Operators call the cultivation of their mental stamina “devil training.” Since being posted to the plateau, the company commander had been testing them to their limits. While they were aiming, gunfire erupted unexpectedly. When they were ready to fire, the commander began shouting behind them. When an operator was training, the other operators would come to find fault in an attempt to irritate the trainee, with some even pulling off the shooting wire only to test the trainee’s temper control.
After several rounds of training, Dou Zhanhui stood out with a steady performance and became the most capable new hand. The young operator is fixated with missiles. Whenever the regiment organized a long-distance drill, he volunteered to stand guard as the lead operator. He could hold a 20-kg missile for four hours at a stretch.
When experienced operators visited, Dou would ask for their advice. In April, a technician from a factory producing missiles of the same model he operated visited the troop. Dou stumped him with his questions and even helped the technician successfully overcome problems with a missile launcher.
When Dou was a private first class, he showed his quality as a sharpshooter. A tiny invention of his had helped operators improve their aim.
Competence is not enough to make an excellent operator. What made Dou’s supervisor pay special attention to him was what he had done in an emergency. During a missile firing drill in August, a master missile operator lost his target in a live-fire exercise.
After this failure, Dou watched the video footage to analyze the cause. At night, he studied by flashlight the instructions for missile firing in plateau conditions. A fortnight later, he went to the company commander to deliver his analysis and volunteered to fire the second missile. Company Commander Sun Xuehui agreed to be his associate. It was that day, he hit his first target.
