September 6, the sky was just beginning to brighten.
Li Wei and Qin Lan were already wrapped in matching Gobi camouflage cloaks, wearing face masks and goggles, and had been huddled in the empty back bed of a military truck for nearly an hour.
This was a transport convoy consisting of fifteen military trucks, which had just finished delivering supplies to the 19th Army in the wee hours of the morning and was now making its return trip.
The last time Qin Lan went to the rear hospital, she caught their ride as well.
The vast Gobi Desert in the west was swept by sand and wind day in and day out, and even though the truck bed was covered with a thick layer of canvas, it could not block the pervasive dust.
At this moment, both of them had turned into dust rats, covered in dirt from head to toe.
Li Wei sat in the corner of the truck bed, letting her body sway with the jolts of the truck, and dazedly thought of an article she had read before transmigrating, whose title seemed to be called, "This summer, they are 'eating dirt'."
In the accompanying pictures, the young soldiers were covered in dirt, their equipment was covered in dirt, and even their bowls, chopsticks, utensils, and food were full of dirt.
Back then, she only felt shocked and sighed at how hard it was to be a soldier, but when all of this turned into a firsthand experience, the emotion surging in her heart was a respect that far surpassed mere sighs.
No matter which world it was, there was always a group of people like this, using their flesh and blood to build an unbridgeable Great Wall for the hundreds of millions of compatriots behind them.
*Pity