Entering Military Academy Cadets' Summer "Required Course": Witnessing Their Growth and Transformation at Their Combat Posts

Military Academy Cadets' Summer "Required Course"

The summer blazes; youth is tempered in fire. Though the semester has ended, military academy cadets have not stopped striving. Leaving campus, they set off for grassroots units, honing their skills and steeling their spirit in the heat of summer internships.

From tactical training grounds thick with the smoke of battle, to uninhabited desolate islands fraught with danger, to aircraft maintenance aprons roaring with jet engines, cadets have gone deep into the front lines of training for war, converting what they learned in the classroom into real-combat capabilities, and tempering the fighting spirit (血性品格) of qualified servicemembers.

Interning with troops is a "two-way convergence" of theory and practice—a "required course" for military academy cadets. In this issue, let us enter the special classroom of the summer internship and witness the cadets' growth and transformation at their combat posts.

Sea-and-Sky "Fledgling Eagles" Break Out from a Desolate Island

■ Liu Jing, Liu Meiyuan

[Caption: Naval Aviation University flight cadets conduct field survival training. Photo by Gao Shansong]

Midsummer, Bohai Bay. While many of their peers were enjoying a leisurely summer vacation, flight cadets from Naval Aviation University were air-dropped onto an uninhabited desolate island—where they would complete 48 hours of field survival training in this scorching, desperate environment.

"Jump! Jump!" At the command, cadets leapt from the hatch, and clusters of parachute blossoms opened above the desolate island. The moment they landed, Group One leader Hao Wei and Group Two leader Jin Peng blew their assembly whistles and rapidly rallied their teams. Each group of cadets was required to carry or haul a log throughout—serving as a "casualty"—and within a set time, pass through a "contaminated" zone and an "enemy" blockade line, and complete a series of challenges including cliff climbing, rope traversal, and battlefield first aid.

Under the scorching sun, the sandy ground was soft and yielding; every step felt like treading on burning cotton. "Contaminated zone ahead!" Hao Wei gave a decisive order: "Wet your towels and cover your mouths and noses—follow me, charge!" He led the way, advancing rapidly from the upwind flank, with his team members close behind.

Meanwhile, Jin Peng and his team members found their path cut off by a near-vertical sea-eroded cliff face. The cliff was overgrown with thorns, and loose stones tumbled down intermittently. "I'll go first!" Jin Peng climbed hand and foot; his knees were scraped bloody. The team members below braced his feet on their shoulders and heaved together, slowly pushing the log up to the cliff top.

The vicious sun licked at the beach; their combat uniforms soaked through and dried again, leaving white crusts of salt. As physical strength was rapidly drained, what was even more demoralizing was the complete absence of fresh water and food.

The cadets climbed to the top of the cliff and had barely caught their breath when the exercise control group issued a first-aid task: stop bleeding, perform CPR, apply bandages and immobilization. Everyone forced themselves to crouch down and, with trembling hands, completed the precise procedures. After receiving a "qualified" assessment, the cadets rested briefly and then realized their canteens were empty. Jin Peng shared the last few sips of water with his comrades and forced himself to recall what he had learned in class: filter fresh water from seawater using desalination agents, and collect water droplets through solar distillation. While searching for water, he called out in delight: "Cape gooseberries! They're edible!" Everyone rushed to pick and eat them; a faint sweetness spread across their lips and teeth, and their fighting spirit rekindled within.

At dusk, a drone air-dropped camping supplies. Group One retrieved rope, parachute cloth, and an engineer's shovel; Hao Wei and his team members selected tree trunks as supports and used the parachute cloth to erect a wind-resistant tent. Group Two arrived a step late and received only parachute cloth, a survival knife, and triangular bandages. Working in the dark, they whittled wooden stakes and drove them into the hard ground, erecting a sturdy conical tent. On the first night on the desolate island, the sea wind howled outside the tents, swarms of mosquitoes bit at them, physical strength had long been pushed to its limit—but conviction was the unextinguished light in the cadets' hearts.

On the second day, Group One, which had been leading throughout, suddenly became lost in dense forest. Carrying their "casualty," they crossed an entire mountain, only to find it was not their destination. Exhaustion, hunger, and despair erupted all at once, and what Hao Wei had feared most came to pass—they were going in the wrong direction. He led the team to an open area and, his voice hoarse, pointed to a tree stump: "Look at the growth rings—the side with wider spacing faces the sun. Combined with watch-based orientation, we go this way!" His crisp, forceful words steadied the team's resolve, pulling the disoriented group back together as one. Everyone encouraged each other, shouldered the log, and forged a path through the thorn-covered wilderness.

At that same moment, Group Two, led by Jin Peng, was crossing a swift-flowing river. The cadets hung suspended above the torrent; the river, churning with silt, beat violently against their bodies, and the rope left deep marks on their palms. Though their legs trembled uncontrollably, they gritted their teeth and pressed toward the opposite bank. The first cadets to arrive used a signal mirror to send a distress signal to a drone, then arranged stones on the beach to form a large "SOS." The previous day they had also gotten lost in a valley; now, by achieving the fastest time on the rope traversal, they reversed the score.

On the desolate island, fierce competition raged. Cadets charged toward their limits with solid skills and iron will. Some had their shoulders rubbed raw and bleeding but never let the log touch the ground; others, feet covered in blisters, still pressed forward over jagged rocks. On the final night, the exercise control group air-dropped chicken, potatoes, and seasoning as a reward for those who persevered to the end. Everyone gathered dry grass and dead branches to make fire by friction; sparks flew and died again and again, sweat dripped onto the wood shavings, and arms ached too much to lift—but no one stopped. When the first tongue of flame licked up through the kindling and lit up those young faces, they let out a spontaneous roar in unison.

The meat sizzled and gave off a long-missed aroma; everyone sat around the campfire drinking hot broth, and all their exhaustion transformed into a burning light in their eyes. From the parade ground to an unfamiliar island reef, from single-subject drills to continuous emergency scenarios, they proved with 48 hours of survival in a desperate situation: true inner strength grows, little by little, when there is no way to retreat. This was a tempering experience close to actual combat, and a necessary trial by fire on the path from flight cadet to pilot.

Guarding Every Valve with Care

■ Liu Xinhao

[Caption: Joint Logistic Support Force Engineering University cadets conduct fuel-dispensing operations. Photo by Li Weiliang]

Late at night, an emergency assembly whistle pierced the air above a military fuel depot. Dense fog blanketed the tank farm; an unannounced fire-response drill under low-visibility conditions suddenly commenced.

This was the third week of cadet Luo Yi from Joint Logistic Support Force Engineering University's on-post internship with the troops. His combat post was concealed within a closed depot area by the sea, where he spent his days working with fuel storage tanks and oil pipelines. Before this, he had repeatedly memorized flange seal parameters, practiced valve switching over and over, and run through emergency response procedures in a simulation system against the clock. When the alarm sounded, even though he had made the corresponding preparations, his heartbeat still quickened involuntarily.

"No. 3 diesel storage tank flange seal failure; static electricity has ignited oil vapor; oil-gas concentration continues to exceed the threshold…" The alert was the order. Luo Yi and his supervising Sergeant Fang formed a two-person work team, donned anti-static gear and flame-resistant gloves, used a handheld anemometer to verify wind direction, and established safe operating boundaries. The procedural prerequisites repeatedly emphasized in class, the lines of bold text in the textbook—at this moment they carried the weight of a thousand pounds.

Because oil-gas density is greater than air, low-lying areas with pooled oil were the points of highest deflagration risk. Each work team conducted layered inspections along the oil containment berm from low to high. At the same time, operations near the coast required avoiding oil-gas vortices stirred up by sea breezes—a variable the cadets encountered in practical training that was absent from the classroom.

"Level-one alarm!" The detector reading jumped to the lower explosive limit threshold. Luo Yi signaled a red alert with his hand and simultaneously reported concentration data to the command group, designating a level-one exclusion zone.

With the perimeter established, response operations commenced simultaneously. Sergeant Fang stepped forward in a single stride and shut off the storage tank's emergency cutoff valve. Luo Yi helped his comrade unroll the fire hose and open the foam pipeline valve for the corresponding tank.

Sea fog mixed with high-temperature oil vapor pressed against his face shield; his field of vision narrowed to the nozzle in front of him and the oil surface with open flame. When the response was complete and they withdrew safely, looking at the white foam residue coating the cuffs of his protective suit, Luo Yi suddenly understood: every class in military academy is closely connected to the combat post; every set of parameters he had memorized, every operation he had practiced, ultimately had to translate into the reality of safeguarding security.

On the way back, the sea fog gradually lifted. Outside the depot's perimeter wall, warm yellow lights spread along the coastline, extending all the way to the distant fishing harbor. Gazing at the expanse of homes and hearths in the distance, Luo Yi's thoughts drifted back to a night two years earlier during recruit training.

It was also an emergency assembly with no warning. Luo Yi hurriedly packed his kit, donned his gear, and followed the formation to the iron fence at the perimeter of the barracks. The cold railings stood straight before him; on one side were the urgent commands of the military camp, on the other were residents strolling along the road and children running and playing.

Two completely different lives collided before his eyes. The squad leader in charge, Sergeant Zhang, noticed Luo Yi's distraction. During a rest break, he came to Luo Yi's side, tapped the fence lightly with his fingertip, and said, gazing into the distance: "Look at the two sides of this railing—on one side is training for war, on the other is peaceful life. There are thousands of posts in the military; the places you stand are different, the work you do is different, but in essence it's all the same thing—protecting the peaceful lights out there."

"You don't always need to think about standing in the most prominent place. As long as you can safeguard the good lives of the common people, you're a qualified soldier." At the time, Luo Yi had not fully grasped his squad leader's words; he simply kept them quietly in his heart. Until this moment, standing inside the depot's perimeter wall, with a squad leader still beside him explaining things—but he was no longer the raw recruit who had fumbled even with packing his kit.

"If we guard every valve well, the comrades up front will have the confidence to carry out their missions, and the thousands of families behind us can live in peace and happiness." Luo Yi gripped his detector firmly, his heart resolute. The cadets interning alongside him had also shed the bewilderment of their first days at the academy; after years of institutional training and tempering by the troops, they had undergone a complete transformation. From following orders to taking initiative, their capabilities had grown step by step, and the responsibilities on their shoulders had grown layer by layer—yet that original aspiration of "guarding" had never changed.

Reading the "Arithmetic Problems" at the Combat Post

■ Yang Zhengzhong, He Gege

[Caption: Air Force Engineering University cadets conduct hands-on training under the guidance of maintenance backbone personnel. Photo by Wu Zelin]

High noon, the desert sun blazing overhead. Air Force Engineering University cadet Zhao Rui crouched beneath a fighter jet's wing; the moment his fingertips touched the aircraft skin, he recoiled from the searing heat. This summer, he had voluntarily applied to participate in a post internship at a base deep in the desert. He had assumed that with his solid theoretical knowledge, getting up to speed on support work would not be too difficult—but he had not expected to hit a wall on his very first day.

During the pre-takeoff routine inspection, Zhao Rui worked through the operating procedures item by item, confirmed that interface connections were secure and parameters displayed normally, then stood up to signal completion. But Sergeant Yang Bo did not nod in approval. He pointed to a pipeline fitting: "Feel it again. The desert has heavy wind and sand; the wear rate on sealing rubber rings is three times that of inland areas. The standard inspection cycle in the textbook—out here, you cut it in half."

Zhao Rui's face flushed. Before coming to the unit, his impression of aircraft maintenance had still been confined to the flowcharts in textbooks and the theoretical explanations from the classroom. But an inconspicuous wear mark under his fingertips shattered his fixed assumptions—the textbook contains no desert sand and dust, no temperature swings of nearly 30 degrees Celsius between day and night, and certainly no combat alert that could sound at any moment. The real combat post is never found in ideal operating conditions.

In the days that followed, Zhao Rui experienced firsthand the tempo of a frontline unit.

One Saturday afternoon, an alarm suddenly rang out across the barracks. Officers and soldiers who had been napping rose by reflex, grabbed their gear, and rushed to the flight line. From the moment the alarm sounded to the moment the first support team was in position, only a few short minutes had passed. Watching the figures moving swiftly through clouds of swirling dust, Zhao Rui grasped the full weight of the four characters "sleeping on one's spear, awaiting dawn" (枕戈待旦).

Night comes late to the desert, and it is extraordinarily still. The runway lights came on one by one, and night-flight training commenced on schedule. Zhao Rui stood beside the apron, watching fighter jets pierce the night sky trailing flame, the roar of their engines sending a faint vibration through his chest. Since beginning his on-post internship, he had developed the habit of looking up at the sky—not to see how bright the desert's stars were, but to see how steady the warbirds' flight paths were. He understood that behind every streak of light cutting smoothly through the night sky lay the maintenance soldiers' repeated inspections and repeated verifications.

What truly engraved the mission into Zhao Rui's heart were the two "arithmetic problems" Sergeant Yang wrote on the board during a regulations study session. That day, Zhao Rui had independently completed a single-item inspection for the first time and was feeling pleased with himself when the sergeant turned and wrote two lines on the blackboard.

The first was an addition problem: adding from 1 all the way to 100, the answer is 5,050. "This simple mathematical formula is just like the process of aircraft maintenance and safety support. Every time you feel along a pipeline, every time you verify a parameter, every time you eliminate a hidden hazard, it is a positive accumulation of the safety coefficient. Only when a thousand and one rigorous operations are stacked together can they bear the weight of the warbird's every takeoff."

The second was a zeroing problem: any number multiplied by 0 equals 0. "Zero errors is not a high standard—it is a hard bottom line. Out of a hundred inspection items, get one wrong, and the result is 0. Hundreds of safe support missions, and one slip-up, and all the effort before it is wasted. This is the professional bottom line of maintenance soldiers, and the bottom line of responsibility to comrades' lives and to combat effectiveness."

The two equations on the blackboard took root and were deeply imprinted in Zhao Rui's mind. He thought of the rubber ring wear he had missed on his first day, of the flashlight worn white from use in the sergeant's toolbox, of the work manual filled with data. Those actions he had once thought "repetitive and trivial" turned out to all be part of working that addition problem; those standards that admitted not a shred of ambiguity were all about holding that bottom line.

From that point on, Zhao Rui's internship diary gained a fixed section: "Daily Review." He recorded knowledge points beyond the textbook and his own operational lapses one by one, reinforcing them in his memory before sleep. The next time he walked out onto the flight line, his steps were steadier, his observations more careful; he was unwilling to let any gap go unexamined.

As the internship neared its end, Zhao Rui solemnly signed his name on the volunteer form. As the pen touched the paper, he spoke no grand words—he only thought of the desert poplars (胡杨) found everywhere on the Gobi: the fiercer the wind and sand, the deeper the roots grow.

He looked up toward the end of the runway, where a fighter jet was taxiing and lifting off, the enormous roar of its engines filling his ears. Zhao Rui's heart was far more settled than when he had arrived. He would master his professional knowledge more thoroughly; when he one day takes his combat post, he will absolutely hold that zero-error bottom line, put every inspection and every verification into that addition problem, and bear the warbird steadily aloft and safely home.

Layout design: Xu Shuo

Photos provided by: Liu Jing