finally reported back to company commander Gao Cheng.
He would negotiate externally to get the problems fixed properly.
Don’t think that Wu Liu Yi and Jin Dashan are just warriors; the work they had to do this time involved water, electricity, and various aspects, which might sound a bit off.
But in reality, most of the army’s work is solved by the company itself figuring out methods.
They rarely apply to superiors and rarely find outsiders.
The warriors of one company in the army, besides carrying guns and fighting, also have to take on part-time roles in daily life, doing all kinds of work that outsiders wouldn’t think of.
Common ones include barbers, electricians, cooks, drivers, etc.
Uncommon ones like welders, machinists, repairmen, painters, and carpenters are all there.
The main theme is self-sufficiency!
This kind of “do it yourself and have plenty of food and clothing,” a small company like a small society, is absolutely a unique characteristic of Chinese troops.
Chen Jun knows a bit of all sorts of miscellaneous tasks, but now his status is different; he has his own things to do, and small matters no longer require him.
Today, he was responsible for his own platoon leader room, plus arranging his private small kitchen.
Even though he had a new mission to lead troops in the new recruit company, Chen Jun still couldn’t slack off at all; improving physical fitness still had to be put first.
As for coming out of Steel Seventh Company and changing places, with no one going out to help procure supplies.
Chen Jun didn’t need to worry about it; company commander Gao Cheng would handle it.
Chen Jun had now become Gao Cheng’s treasure; his status in his heart was already second only to Shi Jin and was still continuously rising.
So.
Gao Cheng paid special attention to Chen Jun’s matters.
Don’t think it’s just cleaning one room; according to the army’s task standards, a room idle for a year actually has quite a workload.
Not to mention bedsheets, quilts, and tofu blocks.
Old tradition!
Windows must be wiped crystal clear with no stains, looking like there is no glass when viewed through.
Dust on tables, cabinets, etc., must be such that a white glove touched on it doesn’t change color, and clothes in the cabinets must be folded into tofu blocks.
Even the cement-smeared floor must be swept to where no dust can be raised.
For one clean room to this standard, a full set of housekeeping takes a very long time and is extremely tedious work.
Not to mention a room idle for over half a year, already full of spider webs.
