Chapter 7 Toshiro Diary (5)

I seemed to be in an emotional state where bravery and fear, heroism and vanity were intertwined.The so-called vanity is to demonstrate to comrades-in-arms.I regretted why I hadn't been more daring.On this occasion, although I have killed an enemy soldier, it is not a big deal. What is important and valuable is to have the courage to dare to kill and have no regrets.Memories without shame!  A few days later, I heard that Lieutenant Nishihara once said to the squadron leader: "Dong (referring to Shiro Dong) was afraid of that enemy, so he didn't stab him with a knife. I hacked him with the Azure Dragon Sword, but the distance was too far. He got away with a gas mask on."

I protested behind my back: "The second lieutenant was going to cut himself, and ordered me not to stab him. He justified himself so meanly." The lieutenant and I are both thieves. Someone reminded that the enemy's night raids are usually at nine o'clock at night and three o'clock in the morning. The attack at nine o'clock at night is over, and we still have to wait for the attack at three o'clock in the morning.We dug trenches desperately, punched holes in the thick walls of the houses, and set up our guns to stand ready. After about an hour, the noise of enemy soldiers came from behind.We were very nervous, but the enemy didn't come straight.Our nerves are strained for another attack from the enemy.

There was something desperate in the dark silence.A long silence continued, and the grass insects began to make pitiful sounds, those insects that had not been trampled to death by military boots.They don't understand the slaughter among nations and are singing their peaceful songs. For us, ears are the only thing we can rely on.We don't make a sound, and we don't let any sound go. Our destiny is in our ears. Then a low voice was heard: "Our squadron leader ignored the danger of our subordinates and hid in a safe place by himself. How is this possible? The squad leader has gone out and hasn't come back. Probably both of them are safe."

Sure enough, at three o'clock in the morning, machine gunfire from unknown allies suddenly broke the deathly silence.The deadly night awoke, and once again became a world of deadly struggles.One dog barked and one hundred dogs responded, and light and heavy machine guns roared one after another, as if a squadron somewhere was attacked by the enemy.The enemy is not coming our way. Thirty minutes later, it was back to the suffocating silence of darkness.However, the enemy attacked at night, and the tumor was not enough.They seemed to be very interested in night raids, and they used many chess pieces to repeatedly attack a veteran who was cornered. At about four o'clock, the enemy came to attack again.

However, their noisy attack did not bring any casualties to our army, but wasted ammunition in vain.It was just that when a soldier went to the toilet, he suddenly heard a lot of gunshots. He jumped into the trench with bayonet guns and was stabbed in the thigh by one of his own bayonets.But he said in the battle report that he was stabbed by the enemy during the battle. At dawn, Second Lieutenant Nishihara, Noguchi and Motoyama came out. The sky in the east showed fish belly white, and we breathed a sigh of relief.Yes, with a sigh of relief.We were liberated from a long stretch of tension that could never let up.We came from a small and dark box to a spacious and bright place. Our stomachs like hungry wolves seemed to be filled all of a sudden, and our embarrassing mood suddenly became comfortable and leisurely.We gathered the muddy guns soaked in night dew from the trenches, oiled them, and prepared for yet another battle.

At seven o'clock in the morning, a strange thing happened. This is an unexpected state of affairs.On the narrow road, there was a little bit of snake-like water at first, and then it flowed more and more, and it became turbid.We couldn't tell what kind of water it was. The water flowed from the road to the fields, no, it also flowed up the road at the same time.We look at the muddy water that is flowing bigger and bigger, and we suffer from not knowing what to do.No one gave orders.We don't know where to go.Seeing that the water is about to submerge the entire ground.We chose a slightly higher place to gather, and we were surrounded by a turbid ocean.The flooded area is getting bigger and bigger, and the water is getting deeper and deeper.After a while, we probably won't be able to move.We didn't have a map and didn't know where to go.It shouldn't be here anyway.It's dangerous here!

We cannot but feel sad for the squadron leader's irresponsibility.This unreliable squadron leader! We are under water attack.The officer of the reconnaissance team reported how the enemy had breached the embankment, and then said that we should take refuge on the embankment.We immediately put on our backpacks, in groups of two, put our shoulders on each other and started to move.Water up to knees.On the edge of the field, it was difficult for our feet to step forward, and our toes were nervously probing the foothold, moving little by little. There are pits the size of a pig everywhere, and we must be extremely vigilant against them.What was dug was not a pigsty, but a pig pit.We walked with difficulty in the muddy water.At this time, the squadron leader was standing indifferently in the corner of a house, with a miserable appearance. The shame of not fulfilling his duties made his figure look miserable, and the nervous little face made people feel that he was Very poor.

Poor coward!despicable thing!With this kind of contempt, we walked past the squadron leader who stood there blankly.He was condemned all over him by the stern eyes of every one of us. He has completely lost our respect. How can there be real leadership without respect? Command that depends solely on power is not real command. A large group of people gathered on the embankment.This embankment is quite wide. The enemy's bullets came, and we dug trenches on the other side of the slope. Putting up the tent and diving into the cave, I rubbed my still-empty belly.Nothing has gone in since yesterday morning.The jug was empty too, not a drop of water.

I tried to filter some of the muddy water, but in vain.Following orders, we embarked on a dangerous pear-picking operation.Enemy bullets kept coming from far away towards the fields that turned into a vast ocean.If we were not lucky enough to pass there, we could not get to the pear tree. The bread of life is opposite the land of the dead. Each detachment sent two soldiers, and they carried their tents and jumped into the water. The squadron leader who strictly forbids picking the fruit from the tree for no reason, how does he accept the command of the squadron leader to pick pears at this moment?There was no one who did not despise this timid and stubborn young squadron leader in his heart.

The pear-picking team members who only wore a pair of underpants were very brave. They dived into the water for a while, surfaced for a while, and swam towards the pear tree without stopping.We have rice, we just don't have time to cook it.Now due to muddy water and lack of firewood, we cannot make rice into rice.We cannot cook because of the muddy water, because we have not fully become field soldiers mentally.For the soldiers on the front line, no matter what it is, as long as it is not poisonous, it can be eaten.Perceptions of beauty and cleanliness must change. Eating is the greatest happiness, the greatest joy.

The sound of guns rumbled in the distance. The rain began to fall, and twilight appeared, hanging low over the river, over the branches of the pear trees, over the grass on the embankment.Only the embankment stretches straight into the distance in a large water. The dark night left only the sound of rumbling guns on the ground, covering everything in the world. As soon as darkness fell, soldiers jumped out of the trenches here and there like voles, and began to ease up. The night blinds the enemy's bullets. We huddled knee-to-knee and talked as we endured mosquito attacks in the narrow trenches.Rain dripped silently onto our laps from the cracks in the tent.First, we cannot help but start from where we are now. The ambiguity of location makes us uneasy.We can neither move forward nor backward, and it is rainy and dark night, and we have no food yet. This kind of situation makes us feel uncertain.Talk about father, talk about mother, talk about brother, talk about the customs of hometown; miss father, miss mother, miss brother, miss the mountains and rivers of hometown; Someone sang pop songs in the tent, and the singing crept over the embankment and flowed into the trenches.The songs at this time, no matter what kind of songs they are, always carry a kind of great sadness! The cannon went on and on. On the other side of the river, the battle continued in the rain, and we were greedy for the little sleep we had. Suddenly, with the sound of machine guns, there was a shout of "Long live" from the other side of the river... The shout hit our eardrums. "Hey! Get up, get up! That's the cry of victory!" To bless the victory of the friendly army, each of us lit a cigarette. "To their victory, here we go!" Everyone held up a little spark between their fingers, wishing them victory. The rushing river ran in the dark. As soon as the triumphant cheers were over, a lonely silence came again.The only thing alive in this world is the sound of the raging water. The late rising sun shines white in the rain, one day of our short life is gone, and the few remaining days of our life are coming.Yesterday, two soldiers wearing shorts were sent to the rear headquarters to contact and report the current situation, so the armored boat came at this moment.At eleven o'clock at noon, the order to advance was issued, and the five wounded were sent to the rear by a liaison ship. We hurriedly put on our backpacks and were ready to go.After crossing the break of the river embankment in the engineer's boat, continue to move forward.The enemy has dug trenches on the embankment since the day before yesterday, and dug them with such ingenuity that we could hardly have done them. We ate pears as we walked through the wooded landscape so common in the interior.While marching, it was dark again.We could see the fire burning in the distance, and we were walking in the dark, not knowing where we were going or how the battle was going, so we just kept walking forward. I started camping in a place I don't know the name of the battle.At four o'clock the next morning, my reconnaissance unit set out to search a village.It was broad daylight when our scouts reached the village. The villagers held the Japanese flag, and there were 20 or 30 people in the assembly. "Soldiers of China, yes? No?" Asked them in blunt Chinese, but couldn't understand anything.I asked a farmer for a cigarette. The autumn wind blew by, making the willow trees on the embankment very pitiful.It seemed that the embankment had been damaged somewhere, and the river was full of muddy water on both sides.From our point of view, the farmland in this state will probably have no harvest in the next two to three years. The good peasants are so pitiful. Therefore, the vicious enemy is hated by the kind peasants.Under the shade of the willow trees floated two wooden boats with refugees sitting on them, and they were talking to us.After walking forward for a while, I saw two men and two women with their children sitting in the grass, cooking something like sticky porridge. Although we were empty stomachs and had neither breakfast nor lunch, the porridge in the dirty pot did not whet our appetites at all.Peanuts were piled up on the embankment, and we put the green and sour raw peanuts into our mouths, barely filling our stomachs. These hunger, fatigue, diseases, etc., are all crushed by the "forward" command, and you must grit your teeth and rush to the battlefield! The branches and leaves of willows sway leisurely in the autumn wind.There was not a single cloud in the sky.Clear blue sky!The pure, boundless, deep sky!The infinite expanse of sky that covers the earth! We pluck from this pure world the fresh food that invigorates the blood, and we march forward. We came across the damaged embankment again and stayed there for about three hours. Bare to the waist and with gear on our heads, we crossed the 50-meter-wide fast-flowing river.We arrived at the break of the river embankment, and after a while we saw another break of the river embankment.What a stubborn break! Just as the enemy stubbornly cut off the embankment, we stubbornly want to cut off their blood vessels.They pay us back with interest for the pain they inflict on us. This is how we arrived at Nianzuqiao Town.The Nianzu Bridge was also damaged, and the traffic was paralyzed, so they had to wait for the engineers to repair it.The engineers and soldiers were hurriedly building the bridge with their bare upper bodies. Their speed means the speed of victory. I sat on a rock in the shade, resting my heavy body.Here, I get the joy of forgetting fatigue and hunger.I say this because I saw the figure of Jun-kun Yokoyama, who was carrying the timber for the bridge with great vigor on his strong shoulders. It was the first time I met this dear friend since the expedition. He is a hard worker, honest and honest, and full of vigor.He is the corporal.I patted his broad shoulders, we looked at each other's energetic appearance, smoked a cigarette and said "Take care", and then we said goodbye. After a while, the bridging work was over and we moved on. The army filled the desolate village of Nianzuqiao Town like a piece of luggage.Their eyes are looking at the distant things, as if some kind of illusory will is urging them.They have been mechanized.The boss's order is their will.Commands cause their flesh and blood to perform various actions.The house was also a mess.The huge buttocks of the army horses lined up under the eaves, half of their bodies blocked the room.Horse manure and human manure were scattered all over the place, constantly emitting a stench, and accidentally covered one's feet.Vehicles, horses, and troops mingled together, making a chaotic noise along the way. It was a heavy torrent with no human voice except the sound of vehicles and footsteps. The torrent would soon hit rocks again somewhere, and break apart again, and fight again.All obstacles will probably be swept away by this torrent. They are all fighters. " The red sun shines on the earth.Our bodies are constantly spewing sweat like water filter machines.Everyone drooped their heads, looking at the heels of the soldiers in front who walked forward silently. "Hey! Are the crows in China also black?" I saw a few crows and said something.Then he walked forward in silence.This is the only sentence I can say with emotion. From the torrent of the heavy and painful team, some words flowed out from time to time like a drizzle of rain, "Don't you rest?" But it was crushed by the sturdy military boots.