Shenhao UP Lord

Chapter 316 Landmine Clearance

Today, Brother Xu told the story of a soldier for the first time. The narrator Xiao Yao is an engineer of the French Foreign Legion. The story happened after he retired from the army last year.At that time, by chance, he went to Cambodia to clear landmines.

"I came to the Foreign Legion and was assigned to the Engineering Corps in November. After that, I spent nearly four and a half years in the engineering unit until I was discharged in the summer of 11."

"On the eve of my discharge from the army, the staff of the Pinglan Public Welfare Foundation approached me and asked me if I would like to go to Cambodia to do demining-related work. Since I had some experience with explosives during my military service, I happily agreed.

I was sent to Cambodia. The first place I arrived was Siem Reap, a tourist city. The streets of the city were full of restaurants, bar streets and tourists coming and going. Our demining destination was about 40 kilometers north of Siem Reap. A small county town.

The first problem I faced when I came to the county was the lack of clean water.The sources of drinking water here are well water, puddles, and pools. There are inevitably unclean things such as parasites, and there are many mosquitoes in the countryside, which can easily spread diseases. At that time, my heart was very broken.

When I go shopping in town, I often run into people with disabilities.At first, I was a little puzzled. When I saw a boss, I wondered why he was sitting on the ground and not moving?
It was only later that I realized that he had no legs.Afterwards, when I went shopping for vegetables, I often saw such people. They were all victims of landmines, and it was commonplace.

It is estimated that there are still about 300 million landmines lying on Cambodian soil.

The emergence of these landmines dates back to the Khmer Rouge period. The Khmer Rouge army massacred a small Vietnamese village, which aroused the revenge of the Vietnamese army. The army fought from the Vietnamese side to the Thai side, equivalent to the entire Cambodia Occupy all.

The Khmer was unable to fight, and they retreated while fighting. In order to give themselves time to escape, but also to create hidden dangers for the occupation of the Vietnamese army, they planted many, many landmines.

After the war ended, Vietnam withdrew its troops, and Cambodia, due to a power vacuum, broke out in a civil war that lasted for nearly a decade. Landmines, a relatively cheap weapon, were once again used in large quantities.
After the restoration of peace, the minefields have gradually become less and less, and the eastern region has been relatively completely lined up, but there is still a large area near the Thai border.There are some Buddhist and Hindu temple ruins in the minefield, which are actually very attractive attractions, but because the mines can't do anything, a lot of land is left unused.

Landmines are still killing people until today. During the 7 months I was in Cambodia, there were an average of 1-2 injury accidents every month.

Before going to Cambodia, our initial prediction was relatively conservative.We envision that the local area may only hire a few farmers who have no experience in demining, and we need to teach them from scratch.

But when I got there, I knew from the moment I saw the mine-sweeping team that it was completely different from the prediction. Everyone was a regular Cambodian army.

Basically, they understand the same things, and they have no shortcomings in knowledge.Even we both went to Africa in 2017 for the same peacekeeping mission.As soldiers, it is easy to develop feelings of sympathy and sympathy for each other, and the relationship gradually draws closer.

We officially started mine clearing operations in mid-August.

There are more than 20 mine-sweeping teams, and I am a coordinator, supervisor, and manager. The local mine-sweeping team is a professional technician to do specific operations.

Demining is actually a very boring thing. First, all vegetation and weeds on the land must be cleared, and then metal detectors can be used to detect the land. It will feed back all metal signals underground to us.

When you hear the beeping sound from the detector, you need to carefully dig up the soil to see what is making the noise. In most cases, it may just be some metal garbage.

Occasionally dig it out and find that it is a landmine, then you need to dig out the surrounding soil more carefully, and at the same time, you must not touch the object itself, just like digging a fossil.

After it is determined that the landmine is not a booby trap, that is, there is no anti-demolition device, it can be taken out.After taking it out, dismantle it if it can be dismantled, and if it cannot be dismantled, put it in a safe place and destroy it. The demining is over.

A demining team with six or seven demining devices can clear about 1200 square meters in a week. The work progress is very slow.

The first mine that was actually found was actually an unexploded bomb, a mortar shell.That is to say, the shell did not explode after it was fired, but remained in the ground. It is hard to say whether it will explode in the future.

The first landmine that was actually discovered was a PMN-1 Soviet landmine. After it was discovered, it was taken out according to the standard procedure and then dismantled.

The types of landmines in Cambodia are not complicated. Just like the Chinese anti-Japanese movie "Landmine Warfare", usually there are only one or two armed forces fighting or stationed in an area, and their own equipment is relatively small, so although there are many types of landmines in total , but specifically for this piece of 64 hectares of land, there are only 7 types of mines.

Once a TV station wanted to come over to shoot a scene, I took them to the minefield to watch the scene being worked on.When walking behind a deminer, the metal detector of the deminer made a strong beeping sound, obviously not small garbage, nails and the like.

The cameraman was very happy, saying oops, finally caught a picture, and started running around the minefield.

I was very nervous at the time, and I scolded him, "Stand in your position, don't go anywhere, don't move around." At that time, my tone was not very polite, because I was afraid that if there was really a landmine underneath, it would cause serious damage. as a result of.We dug up the soil and found that it was a piece of aluminum the size of an A4 paper, so we breathed a sigh of relief.

The old-fashioned detectors used by deminers can only detect a distance of 15 centimeters underground, which requires that the scanning disk at the bottom must be very closely attached to the ground, and it cannot be more than one or two centimeters, otherwise the detection depth will not be enough. Some people Probably didn't realize it, so I pointed it out at the time.

Because garbage is often checked, sometimes the deminers lose their vigilance. When they feel that the source of the signal may be a garbage, they throw the garbage away and prepare to move on.I would stop it when I saw it, and I said, "Don't worry, after you take this garbage away, you have to detect it again in place", because it is possible that the source of the signal is under the garbage.

As an engineer who has received corresponding education in the regular army, my education is to turn a high-risk thing like demining into a low-risk ordinary operation.

We do not rely on courage and sacrifice to do things, but with a more professional attitude, by learning professional knowledge and abiding by system norms, we turn demining into daily work, just like workers on an assembly line.

(End of this chapter)