Chapter 298: First Place, Always First Place!
China Team One crushed the teams from Europe and America on the first day, powerfully demonstrating the prestige and strength of Chinese soldiers.
On the second morning’s competition projects, China Team’s performance remained dominant, achieving extremely impressive results in all the shooting subjects of the morning.
Soon it was time for the afternoon competition subjects, and a new round of competition unfolded once again.
The afternoon also featured several shooting competitions, among which “parallel rope pistol shooting” and “rifle long-distance shooting” were the most difficult.
Parallel rope pistol shooting, as the name suggests, involves shooting while on the balance rope.
The organizers had strung two parallel ropes, one above the other, dozens of meters long in the air between two small hills, with the upper and lower ropes spaced about one and a half meters apart.
The rules required competitors to stand on the parallel ropes, feet on the lower balance rope, hands gripping the upper balance rope.
Moreover, they could only use one hand to tightly grip the upper rope to maintain body balance while moving forward quickly, while the other hand single-handedly loaded bullets into the pistol.
They had to shoot at targets placed between twenty meters and thirty meters away, with varying distances and positions.
The difficulty of this project lay in the dozens of meters of rope suspended in the air; stepping onto it was unsteady, and no matter how strong one’s sense of balance, the rope would sway continuously, causing the body to rock nonstop.
Shooting at distant targets under such swaying conditions was understandably extremely difficult.
Even without requiring accuracy targets, hitting the target under these circumstances was unrealistic; as long as one hit the target, it counted as an effective score.
For contestants from various countries, it remained an extremely challenging test.
Unless they had undergone professional training!
And teams from Europe and America, having participated in many editions of the competition, were already familiar with many of its segments and had received similar training beforehand.
However, even after targeted training on the balance rope for a period of time.
The results shown by contestants from various countries in this subject were uneven, with nearly more than half failing to achieve full marks.
The subject was so difficult that even after training, many faltered here.
Naturally, this led other national delegations to instinctively assume that China Team, participating for the first time, would definitely score zero points in this stage.
They were already prepared to laugh and were determined to mock China Team harshly.
Who made China Team perform so excellently yesterday and this morning—it was really slapping their faces, and they had long been holding it in unbearably.
Little did they know!
China Team indeed lacked this kind of balance rope training, but it had the more advanced training created by Chen Jun, which was even more difficult than this.
Back then, among the techniques Chen Jun handed to A Company, there were methods related to balance training.
Swing shooting, balance beam shooting, and several others.
Although Chen Jun’s balance shooting training was mainly aimed at training warriors’ moving shooting ability and shooting accuracy on vehicles.
It could achieve the same effect on today’s balance rope shooting.
With the right tools at hand, the work is naturally masterful.
China Team One and Team Two, full of confidence, both achieved extremely superior results in this stage.
Take Chen Jun-led China Team One as an example: after receiving the referee’s “shooting begin” order, Captain Chen Jun led team members Cheng Cai, Xu Sanduo, and Wu Liu Yi into action.
They mounted the rope as if walking on flat ground, steady as old pros.
Gunshots rang out, targets fell, smooth as silk.
The whole team took just 3 minutes and 2 seconds to complete the project competition, cleanly and efficiently eliminating all targets.
China Team Two was slightly behind China Team One but still only took 3 minutes and 32 seconds.
Meanwhile, other Europe and America competition teams in this stage took a total of around 10 minutes or more, with some even exceeding fifteen minutes.
Not only were they far slower than China Team, most Europe and America national teams also struggled to eliminate all targets.
They emptied a magazine and still had a pile of targets left.
In the end, for this project, China Team One and Team Two crushed with absolute strength, powerfully seizing first and second place.
Contestants from other Europe and America countries, no matter how unhappy in this stage, had to concede.
They were beaten soundly; the gap was too big.
They had no choice but to be convinced!
The other “rifle long-distance shooting” subject sounded like it had nothing difficult about it—just an ordinary, couldn’t-be-more-ordinary subject.
Yet this ordinary subject was not ordinary at all; its difficulty was equally enormous.
The competition rules required it to be conducted under nighttime conditions, at an exaggerated distance beyond three hundred meters, with each half-body target appearing for only 3 seconds at a time.
Nighttime pop-up targets are usually one hundred fifty meters; a three-hundred-meter pop-up target was double the conventional distance, with difficulty at least tripled or quadrupled.
Yet facing such a grueling subject, China Team’s performance was still so eye-catching.
When the referee announced shooting could begin, both China Team One and Team Two reacted swiftly, immediately setting up their rifles to aim and fire at the targets.
“Pa pa pa pa…”
After a burst of intense, rapid gunshots, all targets three hundred meters away were eliminated.
Seeing China Team’s performance so exaggerated, the international referee team and all the referees were stunned and had to abandon their biases.
They gave thumbs up repeatedly in praise: “Every member of the Chinese Delegation is a sharpshooter.”
Li Dayong, who was watching the screen nearby as the head of the Chinese Delegation, was overjoyed at the referee team’s high praise, his mouth unable to close.
The slight resentment he had toward Chen Jun for not being on the same path and not adopting his suggestion completely dissipated at that moment.
The more outstanding the performance of Chinese soldiers, the more pride he had as Regiment Commander.
Especially whenever China Team’s results came out, crushing a bunch of Europe and America competition teams—it made Li Dayong feel exceptionally refreshed.
Recalling how they were unwelcome at the start of the trip and faced various discriminations and biases along the way.
Now crushing the opponents was simply too satisfying.
…
The shooting-related competition subjects ended, and the next competition subjects were even more difficult, testing the competition teams’ comprehensive quality even more.
Moreover, since the organizers were a European country, many parts required the use of English.
For example, the immediately following battlefield first aid subject: its hardest part was not the rescue itself, but needing to converse with the patient in English and write a first aid report in pure professional medical English.
Most people from Europe and America were proficient in English, so it was naturally no issue for them.
But in China at this 1998 time, the domestic English penetration rate was very low, and grassroots Chinese soldiers fluent in English were even rarer.
Grassroots soldiers fluent in professional English medical terminology were even more like phoenix feathers and unicorn horns.
Even Wu Zhe, the top student with three diplomas, could speak English very fluently and had no pressure writing in English.
But writing a professional English first aid report still touched his knowledge blind spot.
Before the competition, the organizers hadn’t announced to the competition teams which specific projects would be conducted or what passing procedures each required.
This caused China Team to suffer quite a bit in this project.
Especially China Team Two!
When China Team Two arrived at the specified battlefield within the required time as per the project rules, the painful groans on site were already resounding everywhere.
Three wounded soldiers lay on the ground, and an old lady by the roadside was shouting and yelling in panic.
Wu Zhe immediately organized the team members according to the competition rules and the most standard first aid procedures, dividing tasks for cooperative rescue.
They first gave each wounded soldier a piece of gum containing a certain sedative.
Wu Zhe was the only one in the team proficient in English, so he continuously reassured the wounded in English while the other three team members performed rescue on the wounded.
Qi Huan had rich actual combat experience, and battlefield first aid was his strength.
He performed professional hemostasis, bandaging, and fixation on the leg of the most severely injured wounded soldier, completing the entire set of actions cleanly and neatly.
Tuo Yonggang smoothly performed hemostasis, bandaging, and fixation on the little boy’s left arm.
Ba Te Er served as assistant during this time, providing the various supplies needed for Qi Huan and Tuo Yonggang and helping them out.
Under the three’s tacit and professional cooperation, the entire treatment process took less than three minutes.
After watching China Team Two’s entire treatment process, not only did the on-site referees praise China Team’s technology, but even the observing organizing committee officials excitedly said: “Watching China Team’s battlefield first aid is a pleasure.
From either a professional medical perspective or a humanitarian perspective, your performance is the best.
We have filmed your treatment process, and after the competition, it will be made into a professional lesson plan as a model for the next step of training in this subject for the Estonia army.”
China Team’s treatment process in its first competition received high recognition from the organizers’ organizing committee.
Moreover, they planned to use China Team’s treatment process as their national army’s future training lesson plan, aiming to reach China’s current level.
This was an extremely proud honor for both China Team and China.
However, while the treatment process could score full marks and received recognition from the on-site referees and organizing committee officials, theoretically securing a top-two spot.
But when it came to the post-treatment English handwritten report, the entire China Team Two was stumped.
It required writing the report in professional medical terminology; even top student Wu Zhe had no way to handle it, let alone Qi Huan and the others.
In the end, they could only write it in spoken English, causing their score to drop significantly.
Ultimately, China Team Two only got fourth place!
Fortunately, Chen Jun-led China Team One then took the stage, reclaiming the lost points and once again powerfully seizing first place in this subject.
Wu Zhe didn’t know professional medical English terminology, but that couldn’t stump Chen Jun, who had served in the military for several lifetimes.
In his previous life, Chen Jun went on peacekeeping missions at sea with the Jiaolong Assault Team, participating in several major battles abroad during which various rescues were inevitable.
He had quite a bit of contact with professional international medical rescue teams.
For English professional medical terminology, Chen Jun wouldn’t claim to be extremely proficient, but at the battlefield first aid level, it came naturally to him.
China Team’s consistently excellent performance caused their scores to start leading other countries by a large margin.
This turned China Team into a powerful dark horse, controlling the international competition with strong strength and unstoppable morale.
After the first aid subject ended, the next was the “6 kilometer load-bearing armed cross-country” competition.
This was equally a very grueling subject!
After two full days and nights of continuous competition and super-intense operation, contestants from various countries were already utterly exhausted both physically and mentally.
But as soon as China Team Two arrived at the control point, without even time to take a sip of water.
The referee gave the order.
He handed China Team Two a piece of paper, and the 6 kilometer load-bearing armed cross-country began.
The paper listed the competition content for this subject and the requirements to complete it, all of which the competition team had to fulfill one by one.
Wu Zhe could only lead Qi Huan and the other two, following the paper’s content while running and marking targets on the map.
They crossed forest after forest.
They forded river after river.
They traversed swamp after swamp.
Ultimately, in just 30 minutes, they completed all the required subject demands, charging across the finish line with absolute advantage.
The on-site observing military attaches from various countries were stunned.
They simply couldn’t imagine that in such harsh terrain, after two straight days of competition, Chinese scouts could still complete this project under load in such a short time.
Under this extreme shock and awe, they couldn’t help but give thumbs up in praise—
“China’s special forces soldiers are absolutely the fastest-running special forces soldiers in the world.”
And the reason the observing officers from various countries were so shocked by China Team’s results was that before China Team Two, the Europe and America national competition teams that completed this competition had results that were simply incomparable.
The best were over forty minutes, and the slowest took even over an hour.
China Team only took thirty minutes, ten minutes faster than the best Europe and America team—it was simply unbelievable.
However, China Team Two’s shock hadn’t faded long when China Team One also arrived at the control point.
And for Chen Jun-led China Team One, while they might not name their weakest subject, their strongest was very clear.
That was running and shooting!
Shooting had already been fully demonstrated earlier, with formidable strength crushing all Europe and America countries, seizing first place in all shooting subjects.
Now finally reaching the running project, their performance naturally shocked the world just as much.
No need to mention Chen Jun and Wu Liu Yi; both had set records in cross-country running, especially Chen Jun who had broken the all-army record.
Xu Sanduo might not have broken records, but he was famously unbeatable in running.
No matter how they ran, he wouldn’t break; no matter how they trained, he wouldn’t die.
The slightly weaker one was Cheng Cai, but he was only a bit behind Chen Jun and the other two; compared to others, his strength was still very strong.
The team formed by these four directly refreshed the project record.
In just a short twenty-seven minutes, under seventy jin load, they completed this 6 kilometer load-bearing armed cross-country.
Seeing China Team One’s even more exaggerated performance, the competition organizing committee and all the referees were dumbfounded.
Shock after shock, they were directly blown away!
