Chapter 69: Relief of Guard?

...Those brothers who suffered the enemy's gas attacks in combat rarely had a single intact face or body, even if they managed to survive.

Having the skin on one's head, face, and the backs of one's hands break out in blisters, with the flesh rotting away, was considered a relatively mild condition.

Many brothers were even blinded, suffered from tumor growth and joint deformation, and were utterly disfigured, forcing them to be discharged and leaving them to face tremendous hardships in daily living.

Yet only a very few became the sort of unruly, deadbeat wounded soldiers often depicted in movies and television dramas who went around eating without paying and making a nuisance of themselves.

Because as they had said, compared to the brothers who were choked to death by the poison gas, those of us who managed to live this long are actually exceptionally fortunate...

...Excerpt from Hu Biao's collection of diary entries, "Nonsense"...

"Damn it! It's finally getting dark."

Watching the sun about to dip completely below the horizon in the distance, Hu Biao muttered these words of complaint in a tone of immense relief.

The words had barely left his mouth when Huang A-Di, Chaozi, and a few others let out long, heavy sighs, looking as if they wholeheartedly agreed with every word.

And the reason they shared this unified reaction was as follows.

That intensely timely heavy rain had lasted for about an hour. Almost the moment the downpour stopped, the enemy's artillery bombardment began.

Before the shelling had even ceased, enemy aircraft appeared once more, joining the assault on this tiny position.

At that time, Hu Biao and his men could only squat inside the bomb shelters—where the rainwater had already risen past their knees due to the downpour—praying that no large-caliber shells or aerial bombs would land directly on top of them.

Perhaps it was a lingering ailment left over from fighting for too long in the rainy night at Position No. 7 last time.

Squatting deep in the stagnant water, Hu Biao felt a bone-chilling cold penetrating his entire skeleton, yet despite the heavy rain, he felt profoundly grateful for it.

Mainly because the faces of every surviving brother on the position were currently covered in red spots, rashes, and pus-filled blisters of all sizes, making them look quite horrifying.

These skin injuries were corrosive damages caused by exposure to vesicant mustard gas.

This was only the result of the rain washing over their skin in time; had it not been for that timely downpour, the condition of their faces would undoubtedly have been much worse.

It was entirely possible that Hu Biao's handsome visage would have suffered devastating destruction.

Had their luck been even worse, their lives might have been in mortal danger. To emerge with only this result meant the heavens were truly looking after them.

Following that, after a frantic bombardment by heavy artillery and aircraft, around 4:30 in the afternoon, the enemy's next wave of attacks began.

What could they do? Naturally, it was the same old tactic.

Every brother on the position who could still move sprang into action, flattening themselves in the mud-filled trenches, waiting for the enemy infantry to push within a hundred meters of the position before engaging in close combat once the two sides became intermixed.

Using whatever weapons they had at hand, they desperately tried to kill every advancing enemy soldier.

Or in the process, be killed by the enemy.

During this ordeal, Hu Biao and his men looked up at the sky countless times. That sun reappeared after the rain—they could honestly say that even when they were courting their girlfriends in the past, they had never yearned so desperately for the sun to set earlier.

Because back when they were courting, sunset merely meant going out for a date to have dinner or catch a movie.

Yet in today's Songhu battlefield, barring special circumstances, the enemy—whose aircraft and artillery support were restricted—generally would not launch attacks at night.

This meant that once darkness fell, the enemy's frantic assault would halt.

It meant they had finally survived, hopefully to live through yet another night.

Now that the sun had finally set, Hu Biao—who had spun like a top throughout the entire day—felt as though the valve core had been pulled out of him, his strength draining away rapidly.

He flopped down into the trench, most of his body sinking into the mud, sending splashes of muddy water flying high into the air.

Even so, Hu Biao still shouted out: "Listen up, surviving brothers! Start calling out numbers now, let's see how many of us are still breathing. One—"

Following Hu Biao's lead, the numbers representing the surviving brothers of the Third Company, still holding their ground after a day of bloody combat, began to ring out one after another.

This counting stopped when it reached twenty-two.

However, there ought to be at least twenty-three men still alive on the position right now, because AT, the white-collar office worker, wanted to follow up with the number twenty-three—

Suddenly, he was racked by violent, tractor-like coughing fits, coughing so hard that tears and mucus streamed down his face.

There was no helping it! This fellow AT must have suffered damage to his respiratory tract and lungs after inhaling mustard gas, which was why such severe coughing fits struck him from time to time.

Faced with the white-collar worker's plight, the only thing Hu Biao and the others could do was pull out their precious oral penicillin and let AT extravagantly swallow two pills at once.

As to whether penicillin would have any effect on such injuries, they had no way of knowing; all they could do was hope it would work.

Right! By the way, let's recount the battle results of Hu Biao and his men after a grueling day of fighting.

Not counting the wounded soldiers the enemy managed to drag away during their retreat, there were at least three hundred little Japanese corpses lying in the open ground directly in front of the position, along with two tanks.

Inside one of those overturned Type 89 tanks, the enemy crew members were still hiding, not all of them dead yet.

It wasn't that they didn't want to escape; it was mainly because during the enemy's bombing and shelling, these unlucky crew members were too afraid of friendly fire to dare run.

And whenever there was no bombing or shelling, Hu Biao and his men wouldn't agree to let them run either.

The moment one unlucky fellow poked his head out and was instantly riddled by a burst from a Black Star pistol, the rest chose to stay hidden inside.

However, Hu Biao and his men had no intention of going up there with Molotov cocktails or explosive charges to finish those enemies off. Rather than granting them a quick release, it was far better to let them endure a lingering torment...

Hu Biao sat squarely in the muddy water, utterly exhausted and desperately wanting to lean against the sandbag behind him and fall asleep right then and there.

Yet, remembering the responsibility resting on his shoulders, he forced himself to summon his energy.

Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out a pack of enemy-issued "Asahi" cigarettes wrapped in oiled paper—which kept them relatively dry—along with a box of matches.

He lit three cigarettes in succession, using this method to forcibly clear his head and warm his freezing lungs.

There was no help for it! The moment he set his mind to work, he could think of far too many tasks waiting for him, this tiny Hu Commander, to arrange and handle.

The most crucial matter right now, however, was to go see Battalion Commander Xiang and confirm a critical point:

Could the 804th Battalion holding the Dunwusi position be relieved by friendly forces tonight?

If they could be relieved, then everything would be easy to manage.

It would simply mean explaining the key points of the position's defense and the methods for dealing with various enemy tactics to the relieving friendly forces before withdrawing.

If they could not be relieved, then the troubles would pile up endlessly.

Right now, there were only twenty-three men on the position capable of moving, and this handful of people would certainly be unable to hold the line tomorrow; they could not even withstand a single assault.

Considering that the enemy had gained some understanding of their tactics today after suffering heavy losses, tomorrow's defense required a larger force. Battalion Commander Xiang had to give him no less than a company of reinforcements.

In addition, they needed plenty of 7.92mm pointed bullets for light and heavy machine guns.

The 7.63mm caliber ammunition for submachine guns needed to be replenished, and wooden-handled grenades could not be lacking either.

The fortifications practically had to be rebuilt from scratch, as those completed last night were almost entirely blasted flat today. In the final battle, many men of the Third Company had to fire from inside shell craters.

The severely wounded soldiers in the temple also needed to be evacuated under the cover of night, and hopefully, quite a few of them were still clinging to life.

Oh, and they needed to quickly cook some food and prepare some dry rations for backup.

Because they hadn't had time to cook at all today; fortunately, they still had Uncle Sam's beef rations, but now there were only a dozen or so left, which was nowhere near enough for tomorrow's consumption.

In short, if they still had to hold their ground tomorrow daytime, they would be busy through yet another entire night...