The next day, shooting continued.
On the third day, shooting continued.
On the fourth day, they switched subjects to grenade throwing.
Those wooden-handled grenades were not yet considered obsolete.
"Grenade training and live throws will take just one day. Practice in the morning, live throws in the afternoon." A crate of grenades sat beside Xu Chengjun's feet. Li Long glanced at it and saw "Practice grenades" written on it.
"Now throw one after another. Anyone who throws over forty meters can rest off to one side. Anyone who can't keeps throwing."
Li Long remembered hearing later that, after the nineties, the passing standard for grenade throwing in army recruit training was actually thirty meters. Xu Chengjun had raised the standard by ten meters now. He wondered how many would pass.
Xu Chengjun gave everyone a demonstration. A few hundred meters away, people were shooting at targets. The dam along the northern side of Big Haizi formed roughly a semicircle, with a total length of two or three kilometers, so several villages could train here at once.
Everyone had practiced shooting over the previous two days and paid little attention to the gunfire. Xu Chengjun's voice was loud, too, as he spoke in the local dialect:
"Watch closely. I'm only demonstrating once. Right now, we're throwing here on level ground. That red flag ahead marks forty meters. Throw past it and it counts. Everyone gets three throws, and we take the shortest distance."
Well, Li Long thought that made the standard even stricter. Usually, they took the best result out of three attempts. Xu Chengjun was taking the worst.
Xu Chengjun casually drew a line at his feet. Tall and powerfully built, he took his throwing stance and swung his arm into the air. The grenade went tumbling away.
It struck