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They set off from Luan’s central square on a clear-skied and dusty morning, parading two by two and due north along the town’s principal thoroughfare while to the sides—cheering like the proud patriots they incontestably were—friends and family filled the air with breeze-snapped banners and the newly instituted flag of the people. Forty-eight young men drawn from the town and its surrounding villages, called upon by the nation for a task of the utmost secrecy and of the utmost importance. Leading them, a colonel and lieutenant colonel sent from the capitol, field-proven fighters of impeccable repute whose show of confidence and poise that day helped to dispel—however fleetingly—the nagging fears of even the most nerve-racked relatives . . . The young soldiers were now nearing the halfway point between the central square and the town gate by which they would exit, causing the streets to become increasingly saturated with the ever-shifting spectrum of sound produced by the onlookers: by the moist-cheeked mothers letting out pained cries of affection and pleading with the colonel to look after their boys; by the fathers, relatively composed, shouting the requisite words, trite as they may have been, of wisdom and encouragement; by the screaming children who, whipped up into a frenzy by the ambient excitement, chased one another around their grandparents’ legs; and, only really audible when the cheering subsided, by the voices and strings of the local musicians . . . Then—all too soon—the column of soldiers was filing through the ancient town wall’s northern gate; the people of Luan surged forward in response, shoving and jostling one another to scream a final farewell to a brother or son, and the reigning decorum fell completely to pieces; and though the men at the vanguard were lucky enough to be spared the ensuing scene of lament, most of the young marchers found themselves leaving home in a state of panic and confusion, the hysteria around them growing and growing before being brought to an earsplitting head as the last pair of soldiers disappeared beyond the wall. Several minutes later—and mostly owing to the town elders and their words of solace—a relative calm had settled over the town. A few final and scattered wails served as a kind of conclusion, and then the people gathered up their dust-covered flags and began, slowly, to make their way home.
Several months earlier, while winter was transitioning into spring: without any prior notice, a liberationist messenger named Cheng had appeared on horseback outside the town gates and asked to meet with the local leaders. His request duly granted, he presented a decree directly issued from the newly appointed Secretary of Interior, sealed, stamped, signed, final. Read aloud by Cheng then looked carefully over by the town council. An honor or a punishment? The man from the capital insisted it was the former—a unique opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the war effort, to strike a much-needed blow to the counter-revolutionary forces. Yes, but why us? why our town? asked the council. Surely there were populations more suitable, more war-ready. But Cheng paid the argument no mind: the orders had come from the highest levels of government, and were not to be questioned. And so word was spread throughout the town: in two week’s time, every childless man above the age of sixteen would begin training for a mission vital to the liberationists’ success against the counter-revolutionaries. For the moment the specifics were classified, but the name under which Luan’s forty-eight young recruits would march—and potentially fight—was written out several times in the decree and several times shouted proudly out by Cheng during the course of that first meeting: the Western Contingent. A name deliberated and decided upon in the capitol and then brought out here to the provinces, a name that filled most of the townspeople with the same mysterious and humbling awe they’d first experienced several months earlier, when a stray fighter plane bearing unknown insignia had come humming in low over the wheat fields of Luan and then continued along its trajectory straight into a nearby hillside, exploding, and leaving behind it a thick line of stenchy, black smoke.
Twelve days later more men CAME from the capitol, a small team—riding in two massive trucks—which consisted of the colonel and the lieutenant colonel, as well as several lower officers who would leave just before the end of training. The accompanying supplies were hastily unloaded—binoculars, backpacks, tents, guns, uniforms, and much else besides, some of it foreign-made, some sourced domestically—and then, with Cheng waving a friendly farewell from a passenger side window, the two vehicles were speeding back down the dusty road on which they’d arrived; in a single afternoon a temporary training camp was set up south of the city wall over an unused stretch of stone-choked dirt, and Luan’s forty-eight conscripts were told to present themselves the following morning shortly after sunrise. Over the subsequent weeks they would learn how to fire a rifle, how to pitch a tent, how to march in a disciplined and orderly fashion, and, most importantly, how to think in accordance with liberationist ideology. Provincial peasant boys that most of them were, it all took some getting used to, but—despite his occasional and seemingly unprompted outbursts of anger—they found the colonel inspiring and amicable, while the chance to fire a quality-made foreign rifle filled them with a sense of empowerment they hadn’t thought possible; the weeks of training were soon speeding on by, and then before they knew it they’d reached their last day, and then their last hour, and then at last they were finished and ready to set off on their mission; the young soldiers were granted a single day of rest to spend with their families, and then the day after that came the morning of departure.
