"Iron Army" solders recall rescue operations

An, still single, says his happiest moment in Sichuan was when a half-recovered Song came to thank the troops in Yingxiu last summer.

Song's hairdressing business has long reopened. And knowing that, An says, is comforting enough.

More than 300 soldiers from An's battalion took part in rescue and reconstruction in Yingxiu, according to battalion commander Zhang Dianshu.

Zhang, in his 18th year at the military, said he had never seen anything like the aftermath of last year's earthquake. "Yingxiu was just like hell when we first got there on May 14," he recalled.

Even for him, the picture was horrifying. "The dying, the crying, the injured, the dead, all out there, laying, half-sitting, or trying to stand beside the broken roads and crumbled houses that filled our eyes."

By the time they left, though, reconstruction was well underway. Most locals had moved into lines of prefabricated houses erected by the army. A "quake lake" lying about 6 km to the north of Yingxiu and on the upper-reach of the Minjiang River had also been drained, thanks to the battalion.

The locals have come to call a new concrete road, built by the soldiers to link Yingxiu with the outside, the "Iron Army Road".

Editor:Liu Anqi