Under the relentless summer heat at a training base of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force, engineers of the PLA Chengdu Military Area Command Air Force prepared for a comprehensive assessment test. It included eight subjects, such as backfilling craters, paving road surfaces with fiber reinforced plastics and detecting unexploded mines.
Fu Qiaolin, vice head of a rescue squadron, had graduated less than a year before. His dark face and not yet full whiskers showed his determination which was characteristic of China’s Tujia minority.
Under Fu’s leadership, his team had trained at road paving with fiber reinforced plastics for almost a month, resting only after three consecutive error-free operations. To meet this simple goal, team members had suffered pulled muscles, lumbar degeneration, and other injuries.
“Assessment is battle, and battle is far crueler than assessment,” Fu would say after a hard day training.
Assessment day arrived, and the starting whistles, like warning alarms, ushered in machine noises, and shouted commands and responses. In just over 10 minutes, more than 10 meters of road surface with fiber reinforced plastics covered the ruined runway perfectly.
The examiners gave them full marks after strict assessment, and fighter planes could again take off from the air strip.
At another examination base, Sergeants First Class Xu Zilong and Zhao Wen worked together to win full marks in detecting buried mines. They pinpointed the head of an unexploded bomb to within one centimeter, astonishing even the expert group.
“You need to suffer before make a good name in public,” team leader Wang Jianjun had always told his military brothers. “Bomb disposal is always a confrontation with death, and death will seize you with one wrong move,” said Wang, a veteran of more than 500 operations, who was known for his strictness in military engineering training.
If the examination required mine disposal to be finished within eight minutes, they would aim for six minutes. If the test demanded detection to within four centimeters, they would aim for two centimeters.
The team had been given new detection equipment, which they had mastered with a concentrated sweep of the airport. Within a month, the 3,000-meter air strip had been swept and the metal detector head rubbed flat.
During the examination, all personnel finished every move quickly and efficiently, winning eight champions with seven full marks. Young instructor Xu reflected on the dangers of the bomb disposal profession: “It is a science to be completed with courage and caution.”
However, Wang added, “This is only a test and the ultimate examination still lies ahead.”
