Chapter 37 36. The "pleasure" of killing Chinese

When the Marco Polo Bridge Incident happened, I had already enlisted as an active soldier. When we learned of the incident, we were conducting night exercises at the Takashihara Exercise Ground outside Toyohashi City, Aichi Prefecture.I was camping near Iwaya Kannon near Futagawa Station on the Tokaido Line at the time, waiting for the dawn battle to start the next morning. Looking at the windows of the Mercedes-Benz night train with lights on, I thought, "Hold on for a while, and I will be discharged from the army. At that time, I can take that train home. I really want to go back to the place as soon as possible and become a free body." Ah," and felt very sad.At this time, the soldier who went to the headquarters of the squadron for communication came back and brought news of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. He said: "According to the owner of the grocery store in front of the station, there was an armed conflict between the Japanese and Chinese armies near Beijing, and it is still going on." Fighting."

The news that the Japanese and Chinese armies were at war was of great interest to soldiers, but at the time I didn't think it was a big deal.I just thought, "At best, it's just a small matter with the slaves of the Qing Dynasty as opponents. It's not a big deal, and it will be resolved after a while." Not only me, most people at that time never thought of going to the battlefield.We feel that "even if the fighting state will last for a while, there are many elite Kwantung Army in Manchuria, so there is probably no need for the domestic army to go there specially", thinking that this is something that has nothing to do with us.According to the exercise plan, we ran across Gaoshiyuan and returned to the barracks after the exercise that lasted for several days.Only then did we know that our expectation of "probably not sending troops to the country" has come to nothing, and the country is sending troops one after another.

Afterwards, on my way to Toyohashi on a business trip, I saw banners in towns and villages with the words "I wish the king who has served the country to go to war" written on it.On the square in front of the station, the Xiaori Zhang flag to send off the soldiers on the expedition was waving like waves, and the voices shouting long live and the military songs to help them out were like raging waves. In this way, the towns and villages became more and more wartime, but we, the active soldiers in the barracks, were not in the mood to fight.The officers and soldiers called up are all troops who need special skills, as well as the supplement of transportation capacity required by the troops' operations. We never thought that we would carry out a large-scale mobilization in units of divisions and regiments.

But in August, the flames of war in North China spread to East China, and the flames of war ignited in Shanghai.By mid-August, my division began to mobilize.From this point on, the war began to approach us active duty soldiers, and it was decided to go out. The division to which we belonged has completed emergency mobilization and began to march towards Shanghai.Even then, we soldiers of the lower ranks didn't think it was going to be a big war.We took it for granted: "Shanghai is an area guarded by the navy, so the main role is the navy, and the army is just a supporting role. Probably it is to help the marines when they can't handle it."

Even if the army is the protagonist of the battle, our active soldiers have always used the world power Soviet Union as the imaginary enemy in the exercise, so we think that "the slaves of the Qing Dynasty are not qualified to be opponents."Because of this kind of conceit, I feel a little unsatisfied going to a battlefield that the Marine Corps, which is not good at land combat, can handle. When leaving the country, many soldiers naively expected that "the Shanghai Incident in Showa 7 would be resolved in more than 30 days, so this time it will take about a month at most. Even if it takes more time, it will not exceed two months." ".However, this expectation came to nothing after a few days.The Chinese army near Shanghai was heavily defended, and the Japanese army encountered an unexpected counterattack and fell into a bitter battle.

As the first batch of members of the division, the troops that rushed from Nagoya Port by naval destroyer two days earlier than us arrived at the bank of the Huangpu River in one day and night, and suffered almost annihilated losses after resolutely landing in Wusong. We landed as the second batch after the bitter fighting of this friendly force. My original character is that I don't even want to kill a bug, and I feel very sad when I see a murder scene in a drama.But this is not because I have a strong sense of justice or full of compassion, but because I am more timid than ordinary people.

It was a coward like me who was rated as a first-class pass in the conscription inspection and enlisted as a soldier. To put it bluntly, the military organization is a group established for the purpose of killing people.Therefore, the task given to soldiers is to kill.In order to prepare for war, soldiers in peacetime have to practice shooting to kill people, master the skills of stabbing people with bayonets, and practice tactical movements that combine the above two, so as to master the skills of killing people. I also became a soldier. I practiced killing people hard all day long during active service, and my progress was recognized. I was better than other soldiers and became the first batch of corporals to be selected.That is to say, as a soldier, I was considered better than everyone else.But this is only the situation during simulated battles in the domestic army. Once faced with actual combat, not only is he not an excellent soldier, he is even inferior to a second-class soldier. He is simply an incompetent soldier.I was timid when I first arrived on the battlefield.

The place where our troops landed is the same as the place where the first batch of troops landed in front of the enemy, it was the Wusong Railway trestle.Since the first batch of troops successfully landed, they have been unable to advance, so they are very close to the front line. When we landed at the pier, there was loud gunshots from the front line.Stray bullets kept coming, whistling and passing by the sky.Because it was the first time to go to the battlefield, it was scary just like this, and there were also bullets passing by my side and hitting the nearby ground, emitting a puff of smoke.If this hits him, it will be over in one fell swoop.Whenever this happens, I become very timid, thinking that "maybe it's over soon", and I can't calm down.

There was a strange smell coming from nowhere.According to soldiers, in a square on the banks of the Huangpu River near the landing site, friendly soldiers were cremating the bodies of the fallen. I went to see it during the other people's landing, and it's not so much a cremation, it's more like a whole human body being grilled.When I was in China, a corpse would also make me feel terrible, but there were hundreds of corpses piled up in the hills, and a few were pulled out of them and thrown into the burning flames, and only some bones were picked up , and most of the rest were thrown into the Huangpu River in a charred state.

I stared blankly at this horrific scene. At this moment, the soldier who burned the corpse said: "Because our squadron has been wiped out, and there are less than ten people left, so we can't deal with it. We have tried our best." Here I know the horror of the battlefield.Looking around, he found numerous corpses abandoned by the enemy. In the landing battle, the enemy's dead bodies were as many as our losses.The more you look, the more corpses there are. Dozens or hundreds of them are piled up, and they have been half-decomposed by the intense heat.I don't know if the body is full of gas, and the whole body seems to be bursting, and it looks like it will burst if it is poked a little.There were maggots in the eyes, nose, mouth, etc., and they were wriggling densely.

At that time, I felt terrible when I saw these, but the real scary thing was yet to come.Now that he has come to the battlefield as a soldier, it is not as simple as simulating a war.The battlefield is where the decision is made whether to kill the opponent or to be killed.Saying you're naturally timid or a coward or something doesn't work.I thought "I can't escape the murder" and started worrying. When I landed in Wusong, I saw the cruelty of the battlefield with my own eyes, and I was terrified.However, the next day saw scenes of friendly soldiers stabbing Chinese to death. It was stabbed with a bayonet.In the army at that time, the weapons generally used by soldiers were mainly 38-type rifles and bayonets.The rifle is used to shoot and kill the opponent, and the bayonet is mounted on the head of the gun to stab the opponent after approaching the enemy.Soldiers were forced to practice marksmanship and bayonet skills during their education, and they got tired of it.I also received education during active service, and I clearly know that these two techniques must be used on the battlefield, but seeing the scene of stabbing people to death still feels very cruel. After Wusong landed, the squadron I belonged to took action early and gathered at a corner of the Tongji University campus for a night.The next morning, our soldiers were gathering to stand by, when we suddenly heard soldiers from other nearby units say "the spy has been caught", and then they started making noise. It was my first time to see someone from the enemy country, so I went to see it out of curiosity. The person who was said to be a spy was an old woman in her 60s.At first glance, the old woman faltered, never thinking that she could be a spy.She kept talking in an inexplicable language, and lowered her head, as if pleading: "I have never done such lawless things as spies, and I am a good citizen. Let me go." Seeing the old woman like that, I felt very pitiful and wanted to save her.At first I wanted to say, "I said, such an old lady is impossible to be a spy, let her go", but was stunned by the murderous soldiers, and did not speak.The soldiers surrounded the old woman and began to discuss killing her.Then a corporal appeared and said, "I'll stab her." The first class soldier looks young, about my age, and seems to have been born and raised in a relatively well-off family, with a very gentle appearance.Just looking at the appearance, it doesn't look like a murderous demon at all.I was taken aback because he said "I'll stab her."Not only did he say that, but he raised his bayonet and yelled at the old woman: "Ah, hey!" The bayonet pierced into the heart with the shout, and even the tip of the bayonet came out from the back. The old woman yelled "ah", then rolled her eyes and fell down.Those white eyes met my eyes who were watching, and I felt resentment in the eyes of the old woman, so I hurriedly looked away. I felt very uncomfortable just watching, but the private who started the attack acted nonchalantly.He kicked the dying old woman into a ditch and took a cigarette from his pocket.I thought at the time: "What kind of character is this corporal?" But then I thought about it, it was not a question of character.He came to the battlefield before me and became a soldier on the battlefield through fighting. At that time, I didn't know this concept. In general social life, if you kill someone, you will be punished as a heinous criminal by the criminal law.Not only that, but it will also be given the notoriety of "murderous demon" in society.This is the common sense of ordinary people living in ordinary society.In contrast, the battlefield is where people kill each other.But soldiers who go to war are ordinary people in ordinary society before they become soldiers.Even though he became a soldier and came to the battlefield, it was not easy to kill people. To kill, one needs to experience combat, which disturbs the normal psychology of a person.Soldiers called them "from ordinary people to soldiers on the battlefield." On the night when the corporal assassinated the old woman, I came to the front and participated in the battle for the first time. I killed the enemy the next day and finally became a soldier on the battlefield.It seems simple to say this, but it is shameful to think about what you did during the time from arriving at the front line to killing an enemy soldier.That day I decided to attack the enemy's position at night. Later, when I recalled the feeling of waiting for the night attack, I found that it was a complicated state of mind that was difficult to express in words and words. I tried to analyze that complicated mood.After breaking into the enemy's position, it becomes hand-to-hand combat, and the enemy soldiers must be killed.There is a psychology of fear.Although I usually feel that the Chinese soldiers are weak and look down on them, but when I want to fight, I get scared.Thinking that maybe I will be killed, I have an idea of ​​not wanting to die.Even so, if he made a useless move, he was worried that he would be ridiculed by other soldiers. Seems like there were some other thoughts, but can't remember.These thoughts flashed back and forth intricately in my mind, making people uneasy.It was very sad while waiting for the advance order with such a mood.I thought at the time that this might be the mood of a condemned prisoner waiting to be executed after his execution has been announced. The order to advance was issued, and the enemy bullets flying from the campus of Tongji University to the vast field became more and more dense.There's such an adjective as "fire and bullet," exactly. Because the front line is nearby, there are bullets skimming low.We crawled, but the bullets still rained overhead.The bullet hit the cotton branch less than one meter high, and the cotton was bounced up and then fell to the ground, while the lower bullet hit the soil beside it.If I get shot like that, my life will be over.The state of mind at this time is: even if the place to go is a hellish place, I just want to get there as soon as possible. When they arrived at the destination, they launched an assault on the enemy's position before taking a breather and rest.At this stage, I did something humiliating.Although he broke into the enemy's position, he had no intention of stabbing the enemy to death.I was jogging around waving my bayonet like a joke.When he realized that "here is the battlefield, now it is at war", he suddenly felt ashamed of his actions.In order to save face in front of other soldiers, I played tricks, thinking "for the sake of dignity, I must first smear blood on the bayonet". I looked around and found five or six corpses of enemy soldiers.When I was about to stab one of them, aimed at him with the bayonet and prepared to stab him, the man who looked like a corpse suddenly got up and ran in a jumping posture.Judging from that appearance, it seemed that he played dead before he had time to escape. When I pointed the bayonet at him, he was startled and started to run away.Like the enemy soldiers, I was taken aback.When I was taken aback by what I thought was a dead body suddenly ran away, the enemy soldiers fled, and my cunning failed. During my active service, my assassination technology has improved rapidly, and my level is one of the few in the squadron.With that kind of technique, stabbing one or two enemy soldiers should have no difficulty, but it failed.I thought about it later, because I hadn't become a soldier on the battlefield at that time.The normal mind in me coexisted with the soldier mind, and the normal mind got in the way of action by being afraid of what the soldier mind wanted to do. Despite my humiliation, the assault was successful and captured the enemy's position.We stopped our pursuit that night and spent the night in occupied enemy trenches. The morning sun shone in, and the situation in the trenches came into view.It may be because the enemy soldiers retreated in a hurry, so weapons and equipment such as rifles and ammunition were abandoned.Among the scattered weapons, you can see the corpses discarded by the enemy.Judging from the corpses, the Chinese troops deployed in this position are not regular soldiers.It seems to be a patchwork of people, of different ages, and their clothes are also colorful, wearing khaki, dark blue and other colors. Looking around at the corpse, someone inside looked like a father with two or three children. He was over 40 years old, and the exposed teeth looked terrible, which made people feel chills on their backs.Among them were fifteen or sixteen-year-old young soldiers.Seeing the faces of children and feeling that they are sleeping innocently makes one feel pitiful. I thought: "These people probably left their wives, children, and brothers in their hometowns and came to the battlefield. Before they died, they must have thought about them and left their hearts in this world and died." And I began to feel compassion for dying. The enemy's thoughts.Thinking of the enemy soldier who let go last night, I thought "fortunately let him go", so I breathed a sigh of relief. After finishing their breakfast with the lunch box they carried with them, the order to attack and move forward was issued.Not to the whole unit, but to the squadron I belonged to which was left over last night to clear the small enemy positions.It's a small battle, but it's an important one for me. Last night's gaffe was not seen because of the darkness, but this time it is broad daylight, if he makes another embarrassing move, he will always be regarded as a laughing stock by others in the future.I made up my mind, "This time I must bring out my ability of repeated practice." But such determination is only before the action, and after the assault into the enemy's position, it is the same as last night.By the time I realized it, the enemy had almost all retreated, and the battle was coming to an end.I aimlessly moved forward with the bayonet. When I realized "failed again" and thought "I have to find a way to save face" and looked around, I found that there was an enemy soldier running away.I thought "this is a good opportunity given to me by the God of Martial Luck", and I finally became murderous. "How can I let the good prey run away?" I thought so and caught up to make an assassination move, but failed again.Normally, it would not fail, but because of anxiety and excessive force, the timing was not grasped, and the bayonet that was stabbed missed the enemy soldier, and the stab was empty.Even so, it would be fine if I could stab the opponent to death, but I twisted my waist because of too much force, and my waist and legs were limp.While I was struggling to stand up, the enemy soldiers fled. At this time, another enemy soldier ran to the place where I fell.The enemy soldiers may have panicked because they escaped behind, did not notice my existence, and approached to the place where they were about to step on me.I looked in surprise, and the enemy soldiers also noticed me and stared at me with shining eyes.I was stared at by him and couldn't help but look away.At the same time, I thought "dangerous", and then naturally thrust the bayonet forward. Then, the bayonet stabbed subconsciously had the reaction of stabbing someone, and after a strange sound sounded, I finally regained consciousness.When I took a closer look, the enemy soldier seemed to commit suicide, stabbing on the bayonet I stabbed out.Although it was a subconscious action at that time, thinking about it later, it seemed that while feeling "dangerous", the consciousness of protecting the body was naturally activated and turned into action.It happened that I stabbed the bayonet at the same time as the enemy soldiers came running over, so I got stabbed. When I was taken aback and moved slowly, the enemy soldiers fell down, and I was crushed underneath.I tried to push him away, but I didn't have enough strength to move. That's when the blood from the enemy soldiers spilled on me.As soon as my skin felt the lukewarm blood, a shiver of unknown origin flowed through my body like an electric current.While the numbness disappeared, a powerful force seemed to surge out.I felt suddenly stronger, kicked away the enemy soldiers who fell on me, stood firm, and shouted "great" with great momentum.Looking back on the feeling at that time later, it seemed that some powerful force moved to me, making the confused emotions disappear.Shouting "Great" is the same feeling as a young samurai shouting victory in the troubled times of the Warring States Period. It can be said that I was injured when I experienced the first murder on the battlefield, but with this killing experience as an opportunity, I quickly became a soldier on the battlefield.When I first came to the battlefield, I was afraid of the enemy's bullets. Now this fear is gone. On the contrary, there is a rush of adventurous joy.The same is true for killing people, and I began to feel a kind of pleasure.After this change, ordinary people become soldiers on the battlefield.In fact, at this time, he has lost his normal psychology and has become a war madman.