Courtyard Houses: Starting with Li Yunlong's Comrades-in-Arms

Ten days is neither a long nor a short time.

Liu Yuheng practically glued himself to his office. He would get up before dawn every day, wash up, and head straight to his desk, not returning to his dormitory until 11 or 12 at night. The documents on his desk were piling up higher and higher, including rosters from various divisions, personnel lists from various regiments, and stacks of his handwritten statistical drafts.

In front of him was a thick notebook, densely filled with numbers and names, some circled, some crossed out, and some annotated.

In those ten days, he thoroughly investigated the entire army's organization. He had a rough idea of ​​how many people were in each division, how many were overstaffed in each regiment, which officers were transferred from other units, and which were temporarily added during the war.

He sorted out these pieces of information one by one, categorized them, and gradually a clear outline formed in his mind.

Currently, there are approximately 5,000 wounded, sick, and slightly disabled personnel whose continued combat ability is affected. Some of these individuals were wounded on foreign battlefields, some have old injuries accumulated over years of combat, and some have suffered physical decline due to injuries, making them unable to adapt to high-intensity combat. This group is the first to be demobilized; there is a policy basis for this, making the process relatively simple and least likely to cause backlash.

After the first round of screening, there was another group: combat personnel over 45 years old and redundant administrative staff. These people totaled several thousand. Some were veterans who had joined the revolution during the War of Resistance Against Japan; they were old and their physical strength was failing, and although experienced, they were indeed struggling to keep up in frontline units. There were also many redundant personnel in the administrative offices; some departments were overstaffed, with seven or eight people sitting in one section, but very few actually doing any work. This group was the second to be streamlined.

But Liu Yuheng calculated that even if both groups of people were laid off, there would still be a significant shortfall from the 20,000-strong workforce required by the Central Military Commission. He sighed, picked up his pen, and added another line to his notebook: "Set the age limit to forty and do the statistics again."

He put down his pen, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his throbbing head. The enamel mug on the table was cold; he picked it up and took a sip. The cold water slid down his throat, making him feel a little more awake. He stared at the thick stack of rosters on the table and suddenly felt an overwhelming longing for the way people worked in front of computers in later generations.

If we had a computer, we could just pull up the list, filter the criteria, and search for keywords, and we could get all the matching results in a few tens of minutes. Unlike now, where we have to flip through page after page and compare them one by one, which is making our eyes go blind.

He continued flipping through the pages, his gaze lingering on a page containing the roster of the 133rd Division. It was a row of names, followed by their ages and enlistment dates. He looked at each one, marking some names with a pencil. Those men looked young, but they had enlisted long ago; they were veterans. He felt a pang of guilt about cutting them, but the available positions were there, and he had no choice but to make the cuts.

As he was looking at it, the phone on the table suddenly rang.

Liu Yuheng put down his pen and picked up the phone: "Hello, who is this?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, then a gruff voice came through, tinged with impatience and familiarity: "Damn it, who else could it be? It's me!"

Liu Yuheng paused for a moment, then laughed. He switched the microphone to his other ear and leaned back in his chair: "Li Yunlong? You're back at school?"

"They're back already!" Li Yunlong's voice came through the microphone. "Old Kong and Old Ding are back, and Old Zhao is in Nanjing on business. We've all gotten together today. How about a get-together? It's been a long time since we old comrades have had a drink together."

Liu Yuheng glanced at the documents on the table, hesitated for half a second, and then said, "Okay, where is it?"

"Jinling Hotel, Peony Hall on the second floor," Li Yunlong said crisply. "Hurry up, we're all here, just waiting for you."

"Okay, I'll be there in a bit." Liu Yuheng hung up the phone, closed the documents on the table, and dialed the driver's team: "Prepare the car, I need to go out for a bit."

Ten minutes later, he got into the jeep, left the camp gate, and headed towards the Jinling Hotel. The Jinling Hotel was one of the most prestigious hotels in Jinling City, a three-story building with blue bricks and gray tiles, and red lanterns hanging at the entrance, clearly an old establishment with a long history. The car stopped at the entrance, Liu Yuheng got out, told the driver to wait at the door, and strode inside.

The Peony Hall on the second floor is at the very back. The door is ajar, and you can hear voices and laughter coming from inside.

Liu Yuheng pushed open the door and entered, immediately greeted by the warmth and lively atmosphere of the room. Li Yunlong sat directly opposite the door, Kong Jie to his left, Ding Wei to his right, and Zhao Gang next to Kong Jie. The four of them sat around a large round table, on which were already set several plates of cold dishes and a bottle of baijiu (Chinese liquor).

"Coming, coming!" Li Yunlong was the first to see him, put down his teacup, stood up, and waved to him. "Hurry up, we've been waiting for you!"

Liu Yuheng walked over with a smile, took off his military overcoat and draped it over the back of the chair next to him, then sat down between Ding Wei and Zhao Gang. He looked at Zhao Gang; it had been a while since he'd seen him. Zhao Gang was thinner than the last time they met, and his face wore that gentle smile typical of scholars.

He looked him up and down, then asked, "Old Zhao, what have you been up to lately?"

Zhao Gang picked up his teacup, took a sip, put it down, and said unhurriedly, "I've been transferred to the Department of Electrical Engineering, where I'll be in charge of some industrial work. I'm in Nanjing on official business, just passing through, so I thought I'd check on Old Li's studies and see you old comrades."

Liu Yuheng nodded, glanced at Li Yunlong, and smiled, "Then you'd better keep an eye on Lao Li. If he doesn't graduate, it'll be a disgrace to our old unit. The commander of the 386th Brigade's Independent Regiment, unable to graduate from the military academy, will be a laughing stock."

Upon hearing this, Li Yunlong's face immediately darkened. He picked up his teacup and pointed it at Liu Yuheng in a mocking manner: "Go to hell! What's wrong with my studies? I passed the last exam! Even though it was only by two points, it's still a pass! A pass is a pass, so stop being sarcastic."

Everyone laughed, but Kong Jie laughed the most heartily, slapping the table and saying, "Old Li, you're so smug just because you passed. If you had gotten an excellent grade, you'd be flying high!"

Li Yunlong glared at him, didn't reply, but his lips twitched, clearly feeling a little embarrassed himself.

Zhao Gang turned to Liu Yuheng and asked, "Old Liu, what have you been busy with lately?"

Liu Yuheng's smile faded slightly. He picked up his teacup, took a sip, and exhaled. "We're downsizing the army. As you know, the troops expanded considerably when we went abroad to fight, but now that we're back, the numbers have to be reduced. From 38,000 to 20,000, almost half. I've spent the last ten days basically looking at the lists; my eyes are tired from looking at them."

As he spoke, he rubbed his temples: "Those soldiers, they all came through gunfire with me, one by one, they're all familiar faces. I can't bear to lay off any of them, but I can't not lay them off either."

Kong Jie nodded in agreement and continued, "It's similar on my end. I received news recently that the situation in my army isn't much better. Although it's not as bad as the reductions in your 45th Army, it's still a significant number of people being cut. I've been feeling uneasy about it ever since."

Li Yunlong and Ding Wei exchanged a glance, neither of them speaking. Their troops hadn't participated in the war and had long since undergone demobilization, so they hadn't experienced this kind of dilemma. However, their expressions were far from relaxed, clearly indicating that they understood Liu Yuheng and Kong Jie's feelings at that moment.