披着夜色驰向汉江北岸
做一个登山者
一步
一步
在崎岖的山道上
刻下岁月的见证
留一个灵魂清醒的高度
给后人
攀登
——雪阳
风萧萧，
寂静的寒夜，
冷月高悬。
阵阵爆炸声响，
呛人的烟雾，
随风飞旋。
残雪未尽的村庄，
燃烧熊熊火焰。
一队马车拐过山湾，
驰向炽热而僻静的雪原。
车上几个年轻军人，
神色严峻，沉默寡言。
他们都是急于归队的伤兵，
有文书、班长、副指导员。
我们的主人公曹牧云，
也坐在马车里面。
近一百天治疗休养，
他离开哈尔滨陆军医院，
乘坐火车，
直到安东鸭绿江边。
重返前线的激情，
使年轻的心跳动不安。
他和几个同路的战友，
搭上一辆运粮的马车，
驾辕老兵一甩鞭杆，
战马雄赳赳嘶叫，
奔向辛高山下的阳德粮站。
那是1951年初春，
一场大雪铺盖荒野。
曹牧云得知自己的部队，
正集结在涟川、抱川。
前线春寒料峭的间隙，
26军开始汉江北岸阻击战，
曹牧云渴望经受战火的熔炼。
战马嘶鸣，热血沸腾，
车队昼夜往前追赶。
冲破美军远程海岸炮的封锁，
披着夜色驰过辛高山。
黑夜渐渐隐去。
原野露出淡淡曙色，
随着黎明的脚步，
风雪停止了。
战地开始新的一天。
运送粮食的马车队，
停靠在一片矮松林里。
他们搬下一袋袋炒面，
堆放在松树旁边。
战马卸去重轭，
啃着草料，喷着响鼻，
享受短暂的瞬间。
四周静悄悄，
曹牧云倚着松树歇息。
突然树林后背，
一颗蓝色信号弹，
腾空而起。
敌人特务在指示目标，
一场残酷的空袭，
即将骤然而至。
美军独霸空中优势，
重点轰炸疯狂激烈。
四架野马式低空盘旋扫射，
密集的子弹如同雨点。
旭日映照下，
树林里浓烟滚滚。
一匹白马被机枪子弹打中，
跪倒在血浆里悲鸣；
红马在惊恐中挣断缰绳，
禁不住仰天长嘶，
扬蹄飞奔。
饲养员被弹片击中，
倒在白马身边；
曹牧云站起来想去抢救，
一架敌机低空扫射，
班长祁昌奋起将他推倒，
转身抱住他就地翻滚，
隐蔽在坍塌的壕沟里面。
班长祁昌搀扶曹牧云，
挣扎在死亡荒野。
或弓腰奔跑，
或匍匐而行，
有时如同两只蜥蜴，
紧紧地趴伏地面。
又一枚汽油燃烧弹，
落在他们身边不远。
路边矮松顿时呼呼燃烧，
黑烟滚滚，
火焰乱窜。
一棵高大的马尾松，
被拦腰砍断，
枝桠横斜挡住去路。
眼看惊吓的马匹，
四散奔跑，
嘶鸣声凄惨。
倾泻完所有的炸弹，
三架敌机悻悻飞去。
经历刚才的轰炸，
仿佛穿过炼狱一般。
班长祁昌是个乐观的人，
憨厚的脸上阳光灿烂，
他说二次战役他死过一次，
阎王爷说他寿命未终，
又硬把他送回阳间。
他甚至把在战壕里闪过，
荒唐可笑的念头讲了一遍。
寒流在云层中凝结冰雹。
凝固汽油弹，
吞噬岩石草丛，
幻想穿过死亡的阴影，
像夕阳裹在风雪里吼叫。
在变形的空间，
和弯曲的时间中，
祁昌竟荒唐地做着
回归大山的梦。
……汗水浸淫额头。
奔跑啊奔跑，弯弯
曲曲的山路，
稀稀疏疏的竹林，
乌黑的长发，
木屋前瀑布流淌。
鲜红头巾飘出熟稔的窗棂，
胸怀贴紧，挤出
奔涌的泪雨；
黎明，未曾进入
圣殿的门廊。他的心
已被尊严与怯弱捏碎。
处子的乳香成了
永恒的彗星，
铆钉般强悍青春的心。
“执手相看泪眼
竟无语凝噎。”
跋涉，走出群山之路；
别离，生死相盼有期。
海的瞭望塔，
耸立在高山那边。
雁荡山月色缥缈中，
偎依的夫妻峰，
巨大的身影……
祁昌没有在惊栗中颤抖，
没有将伙伴的尸体推离怀抱。
燃烧的浓烟随风飘来，
扣开的手榴弹，
牙齿咬紧，
腰间的血汩汩流淌，
雷轰电击，烟雾缭绕，
死神又向山谷卷起怒涛。
班长祁昌的一席话，
又将曹牧云带回长津湖畔。
他仿佛跟随这个青年，
在下碣隅里的战壕，
艰难地重走一遍。
如今，虽然处境艰难，
他们是志愿军，
坚信自己，
不会轻易地死去。
祁昌狡黠地眨着眼睛，
静静躺卧在泥石草丛中间。
…… ……
黄昏已经来临。
山野萧疏而宁静。
公路上驶来几辆吉普车，
挂满枝条的伪装，
远远望去，
仿佛移动的树林。
前面的吉普开走了，
最后一辆在路边暂停。
司机拎着小桶到溪边取水，
车上有个声音高喊：“嗨，
怎么是你，曹牧云？
你的腿伤治好啦，
真让人好想念。
三个月没有你的音信。”
随着一串清脆柔曼的话语，
车里有梦中常见的人。
一位首长走下车来，
女医生江惠跟在后边。
她说：“怎么这样巧，
我刚送伤员去杨德兵站，
路遇开会归来的曹主任，
跟着他的车赶回医院。”
曹牧云立正敬礼，
慌忙弹去身上泥土。
这位高大魁梧的首长，
微微点头，嗓门很粗：
“你是报社的曹记者，
我听你们社长说，
在长津湖战役，
你表现不俗。
你到突击连采访负伤，
腿部中弹，浑身血污，
江惠和文工团小杨，
在死人堆里将你救护。
如今，伤治好了？
可影响爬山、走路？”
“不影响，恢复很好。
你们看，我照样大步蹦跳。
幸亏当时江医生细心照顾，
她又背我逃出死亡地堡。”
曹牧云感激地望着江惠，
发亮的眼睛真情流露。
深爱下属的曹主任，
也向他俩投出慈祥的爱抚：
“上来说吧，
车里有个空位，
我带你到前方指挥部。”
曹牧云立即转身，
告别祁昌和其它伙伴。
匆匆坐上吉普车，
驰往战火纷飞的前线。
2010-9-31，悉尼
Chapter 5
Do as a climber did
A pace
And paces
In train; that keeps
Marking on a winding mountain road
To carve down the times'firm marks
And as a testimony of the height
Of a clear soul letting newcomers ascend.
—Xue Yang (Australia)
Run in a night towards the north-bank of Han-River
The wind blew sobbing-like,
A cold night in silence sulky,
A pale moon hung high in the clouded sky.
Somewhere not far, the drumming of the earth shock
Fluttered with the swirl of smokes
Sensed choking throats;
A God-forsaken village,
With lingering dirty snows lit up by burning fires,
Rounded a hill bend, a stream of a few carts
Was advancing in the troubled quiet snowy fields.
On one of the carts set a few young soldiers,
Faces stony in speechless—Who injured before
And now on their way back to their front –units
As clerical staff or a squad leader
Even vice guidance.
Cao Mu-yun was among them .
After nearly a hundred days
For health-recuperation
He left the Ha Er-Bing Army Hospital and
By a train Towards the Yalu River near An-Dong city,
Hurried back to the front-line,
With his emotional heart.
Cao and a few comrades who on the same way set
On the rice transporting cart, heard
A soundly sound of slashed whip the cart-drive made,
His lovely horse powerfully neighed,
Then rushed to the Yang-De rice-station, finally
Approached the destination on the foot
Of Xing-Gao Hill.
Early spring days
In 1941, a little gap of cold war-time,
A huge snowy storm had covered the broad wild field.
Cao knew his unit —26th army corps
Now in Lian-Chuan & Bao-Chuan being assembled
In order to start a land war
Along Han River's north banks,
That message really spread
A wave of emotion into his chest:
A soldier's no soldier without
Taking part in heroic battles.
Hearts on fire, the chargers neighed,
Day and night broken through the areas sealed
Off by distant-coastal artillery
Of American Army, and The carts run over
The Mountain Xing-Gao, all that wintry night.
A Night silence, faded slowly the darkness,
While morning lights rising up over the heath,
At dawn's heels with
The flurries of snow stopped,
Another new day of war-feast started.
The carts stopped at in young pinewoods,
Been unloaded the food-supply of bags of fried flours,
That then piled upright by the pines.
Their war-horses were removed their yokes,
And gently dropped heads to crop straws;
In the easiest time of it, hooves
Pawed the dry earth and sounding their noses.
So quiet around there was,
Cao leaned against the pine tree rest.
Behind lines of trees, a blue flare rose
Up suddenly Hung trembling against
The clouded sky—enemy spy's
Working for their ruthless airy raid,
Would soon send their America war-birds
Murderous overhead.
American air- force had held a solo-advantage
In Korea skies, with many key-point-air-raids
Over their opponents; now four wild-horse airplanes
Circling in the sky shot down bullets like raindrops.
The new morning sun shone. Beneath the dense
Black smoke rising in pinewoods. A white-horse
Was gunned down by machine-gun bullets, half kneeled
Down in its bloody-pool, neighing in vain；a red horse
Nearby in a shock broken the reins and raised his head,
Neighing skywards and then hooves
Within the wind gone towards a far-off place.
A stockman hit by splinters and fell down
Nearby the white horse from the force of it.
Cao stood up to rescue him while an enemy plane
Just swooped down with rain-bullets.For the fraction
Of a second, in the immediate vicinity of him
The monitor Qi-Chang pushed him down and
Grasped him rolling away, ducked into a trench ruined.
A few seconds later
The monitor Qi helped up Cao staggered to his feet
And then on the death plain, they had struggled:
They bent double running
Or threw themselves to the ground,
Or crawling, sometimes, lay pressed
Flat against the ground,
As a pair of lizards awake on the paddy field.
Another Napalm bomb hit the ground which
Only a few paces away from them,
Making a darting sea of flames lunge
Towards the sky; a young pine tree by the roadside
Suddenly as the pent up flame burst lurid
From the dark smokes wrapped-swirling up.
A huge taller masson pine was also hit and
Broken as two, of which the broken branches
Fell on the road and blocked it up. Frightened,
The horses were neighing so miserably, and
Run all directions.
Dropping down
a hail of napalm they all had in for killing，
Three US planes then
Brought their noses up and wheeling，
Like buzzards gone，left the ground world beneath
Being the hell suffered from
Heart opening to the sacrifice.
Qi Chang was a rose-colored person.
In the second campaign before he had
Survived a worsened situation
But the Lord of the hell sent him back:
“You should not be finished yet”
Then with a sunny face, his funny ideas and
Thoughts of trench life he liked
Telling you once more like that:
Blew through layers of clouds
The nipping and eager air current congealing hails,
Yet napalm bombs had eaten up rocks and ashed grasses:
Like-minded illusions peer through shadows of death,
Howling like sundown enveloped by stormy-snows.
Within the deforming space
And through bent time,
Qi-Chang was fabulously dreaming a dream
Of returning his mountains they were of yesterday.
Ran from now ran to yesterday,
Sweats ran past his forehead.
The hill roads wounded about to wind,
With which bamboo forests thinly skirted.
Towards a wooden cottage, and in front
Of waterfall with its running voice,
There was a red head-cloth fluttered
Itself through the familiar window lattice;
Chest to chest; from yesterday to today
The welling tears run down waited;
Sunrise has been no entering the holy porch,
Bearing the weight of dignity and
Timid self, his heart was broken.
Debut’s libanotus became as an eternal comet
Remote of a rivet-like brave young heart.
“Hand in hand with tearing eyes yet
Mused within their curdling tear”.
Crossing mountains and the way out of it;
Parted pity then foresee a vivid-day of living memory.
A tall watchtower on seashore erected a far beyond
The mountains; the shoulder-to-shoulder peaks
Of Husband and wife of Yan-Dang's huge purple shadows
In misty discernible moonlight,
Floated.
Qi-Chang had kept himself together and
Embraced the clammy body of his fellow dead;
The burning smokes were fluttering in the wind,
Grounded his teeth and the lid of grenade
Pulled open; from the waist still flew the blood,
Under the sky thunders roaring,
The flashes of light flying,
The gods of death bent the billowy valley.
And of the monitor Qi-Chang the words
Had brought back the scenery of Chosin Reservoir,
As if he had once more had himself in the trenches
Of Xia Tuju-RI and this dear
Reflection disarmed the surrounded dangers.
Today, even in so hard the situation was,
But they were of the Chinese Army and
Acted out of their deepest convictions
Of never stopping a fight till his dying moment.
Qi-Chang cunningly winked his eyes
And lay down quietly among the grassy stony-earth.
…… ……
The dusk had already settled down on the hillside,
Making the surrounding dreary and quiet;
Along the road
A few Jeeps came near, all covered
With leafy –branches,
From afar as if a moving woods.
Jeeps coming and going one after one
But the last one stopped along the road-side
For the occasion.
A driver stepped down from it
with a bucket in one hand and went
Below the road to a stream for water.
Suddenly a voice on this Jeep cried out a name:
“Hey! Why it is you! Cao Mu-Yun!
Your leg is all right now? We all so much miss you!
Already
Three months without a single word from you!”
Crisp words and sounds of the voice of
The person he often dreamed of.
A regimental commander stepped down from
The Jeep, the medico Jiang followed close to him;
A voice of her saying: “How lucky I am!
It is that I just shift the wounds
To Yang-De army-station
And encounter director Cao backed from
A meeting, yet have hitched a ride of his Jeep
Back to the hospital.”
Cao clicked his heels and raised a hand in salute,
Then hurriedly, he pounded the dust from his trousers.
This was a tall and broad-shouldered commander,
With a nod said easily aloud:
“Are you Cao, of our press the reporter?
The Stories of yours
In the battle of Chosin Reservoir
I have heard from your chief manager,
You are really a good reporter.
Wounded while you joined the assault company,
With the leg hit by a bullet and bloody body;
It was that medico Jiang Hui and actress Yang of
The cultural Troupe from the stack of
Dead bodies saved your life.
Now, you all right? Could climb and walk?”
“Yes! I am perfectly all right now. You see
Still being a perfect one-piece, as a good jumper.
Thanks to the medico Jiang, she carried me
In time escaped from a burning bunker.”
Cao was thankfully looking at Jiang-Hui with
Bright eyes in a tide of emotion,
While the director Cao watched them with
His kindness; and, for a while said to them:
“Come up in, there is a vacant seat
For you, go with me
To the front-line headquarters. ”
Quickly turned around, Cao bade farewells
To Qi-Chang and other fellows,
And hurriedly sitting at in the Jeep, with them
Drove away to the bright fighting horizon.
Ran from now ran to yesterday,
Sweats ran past his forehead.
The hill roads wounded about to wind,
With which bamboo forests thinly skirted.
Towards a wooden cottage, and in front
Of waterfall with its running voice,
There was a red head-cloth fluttered
Itself through the familiar window lattice;
Chest to chest; from yesterday to today
The welling tears run down waited;
Sunrise has been no entering the holy porch,
Bearing the weight of dignity and
Timid self, his heart was broken.
Debut’s libanotus became as an eternal comet
Remote of a rivet-like brave young heart.
“Hand in hand with tearing eyes yet
Mused within their curdling tear”.
Crossing mountains and the way out of it;
Parted pity then foresee a vivid-day of living memory.
A tall watchtower on seashore erected a far beyond
The mountains; the shoulder-to-shoulder peaks
Of Husband and wife of Yan-Dang's huge purple shadows
In misty discernible moonlight,
They floated.
Qi-Chang had kept himself together and
Embraced the clammy body of his fellow dead;
The burning smokes were fluttering in the wind,
Grounded his teeth and the lid of grenade
Pulled open; from the waist still flew the blood,
Under the sky thunders roaring,
The flashes of light flying,
The gods of death bent the billowy valley.
And of the monitor Qi-Chang the words
Had brought back the scenery of Chosin Reservoir,
As if he had once more had himself in the trenches
Of Xia Tuju-RI and this dear
Reflection disarmed the surrounded dangers.
Today, even in so hard the situation was
But they were of the Chinese Army and
Acted out of their deepest convictions
Of never stopping a fight till his dying moment.
Qi-Chang cunningly winked his eyes
And lay down quietly among the grassy stony-earth.
...
The dusk had already settled down on the hillside,
Making the surrounding dreary and quiet;
Along the road
A few Jeeps came near, all covered
With leafy –branches,
From afar as if a moving woods.
Jeeps coming and going one after one
But the last one stopped along the road-side
For the occasion.
A driver stepped down
From it with a bucket in one hand
And went below the road to a stream for water.
Suddenly a voice on this Jeep cried out a name:
“Hey! Why it is you! Cao Mu-Yun!
Your leg is all right now? We all so much miss you!
Already three months
Without a single word from you!”
Crisp words and sounds of the voice of
The person he often dreamed of.
A regimental commander stepped down from
The Jeep, the medico Jiang followed close to him;
A voice of her saying: “How lucky I am!
It is that I just shift the wounds
To Yang-De army-station
And encounter director Cao backed from
A meeting yet hitched a ride of his Jeep back
To the hospital.”
Cao clicked his heels and raised a hand in salute,
Then hurriedly, he pounded the dust from his trousers.
This was a tall and broad-shouldered commander,
With a nod said easily aloud:
“Are you Cao, of our press the reporter?
The Stories of yours in the battle
Of Chosin Reservoir
I have heard from your chief manager,
You are really a good reporter.
Wounded while you joined the assault company,
With the leg hit by a bullet and bloody body;
It was that medico Jiang Hui and actress Yang of
The cultural Troupe from the stack of
Dead bodies saved your life.
Now, you all right? Could climb and walk?”
“Yes! I am perfectly all right now. You see
Still a perfect one-piece, as a good jumper;
Thanks to the medico Jiang, she carried me
In time escaped from a burning bunker.”
Cao was thankfully looking at Jiang-Hui with
Bright eyes in a tide of emotion,
While the director Cao watched them with
His kindness; and, for a while said to them:
“Come up in, there is a vacant seat
For you, go with me
To the front-line headquarters. ”
Quickly turned around, Cao bade farewells
To Qi-Chang and other fellows,
And hurriedly sitting at in the Jeep, with them
It drove away to the bright fighting horizon.
