Three reef guards retired from

  military camp

  At about 17:00 on February 20th, seven officers and soldiers of a certain Marine Corps brigade stood on the pier of the military port. Among them, three female soldiers were holding flowers.

A group of people came specially to welcome the three veterans who had delayed their retirement due to guarding the reef. The three veterans were stationed on different reefs. They were the fourth-rank sergeant Zhang Huyue, the sergeant Bai Jinrui, and the superior Yan Yajie.

  "Salute to the warriors who guarded the reef for the country for 413 days!" The three veterans carried their backpacks down the gangway, took the flowers in the admiring eyes of a group of warships, and returned the Israeli military salute.

The veterans were more excited than one, and Zhang Huyue, the oldest soldier, had a hint of shame on his face.

  On the way back to the camp, Zhang Huyue, who had been a squad leader for 14 years, looked at the bustling street scene and the lively crowd outside the car window, and thumped his aching right knee, "It's worth living in the lighthouse for so long," he said.

  Zhang Huyue has made three third-class merits, two of which are related to the South China Sea. One was the maritime military parade in April 2018, and the other was on the reef.

Zhang Huyue said frankly that he has no romantic feelings. Unlike some comrades who retired, they would bring back a bottle of sea water and a bottle of sand from the reef. He always felt that there were several white washed marine camouflage suits stacked in his suitcase. enough.

  The night before he went to the reef, Zhang Huyue turned over and over after being laid off and couldn't sleep. Whenever the soldiers went to take over, he would remind him, "Don't overtime." From the initial medical examination to the completion of his mission, the past is like a movie screen. Flashed past, resentment flooded like a tide.

He comforted himself, removed his collar, armband and chest badge, and the party emblem was still there.

  Just before boarding the ship, Zhang Huyue, who has always been rugged, still did not stretch, and tears fell on the backs of his comrades in arms.

When he waved his hand, he shouted the last order to the soldiers who came to see off in the squad.

  The wife and daughter at home don't know about Zhang Huyue guarding the reef, only know that he can go home this year, and will be able to guard the wife forever.

Zhang Huyue didn't know that there would be surprises waiting for him at the high-speed railway station in his hometown.

His wife customized a welcome banner for him. 8-year-old daughter Zhang Mingxuan has eaten lollipops every day these days, and is about to give a super sweet kiss to his father who is "soaking in the phone all the year round".

  The brigade opened a green channel for the three reef guards to handle retiring operations.

The next day, Yan Yajie, a superior soldier from Shijiazhuang, Hebei, completed all the procedures for leaving the team.

  At the end of his military career, Yan Yajie could not take the photo with the sovereign monument, but brought the best memories.

The leader of the team coordinated an induction cooker, pulled some vegetables from the vegetable field, and served him with a pot of beef hot pot and a large bottle of Sprite.

  The left pocket of Yan Yajie's camouflage jacket also contains a two-inch pocket photo uniformly produced by the unit. This plasticized photo is a group photo of his parents.

He said, "In this life, you have to make your parents proud once or twice." He is going to go home and tell his parents that more than half of the more than 700 days of his service have been spent in a first-level combat readiness; Faced with the enemy's situation, he did not shame his family, and together with his comrades, "turned the jackal into two ha".

  In addition to his parents, he also told his classmates at Hebei Youth Management Academy after returning to school that he had served with a group of the most powerful warriors.

A tug-of-war competition was held on the reef, and the 12 people they sent to "snap" won all the participating teams of the brothers.

In another tug-of-war competition half a year later, the organizers simply refused to let them participate.

  At the retirement ceremony on February 22, he looked at the national flag fluttering in the wind on the playground, and imprinted a sentence from the leader of the army on the podium, "Take off the uniform and keep the true qualities of a hero!"

  Saying goodbye to the military banner, Bai Jinrui, whose home is in Yinan County, Linyi, Shandong, has a flood of eyes.

As a shooting technician of the company, he could not forget the wind and snow in Inner Mongolia and Jilin during the cold training, the heavy rain in eastern Yunnan during the training on the plateau, and the heat waves rolling along the coastline of western Guangdong.

As the person in charge of Point 2 on the reef, he cannot forget the sweat dripping from the breakwater with live ammunition every day, the blood blisters worn out from his heels on patrol roads, and the tears shed in the last years of the military.

  An elderly phone with the reef can only allow Bai Jinrui to listen to the voice of his family.

In June last year, his wife's roar came from this mobile phone worth 120 yuan: "You live, you die, you give me a letter." He doesn't blame his wife in the "Hometown of Red Sisters".

The moment he dialed the phone, he knew that his two-and-a-half-year-old son Bai Zhenting was again hospitalized with gastroenteritis.

  Having said this, Bai Jinrui closed his eyes tightly, "The child is so small and so cute, and he always runs to the hospital. Who doesn't feel bad."

  When he went down the reef, he prepared more than a dozen shells for his son. He was afraid of being broken by wind and waves on the ship, and he also wrapped them tightly with white sheets.

Although this gift is not tied with a bow, it is the best gift that Bai Jinrui can think of.

He has a wish that when his "Xiao Baibai" grows up, he will show him the sea and the land he has guarded.

He wants to tell his son a veteran who sticks to his heart: "A country can have a home!"

  Xia Dewei Source: China Youth Daily