Winter goes to spring, when the long cold winter is coming to an end, the once silent battlefield is boiling again, the war is continuing, for the people of this world, they don't seem to see the end of the war at all, the war is deadlocked, every day, thousands of people, on the Eastern Front, on the Western Front, die on the battlefield, when a battle aimed at breaking the stalemate of the war starts, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of soldiers will die tragically in the battle that has no hope at all, and finally, After paying the price of hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, the battlefield is still the same battlefield, a battlefield that does not seem to have changed at all.

On the swampy ground outside the muddy trench walls, the fog rose as if it hung from the spikes of barbed wire. At the bottom of the trenches there was mud half an inch thick. Small streams of brown water trickled down from the gun's hole. The Japanese soldiers who had endured the cold and shells in the trenches, some wore damp mud-stained military overcoats, made tea with kettles on the guards, and some squatted there smoking with their rifles against the wall.

"How many times have I said that you are not allowed to light a fire on the guard! You bastards, why don't you understand? ”

A Cao Chang walked up to the nearest group of inferior soldiers sitting around the fire, kicked one of them to the ground viciously, and then cursed loudly.

Two people reluctantly stood up, while the rest tucked up the placket of their coats, smoked cigarettes, and continued to squat there. A dark-faced fellow, apparently one of those "veteran oilers", from time to time shoved a small bundle of dry branches under the pot, replied:

"We'd like to do without a guard, but Sada Socho. So how can you make a fire? Look, how deep the water is here! ”

"Pull the guard out now!"

"Are we squatting here hungry then?! It's-this-......"

A wide-faced, pockmarked veteran frowned and looked to the side.

"I'm telling you...... Pull out the guard! ”

Sada kicked the burning dry twig out from under the pot with the tip of his boot.

The veteran sneered at a loss, maliciously, and spilled the hot water from the pot. whispered:

"Brothers, even if you've drunk tea......"

The soldiers silently watched the back of Cao Chang walking along the position. The moist eyes of the bearded Cossacks shone like fireflies.

"He's angry!"

"Alas—alas! ……”

One of the veterans put the strap of his rifle over his shoulder and let out a long sigh. In any army, this is the case, veterans are always domineering and disobedient, especially for those veterans who have been torn apart on the battlefield for a long time, and for these mobilized bearded soldiers. They could not be as faithful to their duties as the young soldiers, and even less 100 percent obedient to discipline, but lately they had found some justification for their actions.

"Hey. Who of you has the latest Workers' Union ......"

The old soldier with a wide face and pockmarked face suddenly asked the person on the side, and after a while, a newspaper was quietly stuffed into his hand. He didn't even notice how the newspaper got into his hand.

Sata, who looked flustered, walked into the shelter of Captain Sadaki Chida, hesitated for a while, and reported:

"Your Excellency, the soldiers found these newspapers in the trenches this morning. That doesn't seem right...... So I'm here to report back to you. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll get into some trouble......"

"What newspaper?"

Sadaki Chida stood up from the bed. Asked. Sada handed him a few crumpled pieces of paper clenched in his fist. On a four-sheet sheet, perhaps the most inexpensive and thin one produced in China, perhaps a newspaper made of straw, with Japanese clearly printed on the paper. And the beginning is the "United Daily of Workers". …,

Seeing the name of this newspaper, Chida Sadaji's brows furrowed. He had heard of this newspaper that had just appeared and circulated on the front line a month earlier, but this was the first time he had seen it, so he read it in one go:

Proletarians of the whole world unite!

Comrades soldiers!

The war of all evils has dragged on for two years. **Soak! Book. You have been far away from your own families and have been in the trenches for two years in defense of the interests of others. Workers and peasants in various countries have been bleeding for two years. In the course of this war, hundreds of thousands of Japanese were killed and maimed, and millions of people in Japan were orphaned and left behind - this is the result of this massacre. Why are you fighting? Whose interests are you defending?

In order to curry favor with the Chinese, the government has driven millions of soldiers into the Russian firing line, and while you are fighting bravely on the front line for the "future of Japan" in the mouths of corrupt officials, at home, corrupt officials and corrupt officials are oppressing your families, and in order to pay taxes, your parents have to sell your sisters to human traffickers, and human traffickers sell your sisters to China and even Russia, and in the Japanese brothels not far from the front line, every woman from Japan has a similar and tragic experience of the old and the new. When your relatives, wives and daughters are in Japan, and at the same time they endure heavy taxes because of the extreme oppression of corrupt officials, and at the same time they are being oppressed by profiteers, and when they are starving, you, foolish people, go to war and die for their benefit, and slaughter those who are like you.

Enough of my brother's blood has been shed! Wake up, workers! Your enemies are not the Austrian and German soldiers who have been deceived like you, but the corrupt officials, the powerful plutocrats, the profiteers, and the landlords of the government. Turn your guns against them. Unite with German and Austrian soldiers. Reach out to each other over the barbed wire that separates you like wild beasts. You are all labouring brothers, and the cocoon of labour on your hands has not yet grown, and there is nothing to separate you. Down with autocracy! Down with the imperialist wars! Long live the unbreakable unity of the world's workers!

Sadaki Chida panted and finished reading the last few lines.

"Yaga!"

After scolding this sentence, Chida Sadaji's heart was full of hatred, and he was overwhelmed by all kinds of heavy premonitions that attacked, and such a newspaper was widely circulated among the army. Could it be the masterpiece of German intelligence? He immediately called the wing commander and reported what had happened.

"What instructions do you have, my lord?"

Finally, he asked.

The words of the co-captain. Through the buzz of wires like mosquitoes and distant telephones, word by word came from the receiver:

"Immediately conduct a search with the captains and squadron leaders. Search one by one, and officers are no exception. Today, I will ask the division headquarters for instructions and ask them when they plan to change the defense of our country. I urged them. If anything is found during the search - report it to me immediately. ”

Obviously, the wing commander attributed this kind of thing to the psychological boredom of the soldiers tearing and killing on the battlefield for a long time, and thus the war resistance that was born.

"I think it may have been the work of German intelligence."

"Really? I will immediately to the command. I wish you success. ”

Chida Sadaki summoned his squadron leaders to his earthen house and conveyed the regiment commander's order.

"How unreasonable!"

Osugi and Mura scolded angrily.

"Do you want us all to search each other?"

"If it's going to be searched. It must be searched from the chief! ”

The young Second Lieutenant Akiyoda, who had just been replenished from China, shouted dissatisfiedly that most of these low-ranking officers were from poor families, and the reason why they were admitted to the military academy was only because the military academy was a free higher education. Moreover, employment can be guaranteed, and soldiers often turn a blind eye to the "United Workers' Daily" because they are well aware of the sufferings of society and know that what is said there is often the truth. …,

"Ladies and gentlemen. Will you refuse to obey your superiors? ”

Sadaki Chida interrupted everyone harshly.

"Of course, as a member of the Imperial Army, I believe that you will not hide it privately, but to the soldiers and soldiers of this brigade. They must be searched. Call Sada. ”

Here comes Sada, a not very young veteran who served during the Sino-Japanese conflict, after the third group of mobilized troops after the expansion. He looked around at the officers and saw that all the squadron leaders were looking at him. There was a look of dissatisfaction in his eyes, and it was clear that if he said something wrong, the end would not be any better.

"Who in your squadron is suspicious? Think about it, who might distribute these newspapers? ”

Chida Sadaki asked him.

"There is no such person, Your Excellency,"

Seeing the angry look on the face of the squadron leader of Osugi Gokumura, Sada's heart was cold, and he hurriedly replied.

"Didn't the leaflets be found on the defense zone of our brigade? Has a stranger ever been in the trenches? ”

"Not a single living person has ever come. No one from the other brigade came. ”

"Let's go search one by one,"

Knowing that she couldn't ask a clue about this, Chida Sadaki waved her hand and walked towards the door.

When the search began, all the soldiers had a variety of expressions on their faces: some were sad and confused, others looked in horror at the officers who were rummaging around their poor homes, and some were snickering.

"Say, what are you looking for? If something has been stolen - maybe some of us have seen it in someone's place. ”

"That is, if you want to find something, just ask the team leader to let everyone line up, and you can find out with one order!"

The search in the barracks yielded no results, and then the squad leaders began to search the soldiers' pockets with the cooperation of the officers. Only a crumpled newspaper was found in the coat pocket of a military officer in the first row.

"Have you read the paper?"

Sadaki Chida asked.

"I picked up cigarettes for it,"

The military cao did not raise his lowered eyes, and smiled and said.

"What are you laughing at?"

Chida Sadaji's face turned red, and she walked up to him and shouted violently. The face of the nearly forty-year-old soldier immediately became serious, and his smile disappeared, as if he had been blown away by the wind.

"Your Excellency, Sir! I was a veteran of the Qing-Japanese War and the Rilu War, and when I was very young, I worked in a factory and barely studied, so I was almost illiterate! I don't read a newspaper at all. The reason I picked it up was because the cigarette paper was gone! We haven't had a ration for half a month, and we didn't even have any paper in our hands, so I just saw this piece of paper, so I picked it up. ”

Juncao replied loudly, but his words were full of resentment and dissatisfaction, and when he mentioned the Qing-Japanese War and the Rilu War, Chida Sadaki glanced at him. Then he took a sip and walked away, the officers following him, but after they left. As if by juggling, some of the veterans pulled out the oiled paper packets containing bullets from the gaps in the trench guards, and then they took out the newspapers from the oiled paper bags.

Then there were no one else sitting in a heap and looking at the newspaper, looking at the news about Japan, the story about home, and when they looked at the newspaper, there was always sadness and indignation in their eyes.

After another half a month, the wing was withdrawn from the front line. Transferred to the rear more than a dozen kilometers away. Two members of the Chida Brigade were arrested for inciting soldiers to flee and sent to a military court, while the rest rested in the rear. After a few days of recuperation, the team got a little bit in order. The stinking soldiers were bathed. Changed into clean clothes, carefully shaved his face - not like in the trenches, it looked like a group of beggars. …,

All people are resting, and in this recuperation, they regulate their emotions. Ostensibly, they were clean and happy. But Chida Sada-ki and all the officers knew that this sentiment was only superficial, just like the weather in Russia, which was sunny today. Not necessarily tomorrow.

As soon as he mentioned pulling forward, the expression on his face immediately changed. There was discontent and an eerie hostility beneath the lowered eyelids. People are tired, and this physical exhaustion causes mental turmoil. Chida Sadaki knew it clearly. If a person in this state of mind rushes towards a certain goal, it is very scary.

In 1915, he had personally seen a company of infantry charge five times in a row, with heavy losses, and when he received the order to "continue the charge", the remnants of his squadron were defeated and charged again, and fought until the end, when the Japanese army was the strongest force on the Eastern Front, and from this year, it only took one charge, and in one charge, you could see some people slowing down or lying in the craters and pretending to be dead during the charge, and if a second charge was launched, there would even be people who would run away, and in the face of the German attack, Nor did they hold out to the last man, as they had done in the past, and he believed that if these soldiers faced the German attack again, they might even retreat if the Germans were determined to enter.

Thinking of the change in the mentality of the troops now, thinking that during the Rilu War, two well-equipped wings, in the face of the counteroffensive of the Russian army, actually retreated dozens of kilometers, Chida Sadaki's heart always shuddered, he excitedly looked at those soldiers with new eyes, and couldn't help but think:

"Will it be true that one day, these soldiers will really abandon their military honor, and will really turn around and flee to the rear, and there will be nothing to stop them except death?"

When his gaze met these tired, disgruntled gazes, he came to a definite conclusion:

"They're going to rush at us!"

Compared to last year, the mood of the soldiers has changed radically. Even the songs sung have changed—they are all sombre and bleak songs born in the midst of war, which at first were passionate, then abandoned, and more recently they are full of nostalgia and homesickness.

As Chida walked past the humble and spacious shack where the troops were stationed, she often heard a melancholy, infinitely sad song. The song is always sung by three or four people. A backing vocal's alto sings a very crisp and powerful tone, which grabs through the thick bass and shudders and pulls high:

"Oh, where I was born,

I'll never see you again.

Oh dear mother,

Don't grieve unduly for me.

Dear Mom, know that

Not all of them are going to die on the battlefield......"

Chida Sadaki stopped and listened, feeling that the simple melancholy tone of the song was powerful to him. It was as if a taut string had been pulled up on his heart that was beating faster and faster, and the deep backing vocals were constantly stirring the string, making it tremble in pain. Standing not far from the sata, staring at the clouds of the autumn dusk, Chida Sadaki himself could not help but burst into tears.

"Oh, I have a hunch in my heart that I have seen ...... I will never be able to go back to my hometown, and I will never see my dear mother again......"

The homesickness of the soldiers in the song, the sad mood in the song constantly echoed in his ears, and from the homesick, gloomy, and melancholy lyrics, Chida Sadaki could feel the soldiers' resistance to war or nostalgia for life, who would not be nostalgic for life?

Maybe their families will tell them to die in battle, and use their pensions to do their filial piety! However, the daily issue of the "United Workers' Daily" clearly told them what they could do with the 100 yen pension.

"For 100 yen, you can only buy 20 stone rice!"

And this is still on the premise that the profiteers did not raise the price, but in order to raise the price of rice, those profiteers would always accumulate money, or transport the rice to the big cities, or even to China to sell...... Thinking of the news reports she had seen in the United Daily of Workers, Chida Sadaji's face was filled with resentment, as if she was angry at what the profiteers had done, and as if she was hating the incompetence and corruption of government officials, who colluded for personal prosperity and wealth Chinese......

Just when this emotion echoed in Chida Sadaji's heart, he was suddenly stunned, and then his face showed a trace of horror, he seemed to be feeling a little frightened about his change, he didn't even understand why he had changed like this, and after leaving silently, suddenly Chida Sadaki scolded.

"Baga, it's all the damn "United Workers' Daily"!" (To be continued......)