The No. 18 Artillery Regiment of the 14th Army Group Corps under the PLA Chengdu Military Command was one of the first PLA units to enter the afflicted areas. The author was with the regiment throughout its rescue operations, for which it was to become known as the "Iron Army from the Wumeng."

At 22:00 hours of May 13, the regiment arrived at Hanwang Township. Hardly were the officers and men able to take a break before it received order to search for quake survivors trapped in the rugged Qingping Mountains. It was to turn out that deep in the mountains, people in their thousands were waiting for rescue, including some tourists and 18 scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences on scientific expedition there.

Those mountain roads and trails, some almost unusable even before the earthquake, had all been destroyed. Rocks kept felling from mountains as the shock brigade pressed ahead, from time to time having to wade across earthquake-created ponds and lakes – in fact rivers and streams dammed by landslides caused by the earthquake.

On May 14, some 400 men from the regiment came, following the route blazed by the shock brigade, carrying on their backs provisions for the track survivors. Over the following three days some 5,000 people evacuated to safety with their help, including all the tourists and 15 of the scientists who had survived the devastating earthquake. Tearful survivors told soldiers that hungry and cold, they had almost given up hope of ever getting out of the mountains. 

Over the next few days soldiers helped several hundred miners from a phosphorus mine and more than 1,000 other people evacuate to safer places down the mountains. Meanwhile, some 400 led by Regimental Commander Zhou Hongxu were escorting 226 survivors in need of special care – those too old, too young or too feeble or disabled – in a trek down the mountain.

Transporting provisions for the quake victims

Twins of a baby boy and a baby girl saved by the "Iron Army from Wumeng"

The earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 and left millions homeless was already history, but the "act of nature" was far from being over. Hundreds of aftershocks struck every day, some greater than magnitude six on the Richter scale that are powerful enough to cause collapse of ordinary buildings. Terrains were deformed with each major aftershock, beyond recognition of even the local civilians. Roads and trails that used to snake along the Mianyuan River were now covered by huge piles of rocks and mud from landslides, while rocks continued falling on them. Those "earthquake lakes" were threatening to burst, as water from upstream continued to empty into them. There used to be a road down the mountain, which was 17 kilometers. The road was now buried, making the distance endlessly long. Ever worse, telecommunications signals were lost, and the team of 400 soldiers, with 226 lives in their care, was complexly cut off from the outside world and had to fight alone for a way out.

Down the mountain, officers in command of the rescue operation were grilled by anxiety over the fate of Regimental Commander Zhou Hongxu and his men. At about 18:00 hours of May 17, Pang Long, deputy political commissar of the Fourth Artillery Division of the 14^th Army Corps, and Zeng Mingxiang, political commissar of the "Iron Army from Wumeng" regiment, decided to send 20 soldiers up the mountain to search for the "lost" detachment and before long, the men disappeared in the darkness.  

Six long hours had passed, and at about 22:00 hours, two soldiers, with two women under their escort, appeared. It turned out that the trek of the team under Colonel Zhou Hongxu had been cut by an "earthquake lake" more than one and a half meters deep. The soldiers could have make a raft with fallen trees or tires from crushed vehicles, but the idea was dropped for fear that safety of the civilians may not be guaranteed. In the end, the regimental commander ordered two of his soldiers, Yang Qichao, 19, and Zhu Juntao, 20, to find a way out. On their way down the mountain, they met the two women who had lost their way in the pitched darkness.

As the proverb goes, "good tidings love company", contact was restored with the lost party via a satellite telephone. Colonel Zhou Hongxu told the commanding post that he was leading the party to a nearby village and would spend the night there.

At about 16:00 hours of May 19, after getting lost for 32 hours, Zhou Hongxu led the 600-odd soldiers and civilians back, all safe and sound. None was hurt or died during the trek. Among the more than 200 civilians, the oldest was in his 90s and the youngest, three years old. There were two pregnant women, and two disabled.

There was a downpour that night. The soldiers built some makeshift shelters for the civilians, but they themselves stayed in the open. They even cooked some rice porridge with some rice salvaged from the debris, and offered it all to the civilians even though they themselves were hungry and cold. With shovels and picks, soldiers cut a trail through the dense bushes and forests along the precipitous cliffs as the team inched forward, carrying on their backs the pregnant women and the disabled all the way down the mountain. At one point the trail on a cliff, barely two feet wide while slippery with moss, was so menacing that some of the civilians became desperate, tearfully begging the soldiers to leave them behind, saying that they would rather stay and die right on the cliff. In response, soldiers laid on the ground, forming a "human road" with their backs. From time to time Regimental Commander Zhou would comfort the civilians. "You will be safe so long as we, the PLA men, stay with you," he vowed.

This is just one of the numerous stories about the kind of heroism, the kind of devotion to the people, displayed by the 130,000 soldiers of the PLA and the Chinese People's Armed Police during the rescue and relief operations. When this article was being written, these soldiers were still working in the afflicted areas, tending the wounded, burying the dead, comforting earthquake orphans and building spillways to divert water from some of the most menacing earthquake-created lakes, so that people living down stream will be safe.