????Dubbed the “Dongfeng First Branch” of the Second Artillery Force, this brigade is honored as a pioneer of the People’s Liberation Army and China’s first strategic missile troop. Since its establishment in July 1959, the troop has completed 48 significant exercises and training missions and launched scores of strategic missiles of various types.

????Protecting the nation

????One autumn day at a missile launch site in northwest China, troops were about to launch an intercontinental strategic missile.

????With the rain getting heavier, the test of missile performance and operational skills became tougher.

????Many personnel worried if the launch would be continued as scheduled. Yang Guang, then Brigade Commander, said resolutely, ”Yes, it will!”

????On schedule, the missile rocketed into the sky through the heavy rain.

????“Some 50 years ago when the troop took over the missiles from their predecessors, they shouldered the political duty to be military pioneers and develop the PLA into a stronger army,” says Political Commissar Li Yongsheng, of a Second Artillery Force base.

????In the early 1960s, China’s first ground-to-ground missile battalion entered the northwest region to launch the PLA’s first ground-to-ground missile.

????One morning in October 1963, the missile hit its target, refuting the belief in some nations that Chinese missiles would never fly.

????For more than half a century, the troop has undergone various transformations and never hesitated to follow the instructions of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

????One year when China was hit by food shortages, the soldiers ate wild vegetables from the Gobi desert and meager grain crops grown on an army horse stud. Some troops fainted on the training ground.

????When a 7.6-magnitude earthquake ravaged Tangshan, the troop helped the local government send the first telegraph to the Central Committee of the CPC and sent more than 2,000 soldiers to rescue survivors at the epicenter.

????When they received orders to leave their urban barracks and move into mountain areas, they finished the transfer within a few days without complaint. Soon after, a new launch site was established. Within a year, a missile was fired, startling the world.

????The troop has always shown unconditional loyalty to the Party.

????Although their barracks have been hit twice by rare mountain floods that occur usually once a century, the troops safeguarded their positions without casualties and ensured all equipment was well protected.