Chapter 18 - Into the Flames of War
At night, the ground shook more and more violently. This made me feel very uneasy. An hour passed. I found that there were a few more large trucks in the reserve arsenal. Many wounded were brought in from the truck. Their arrival also made the smell of gunsmoke even stronger.
The young woman couldn't sit still, she saw the big trucks, looked there, and then ran at once. Mench also motioned to follow.
As we entered the arsenal, she looked at the soldiers one by one.
She had seen almost all the wounded, and she was relieved when she had seen them. It seems that he is worried about whether his boyfriend is hurt. Ban Yan saw that these people were indifferent, and I really didn't know him anymore. Before, he was always cynical and very frivolous, smiling all day long, since the matter of the female singer, he went crazy, he fell, and now he doesn't say a word, from the train to the present, he has never said a word, and his expression has never changed.
The young woman went to talk to a wounded man. I'm hanging out. I saw that the wounded were covered in blood, large and small, and everyone's clothes were covered with black gunpowder. Some even broke their hands and feet, but few cried out in pain.
I came to a wounded man whose hands were blown out. I said to him, "Big brother, does it hurt?"
He replied very hard: "It's strange if it doesn't hurt!"
I asked, "Do your troops have lost a lot?"
He said: "In less than a day of fighting, our battalion has lost one-third of its strength, and ammunition is a little tight, and it will be very dangerous for the enemy to attack again tomorrow."
I asked, "How did the ammunition run out so quickly?"
He said: "There are too many enemies, they are attacking us in groups, while we are scattered on the defense, our defense line is ten kilometers long, there are a total of eleven regiments to defend, but the enemy concentrates his forces to attack one of our regiments, and the casualties are heavy."
I asked, "Huh? Won't the rest of the troops on the line support you? ”
He said: "Cut, support, they are afraid that if they support our enemy, they will turn around and attack their original position, what is the reason, what the way of the world."
I'll be gone. When she returned to the courtyard, the young woman was still in the arsenal and did not return for the night.
The next day, the ground shook more violently and more frequently. At noon, about two hundred soldiers withdrew to the arsenal. Mench motioned for us to enter.
When we got to the door of the arsenal, the doorman turned us out. But we heard the shouts of an officer in the arsenal: "Now that the outer defense line of Borata has collapsed, and we only have two hundred and thirty men left to fight, the division headquarters has given an order, let us block the next wave of the enemy's offensive here, and then withdraw into the city, fight street battles with the enemy, now everyone take their weapons and survive the enemy's afternoon offensive!"
With that, the soldiers walked to the warehouse. At the same time, the officer was talking to the young woman. After talking for a while they embraced, then the officer rallied his troops, waved his hand to the young woman, and went with them. A soldier at the front of the unit was also holding a battered battle flag with a few vague black letters printed on it, which was the number of their unit.
The soldiers only advanced a few hundred meters before stopping, where they dug trenches to build defenses.
It seemed that we would definitely fall into battle if we stayed in the yard, so I asked Mench, "If we stay in the yard, we might die, where should we go now?"
"If the battalion commander's fiancée is still in the arsenal, we'll stay in the yard, and if she comes out, we'll withdraw to the city," Mench said.
Then we waited outside for half an hour, and the young woman had not yet come out, so we had to go back to the courtyard.
Now I'm very nervous, because we can say that we are on the battlefield, and the enemy's artillery can blow the three of us away at any time.
I hadn't slept well for a few days, so I fell asleep against the wall at noon. Suddenly, a huge cannonball exploded more than ten meters away from us, almost scaring my soul away, and the sound of tinnitus in my head was all over my head. I saw Menqi holding his head and dragging the paralyzed Ban Yan to the shell crater, after they ran in, Menqi waved his hand, meaning to call me over, his mouth was wide open, and he should have shouted very loudly, but I couldn't hear the ringing in my ears. When I saw his gesture, I hurriedly covered my head and ran to them.
As I ran, I couldn't help but look to the left and saw soldiers in the distance running around bent under the bunkers, some with wooden crates, some from another location to continue shooting, some were killed as soon as they showed their heads, and some were killed by shells before they could get up.
Before I could marvel at the cruelty, my left calf was pierced by a bullet, fortunately it hurt the gastrocnemius muscle, not the bone, but it hurt me to the ground. When I moved my left leg, I was in pain, like holding a red-hot steel pipe against my leg. It's hard to climb over now.
I was gritting my teeth to overcome the pain when I tried to crawl directly to the crater on my stomach when another shell landed about five meters to my right and exploded, and I was shaken more than two meters to my left. I felt like the shock shattered my internal organs, and my head buzzed. There is no strength at all.
Now I feel that the world space is distorted, and everything has ghosting.
As soon as the vision became clearer, another shell shattered the yard. The shards of the yard wall were the size of fists, and one of them hit me in the forehead impartially.
My head hurts even more, and now it's really hard to move an inch. I saw Mench crawl out of the shell crater with his head covered and slowly crawl towards me.
When he was only a step away from me, he reached over and grabbed me by the collar, then slowly turned around and pulled me back into the shell crater.
When I came to the shell crater, I finally saw that Ban Yan's expression had changed, and he became anxious.
Menchi lay on the ground, took his backpack, dug his hand into it, and then took out a bandage and a bottle of wine. I almost cried when I poured more than half a bottle of wine on my leg, it hurt so pervertedly. Then wrap the wound with a bandage.
Ban Yan sat on the ground, his expression looking a little anxious. Mench sat down on the ground after bandaging the wound, pulled out the tough bread from the train and began to nibble on it. He still said something to me from time to time, but my hearing had not yet been restored, and I even wondered if I was deaf at the time.
After a few minutes I gradually heard the sound of gunfire and shells, and I was overjoyed to know that I was not deaf. Mench asked me, "Can you hear me?"
I said, "I can hear you a little."