Correct Outlook on Political Achievement, Practiced in the Barracks | A Grove of Casuarina Trees at the Field Training Site
A Grove of Casuarina Trees at the Field Training Site
■ Wang Mengyuan, PLA Daily Reporter Xiang Liming
Illustration: Fang Han
Casuarina—this word is unfamiliar to many people. It is the name of a tree; in Dongshan, Fujian, locals affectionately call it the "Gu tree" (谷树).
"See the casuarina, think of Gu Wenchang." This widely circulated saying expresses the most plain and heartfelt gratitude of local people toward Gu Wenchang.
Beside the casuarina grove lies a field training site where officers and soldiers of a certain brigade of the 73rd Group Army conduct maritime training year after year. The officers and soldiers say this grove of casuarina trees is both a "navigational landmark" for amphibious armored vehicles and a "value coordinate" for establishing and practicing a correct outlook on political achievement (正确政绩观).
Looking up at the casuarina trees, learning from Gu Wenchang. Beneath the "Gu trees," beside the armored vehicles, the reporter went deep into the brigade's field training site to listen to stories of officers and soldiers emulating worthy examples and correcting their outlook on political achievement.
The first story begins in the second year after the brigade was reformed and restructured. At the time, because the main combat equipment assigned under the new table of organization had not yet been fielded, officers and soldiers were training with old equipment as placeholders, and many harbored a wait-and-see attitude: some felt that because the performance gap between the old and new generations of equipment was large, it was enough to just get through the transition-period training; others thought that since they had just become proficient with the old equipment this year, the new equipment might be fielded next year anyway, so why waste time...
Just then, word came that the Army planned to organize the "Extraordinary Forces" (奇兵) series of skills competitions. After the notice was issued, few signed up—many officers and soldiers felt that competing against others' new equipment with an "old jalopy" offered no chance of winning, and so they began to have second thoughts.
After considerable mobilization, enough participants were scraped together with difficulty. Officers and soldiers privately speculated that the training detachment would "especially cherish" its participants. But to everyone's surprise, a continuous assessment was held on the very first day of the training session, and a number of participants with lower scores were eliminated on the spot. "A skills competition is combat, and in combat you can't pick your equipment," said Battalion Commander Chen, who was in charge of the training session, stating his position clearly. "When adversaries meet on a narrow road, the brave one wins; on the battlefield, it is fighting spirit that counts—what is there to fear about difficulties!"
Afterward, Battalion Commander Chen led the participants on a visit to the Gu Wenchang Memorial Hall, where they reviewed the arduous process of Gu Wenchang's tree-planting and sand-control efforts.
"Faced with a harsh environment of raging sandstorms and severe drought, Secretary Gu Wenchang did not make demands or wait for others to provide for him, but instead proactively shouldered his responsibilities and made a vow: 'If we cannot tame the wind and sand, let the wind and sand bury me.' He led the people through fourteen years of hard struggle and ultimately transformed a barren island into a green oasis..." Battalion Commander Chen said, "If war breaks out tomorrow, would we refuse to go to the battlefield without new equipment? As soldiers, we even more cannot wait or rely on others—we must dare to press forward in the face of difficulties."
In the training that followed, the participants' enthusiasm ran high, and three vehicle crews ultimately passed the assessment and earned their entry tickets to the competition.
"To push crew coordination to the absolute limit, we broke down every step and went through each movement one by one," said gunner Yang Bo. During the final sprint of preparation, they would spend an entire morning drilling the actions of mounting and dismounting the vehicle; they practiced the mounted-shooting subject until the gun barrel turned red, and finally achieved "man and vehicle as one, gun fires the moment the vehicle stops, simultaneous dismount."
Effort pays off. In the end, Yang Bo's crew won the championship with outstanding results. When the news came back, the entire brigade erupted. This championship was not only a competition honor—it was also a vivid lesson in education on the outlook on political achievement: equipment may have a generational gap, but thinking must not lag behind; winning battles with the equipment in hand is the true political achievement (真政绩).
When the reporter visited the field training site of the brigade's 4th Battalion, a maritime training exercise had just concluded. A gentle sea breeze blew; the casuarina trees formed a canopy of green shade. Officers and soldiers told the reporter a story about willingly sitting on the "cold bench" (冷板凳).
The 4th Battalion had gone several consecutive years without being assigned any major tasks. Many officers and soldiers grew restless: "Does this mean our battalion's development isn't up to standard and the brigade Party committee doesn't think highly of us?" "Without the experience of major tasks, what basis do we have for being evaluated as outstanding?"...
Hearing the grumbling of the officers and soldiers, then-Battalion Commander Liu offered no lengthy explanation, but instead led everyone to the casuarina grove and told them about the concrete things Gu Wenchang had done with painstaking effort to accomplish people's livelihood projects.
Resting his hand on a casuarina tree, Battalion Commander Liu said with feeling: "Without major tasks, we certainly have fewer opportunities to carry the red flag and compete for honors, but viewed dialectically, having no major tasks also gives us more time to solidly lay the foundation of combat capability. For us, warming up the 'cold bench' is our 'latent achievement' (潜绩)!"
Not long after, the 4th Battalion produced a "Cold Bench Plan"—a set of "assessment progress monitoring charts" covering all companies, with information on specialized subjects, training phases, assessment pass rates, and more displayed at a glance. At the field training site, the "assessment progress monitoring charts" were hung in the most prominent position, updated dynamically as assessments were conducted.
On one occasion, Battalion Commander Liu analyzed the "assessment progress monitoring charts" and found that the scores of the motorized infantry companies on the passenger-elevation-angle shooting subject had stagnated. After several rounds of investigation, difficulties surfaced: the training site was hard to set up, the risk factor was high, and there were few personnel capable of organizing the training. He recorded these problems one by one.
In the period that followed, officers and soldiers noticed that the battalion commander, who rarely went out, began going out more often on weekends. Before long, Battalion Commander Liu informed the two motorized infantry companies that a training site had been found. It turned out that he had used several weekends to conduct detailed reconnaissance and ultimately found an abandoned quarry near the garrison area. After coordination, reporting, and safety clearance, the quarry was converted into a shooting range, and scores on the passenger-elevation-angle shooting subject improved quickly.
During one wave-landing training exercise, wind speed was Force 4 and wave height was 2 meters, approaching the limiting conditions for maritime training. "Launch into the water, execute!" After the order was issued, the scene fell into silence. Battalion Commander Liu said nothing, ran to the water's edge, replaced the driver of the lead vehicle, and drove straight into the sea. Immediately afterward, his instructions came over the radio: "All company commanders, follow behind me and enter the water in sequence"...
Willing to apply the "embroidery-work effort" (绣花功), warming up the "cold bench." Basic-subject training may seem unassuming, but with the tenacity of hammering one blow after another, the officers and soldiers built a solid and reliable foundation for combat capability development. In the first year after new equipment was fielded, the 4th Battalion set the brigade record for the number of vehicle crews boarding and disembarking landing ships (craft) in a single day, and the battalion-wide armored qualification rate reached 90%. At the beginning of this year, the 4th Battalion brought home its 9th "Grade-One Battalion in Military Training" honor plaque.
During the interview period, the brigade conducted a comprehensive training exercise on the beach. The reporter observed on site: unmanned vehicles and unmanned boats reinforced obstacle-breaching to open lanes; unmanned aerial vehicles guided assault vehicles in suppressing beach firepower; FPV drones (穿越机) hunted out enemy concealed fortification firing positions...
"The brigade doesn't have that many UAVs—where did so many flight-control operators come from?" In response to the reporter's question, a brigade leader told the story of "three news reporters winning the championship."
On that occasion, the Group Army held a FPV drone training session, and the brigade's news reporters Yu Xiangjian, Yuan Yi, and Xiao Jie signed up to participate. They had already learned to operate UAVs beforehand and assumed that switching to FPV drone operation would be "easy to grasp." Unexpectedly, the three were bewildered the moment they arrived at the training detachment: from performance and construction to operating methods, the two were completely different.
"We don't know what use practicing FPV drones will be now, but they will definitely be useful on the future battlefield." The three decided to learn through hands-on practice while exploring on their own, and resolved to master FPV drones. By the midpoint of the training session, their scores had risen to the upper-middle level.
The training ground of the detachment was very large, and FPV drones easily lost signal when they flew far—this was a major common difficulty faced by all participating officers and soldiers. The three simultaneously taught themselves communications principles and sourced various models of equipment for modification and testing, independently innovating a signal amplifier that successfully solved the signal-loss problem; the result was fully promoted throughout the training detachment.
Persevering without letup, water wears through stone. In the Theater Army UAV skills competition held afterward, Yu Xiangjian, Yuan Yi, and Xiao Jie brought home the championship, and all three were awarded second-class merit citations. Their inspiring story ignited their comrades' enthusiasm for independently studying new-quality combat forces (新质作战力量), setting off a new wave of learning and applying UAVs across the entire brigade.
"This is the enlightenment that Secretary Gu's tree-planting gives us: the casuarina trees planted today will surely block tomorrow's wind and sand; the unmanned combat capabilities being accumulated now will surely decide victory on the future battlefield." The brigade leader said this with full confidence.
Apply Latent Effort (下潜功), Create Visible Achievement (创显绩)
■ Tian Zhe
A grove of casuarina trees, a lesson in education. The casuarina trees standing lush and tall at the field training site of a certain brigade of the 73rd Group Army are both an ecological barrier for Dongshan Island and a mirror that helps officers and soldiers correctly understand the dialectical relationship between visible achievement (显绩) and latent achievement (潜绩), and calibrate the coordinates of political achievement.
What is visible achievement? In this brigade's record, visible achievement is the gold and silver medals won at skills competitions, the glory of nine "Grade-One Battalion in Military Training" honors, the breakthrough of new-quality combat capabilities (新质战斗力) drawing their sword on the battlefield—seen and felt, inspiring the troops and boosting morale.
What is latent achievement? In this brigade's practice, latent achievement is the pursuit of pushing old equipment to the absolute limit during the transition period of equipment changeover; it is the perseverance of tempering basic subjects through a thousand hammerings over years without major tasks; it is the deep cultivation of studying unmanned equipment from scratch and proactively building up reserves of new-quality personnel—unassuming and unobtrusive, yet consolidating and strengthening the foundation of combat capability development.
From their deeds, we can appreciate that "latent" is the foundation of "visible," and "visible" is the result of "latent"; the process of applying latent effort is precisely the process of accumulating momentum for visible achievement to break through the surface.
"If we cannot tame the wind and sand, let the wind and sand bury me"—Gu Wenchang took root in Dongshan for fourteen years and transformed a barren island ravaged by wind and sand into a "green oasis." For the military, the development of combat capability has never been a "fast-growing forest." Every officer and soldier should, in their own post, apply latent effort and create visible achievement, allowing "latent" and "visible" to resonate in the same frequency and rise in a spiral within the coordinate system of strengthening the military—just like those "Gu trees" that do not seek to provide shade immediately but can hold back wind and fix sand, taking root and growing on the new-era journey of strengthening the military, flourishing into a great forest.