Lieutenant Colonel Wang Huiqing was lying on a canvas marching bed, his eyes fixed on a swarm of flies on top of the tent. The black swarms sometimes expand and sometimes shrink.

His stomach ached. He had been suffering from dysentery for more than a month, and he was skinny and skinny, with deep black circles around his eye sockets. Kobo's malaria also struck him, and he hesitated on the brink of death several times.

The cure for malaria, quinine, comes from the Indonesian kina tree, which was completely monopolized by Japan early on.

According to Mrs. Lakinot, the "Tokyo Rose", as long as the Japanese soldiers landed in Guadalcanal with quinine, without fighting, the enemy would all die of malaria, which is really a brilliant idea of a science fiction novel.

It is a pity that they are too ignorant of the huge potential of Chinese science and technology. A special drug (atropine) appeared. It was made on a trial basis after studying the molecular structure of quinine crystals, and it is more effective than natural quinine.

The first batch of atropine was delivered to Guadalcanal, where it saved the lives of thousands of officers and soldiers, including Lieutenant Colonel Wang Huiqing.

The Japanese fought with fanaticism, and the Chinese fought with technology.

Wang Huiqing was in pain, but he was not nervous, he was lazy, sometimes basking in the sun, reading books when he was sick, or playing chess and chatting with his friends in the field hospital.

Gone are the hard days of the first landing for more than a month.

Since the arrival of the main forces of the Chinese Navy after the three-day and three-night naval battle of Guadalcanal in mid-May, the Japanese no longer dared to reinforce Canal on a large scale.

Major General Liu Qing had already sent a "victory" telegram to Qian Sihai. The Japanese also sometimes sent a few bombers, or fired a few shots from submarines. Or also bombard the airfield with their 150-mm howitzers. These are purely harassing in nature and do not affect the overall situation. The planes, artillery, and warships of the Chinese army often responded with ten times more firepower than a hundred times the Japanese.

A quiet life is hard, and it lacks the thrill that military craves.

The military doctor repeatedly advised him to take the Kunpeng transport plane to the rear to recuperate. Because of the increasing number of Chinese troops in Karnal, the remaining two regiments of the Jungle Army, the 6th Regiment and the 8th Regiment, landed, and the 25th Infantry Division and the 2nd Marine Division also changed their defenses with the 1st Marine Division, which had been fighting for a long time and was well-known.

Part of the 1st Marine Division has boarded the ship and left Guadalcanal.

Wang Huiqing was reluctant to leave Karnal because he wanted to participate in the final battle to destroy the Japanese 17th Army.

The departure of old friends of the 1st Marine Division, Lin Siyu, Wu Bing, and some other acquaintances, made Wang Huiqing very sentimental.

He shares their fate with them, like a sailor on a boat.

He was used to talking to them about wars, about counteroffensives. Talk about art and women.

Right now. A large group of army forces came, and even the commander of Karnal was replaced by Major General Liu Qing of the Marine Corps to Major General Sun Qi of the Jungle Army. Although the 1st Marine Division still had some troops on Kuah Island, the war had become an Army affair.

Now, the Army doesn't have to fight like the Marines before it.

The front has stretched outward for many kilometers. The Japanese were in a defensive position. When the soldiers of the Jungle Army were familiar with digging the Japanese out of the trenches with bayonets. They're all skinny.

See many battle reports. Only then did Wang Huiqing know that the Japanese front-line troops had been out of food for a long time and had to feed on tree bark and wild grass. Almost everyone suffers from diseases and skin diseases, and without treatment, they can only wait for death.

However, even at this point, the resistance of the Japanese army was still stubborn. In the battle for Mount Osteng, the jungle army met with a very resolute resistance. The battalion commander was stabbed, the battalion headquarters was destroyed, and the entire battalion was pinned to the ridge and could not be withdrawn.

It is unbelievable that the Japanese soldiers, who had already been boiled to the ground, had launched six daring charges, as if they could survive with air, water, and leaves, and shoot with their guns.

Wang Huiqing ignored his weak body, cut off a cane, and returned to his camp headquarters. He was also ready to fight a bad fight. He knew the Japanese soldiers, who had been educated in bushido since childhood, and were full of thoughts about serving the emperor.

They firmly believe that after a person dies in battle, he will become a god of war, and his soul will transcend his earthly body and fly to a place called Yasukuni Shrine in Kudan, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, to enjoy the incense of future generations.

In the eyes of many Westerners, these Japanese soldiers were poor and therefore despised death, and they took any pain and circumstance that the white man could not endure as if it were natural.

In the eyes of the Chinese soldiers, they did not know how to surrender and only wanted to kill a few more enemies, so the battle could only end if they were killed.

Sometimes there are exceptions: some wounded soldiers, some extremely weak soldiers, who were unable to commit suicide, fell into the hands of the Chinese army alive. The Japanese high command did not consider this possibility at all, they thought that the Imperial Army would die in battle except for victory.

On the one hand, they did everything they could to intimidate the soldiers, propagating that the enemy would execute all prisoners of war, and that being captured was the greatest shame for soldiers. On the other hand, they had never trained the soldiers in counter-interrogation, so the captives were very well-behaved, knowing everything and saying everything, as if they were pouring beans from a bamboo tube.

The Japanese did not pay any attention to the secrecy of the written word, and the root cause was that they believed that they would never fail.

Wang Huiqing's troops captured a large number of enemy diaries, and almost every Japanese soldier had the habit of keeping diaries, and Oriental feelings always liked to be expressed in a subtle form.

At the same time, maps, documents, orders, manuals, everything was collected by the Chinese army, and only the password was missing, which the Japanese kept extremely secret, but it had long been mastered by the Chinese intelligence agencies.

All intelligence and confessions from prisoners indicate that the last bastion of resistance of the Japanese 17th Army was Cape Esparnes.

Wang Hui knew about these situations early in the morning. He stayed there to take part in the final battle against Cape Esparnes.

"I've survived such a hard time, and it's the turn of a good show, and I don't plan to miss it. It is Verdun in the Pacific Ocean, and it is the Karnal airport for the Japanese. ”

Wang Huiqing dragged his somewhat tired body to the front.

The Chinese army launched successive attacks to the west and had overcome the Japanese positions on the west bank of the Matanikau River, Cape Cruz, Mount Osten, and Cocambona Bay.

By June. The striker arrived at Cape Tasa Falonga and could no longer advance. The whole front is in the midst of a bitter battle.

On the jungle roads, on the rotting fallen logs and moss, in the caves on the coast, there were all the tattered weapons, supplies, and equipment of the Japanese army, but there was not a single grain of food.

Large trees near the road were stripped of their bark and white ballast was exposed. All the oysters on the reef off the coast had been pried open with bayonets.

As a veteran of the Marine Corps, whether it was the military academy education or experience back then, he was telling Wang Huiqing: Fish, shrimp and oysters, whether they are eaten raw or cooked. Both require a very digestible stomach. If a person is weak and eats this kind of thing, he can only eat his stomach and intestines.

"The Japanese are running out of hope, our air blockade is stuck in their throats. Battalion commander. I should have brought a copy of Julio. The book of General Duhey. This Italian was at the time of the first appearance of the plane. It is prophesied that it will become the master of war. The company commander next to him said to Wang Huiqing.

"If we hadn't stubbornly defended Karnal Airport, and the Navy hadn't repelled the 'Tokyo Express,' the pilots of the 'Cactus' (the nickname of the Chinese Air Force Flying Team on Kuah Island) would not have been able to do such a beautiful job." Wang Huiqing picked up a hermit crab from the beach that washed in with the tide. To his scholar company commander:

"The Air Force is like this crab, the Marine Corps and the Navy are its screw shells, without the shell, the crab will die. With the shell, the crab can swim freely in the vast ocean. This Pacific War of World War II was a peculiar war that had never been seen before in the history of mankind. The navy uses its naval supremacy to send infantry to enemy-occupied islands, and the infantry captures an airfield for the air force, and planes take off from the airfield to cover the navy's capture of the next island......"

There are no avenues in the dense forest, all forest paths like spider webs. Strangely shaped tropical vines overhang the grooved trunks of the mebese trees, the canopies of all levels have been capped, the sunlight is blocked out of the green mansions, and the rainforest is dim and blurred.

Wang Huiqing stepped on the corpse of a Japanese soldier and almost slipped and was startled.

The black-pressed swarm of flies was already crawling all over the exposed skin of the corpse, and it was impossible to see that there was still a person lying there. After the swarm of flies flew away, the dead body was revealed, most of the flesh had been eaten by maggots, the face was very ugly, and the eyes, nose, and mouth were exposed with white bones.

Wang Huiqing turned over the corpse with his boots, the military uniform had already been torn into pieces, and pieces of purple rotten flesh were attached to the bones, and the flesh was covered with black blood scabs. A foul smell made Wang Huiqing vomit, and Captain Ding En was already familiar with it, and was busy exploring the way for the battalion commander, and said nonchalantly: "There are many more, all the way from the banks of the Matanikau River to Tasa Falonga, there are dead bodies." We do not care about burying them, but only bury our own, and the dead are more terrible than the living. ”

After a while, Wang Huiqing encountered a second corpse, and soon after, a third corpse was encountered. There were more than forty bodies in less than a mile, and he was not surprised.

A "pop" gunshot, breaking the silence of the woods, and the bullet hit the rattan beside Wang Huiqing, and the rattan was broken.

"Japanese sniper!" Zheng Guidong, the commander of the scholar company, shouted and pulled Wang Huiqing behind a tree, and then fired another shot.

Zheng Guidong took off the rifle on his shoulder and carefully searched for a target in the rainforest. After a while, he asked Wang Huiqing to pick out the military hat with a cane and try it, but he was shot again.

Dynn fired back hard, and a heavy object fell from the tree and fell into the bushes like a dead pig with a "poof".

"Battalion commander, be careful next, the Japanese soldiers are still infiltrating and attacking our personnel."

In order to hide from the Japanese snipers, Wang Huiqing and Zheng Guidong got lost in the rainforest.

They couldn't find the way, they didn't dare to make a noise, they didn't dare to shout or fire their guns, which would only attract bullets from the Japanese.

As soon as Wang Huiqing stepped into the barracks, he was repeatedly warned by the instructor: The jungle march must not be noisy, and we are using the shouts of the enemy troops during the march to ambush them. And of course they do.

The rainforest is dense and impermeable to wind and light, and as a basic principle, they should go back. But there were no signs in the forest, and with the accident before, there was no one to see, no road, except for the impenetrable trees, the strangled plants, the hundred-foot-tall bamboos, the deformed lilies as large as apple trees, and countless insects.

The two were helpless, so they found a relatively hidden place, sat down, took a breath, and ate something. Drink some water from a bromeliad plant on the trunk of a tree. They need to balance their organs and then find their way.

"Bang! Boom! ”

Two booms caught the attention of the two. Wang Huiqing even recognized the sound of grenades from the Chinese army. They stood up and looked at each other for a moment, and Wang Huiqing said to Zheng Guidong: "Go there, there are people where there is a sound." ”

After some struggle, the rainforest suddenly opened up and a small stream appeared. There are so many creeks on Karnal Island, especially during the rainy season, that no one can figure out their names. Zheng Guidong took out the battle map. I couldn't find its location either.

"Let's go along it. It's going to flow to Iron Bottom Bay anyway."

They had just taken two steps. I heard the shrill chirping of birds in the rainforest, as if a flock of birds were fighting in the air.

Wang Huiqing heard that it was a communication signal from the scouts, and he beckoned to Zheng Guidong and quickly hid behind a large rock.

There was a strange laugh all around them. Like a bunch of elves. Dozens of soldiers appeared. They were all dressed in colorful jungle camouflage suits. Carrying an assault rifle, his face painted with black oil paint, all of them looked vicious. It's like a bunch of demons and monsters. Dozens of people surrounded Wang Huiqing and Zheng Guidong in an instant.

The leader stepped forward, saluted Lieutenant Colonel Wang Huiqing, and said softly in Chinese: "Lieutenant Colonel Wang Huiqing, I am Lieutenant Colonel Ange, the commander of the assault battalion of the 25th Division of the Conglin Group Army. I didn't expect us to meet here. ”

"It's you kid, it's a surprise meeting." The colorful face in front of him couldn't tell what the other party was looking like, but when he heard the other party report to his home. With an excited face, Wang Huiqing rushed to her ex-husband and hugged Ange, they had known each other when the Second Assault Battalion had just landed on Kuah Island.

Zheng Guidong also shook hands with the rest of the soldiers.

Anger has a smart and confident face, and most of the grassroots officers in the Jungle Army are ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia, and Anger is no exception. Dealing with the rainforest every day, the thirty-year-old has bark-like wrinkles on his face.

Wang Huiqing asked Anger: "Is it the grenade you lost?" ”

"Of course." Anger laughed. "My dear friend, don't you see that we are so hungry that we are indistinguishable? We have long run out of dry food. Nowadays, the only way to eat is to use grenades to fry fish in waterholes. God, the Japanese have everything in the rear, but they lack two things, food and women. They have almost gnawed away the bark and left us with nothing. ”

Only then did the Marine officers notice that the faces of the assault battalion soldiers, painted with oil paint, had been thinned out of shape, but their eyes were sparkling and full of the joy of victory.

Wang Huiqing asked Zheng Guidong to open his backpack and take out K-class rations, chocolate candy bars, ham, and a full military kettle of beer, which was his half-month's military ration, and spread it all out on a large smooth rock by the stream to entertain Ange's group. They ate happily as if they were celebrating a holiday, and even lifted two Marine officers up.

Anger happily told about their legendary experiences, about their battles against the Japanese army, and about Robinson's life in the dense forest. The two Marine officers were dumbfounded.

"I divided the 2nd Assault Battalion into two parts. Half followed me into the jungle, and the other half went west along the coast with the 2nd Marine Division. The jungle troops were two companies, one and a half hundred men each, and no matter how many people there were, it was useless. Our principle is: kill every Japanese soldier we meet. There will be no forgiveness, no mercy. ”

"Jungle warfare is a new topic. The Japanese always boasted that they were experts in this area, and that they had defeated the British in Malaya and Burma. This time, they also learned the power of the Chinese army's jungle group army. We are the professionals. ”

"Jungle warfare requires soldiers to be specially trained, psychologically stable, accurate and quick to react, and to be good at fighting alone and to work closely together. Good training allowed us to adapt to the new environment, and we became green devils. We took cover, attacked the enemy's logistics warehouses, burned supplies, shot sporadic personnel, ambushed Japanese patrols, planted mines, destroyed enemy command structures, blew up their firing points and radio stations, and seized all kinds of enemy documents. We kill with rifles and mortars, daggers and bayonets, ropes and sapper shovels, and we leave not a single one.

"Unfortunately, the Japanese army died at our hands far less than the people who died of starvation and disease. Wang Huiqing, you have read thousands of books, and you know much more than me. In the past medieval sieges, starvation was widely used as a weapon by soldiers. In Karnal, hunger is worse than anything else! Friends, if the Japanese had captured the Karnal airport, wouldn't it have been the same for us!"

Wang Huiqing did not answer this question. Because Japan and China are different in many ways, he can't answer this question.

The soldiers of the assault battalion gobbled up Wang Huiqing's food. They wiped their mouths and whistled again. "What are you doing here? Lieutenant Colonel, come home with us. ”

Wang Huiqing said embarrassedly: "We are lost." ”

"Hey, we're the elves of the jungle, let's go along, you can't be wrong." Lieutenant Colonel Anger looked at his watch: "It's still in time for dinner." ”

When it got dark, it became even darker in the forest. Sometimes a star can be seen from among the treetops, but most of the time you can't see your fingers. Everyone in Camp Ang walked quietly with white cloths tied to their arms. They walk in the jungle at night as if they were on a flat road during the day. Wang Huiqing never figured out how they identified the direction.

In a clearing on the edge of the forest. Aang ordered camping. His men were propping up their hammocks in an instant. Regardless of the mosquito bites, they fell asleep, only the sentinels patrolled vigilantly.

They knew the jungle as well as apes. Merge with the jungle. Although Wang Huiqing has heard countless criticisms of the assault battalion of the Jungle Army in the past: the salary is high. There are few wars. The equipment is the best, the supply allows them to be exhausted, and there are subsidies in the field. There are also subsidies behind enemy lines (there is no subsidy in front of enemy lines), idleness all day long, nothing but women's interest, etc. However, this half-day march and camping gave him a real understanding of the assault camp.

"They're good, let them spend what they deserve." Wang Huiqing thought.

Ange took a cigarette handed to him by Wang Huiqing and smoked it. He whispered, "Wang Huiqing, I guess the Japanese are ready to retreat." ”

"What? Are they going to retreat? Didn't they clamored to send troops and reclaim the airport?"

"Yes, that's what the intelligence says, the Eighth Front Army has been formed, and two more divisions will be sent to Kuah Island."

"Are there any signs of retreat?"

Intrigued, Anger chose two trees at the right distance and set up two hammocks one at a time. He slept below, and Wang Huiqing slept above. He smoked all his cigarettes, casually caught lice, and then told Wang Huiqing:

"At first, I didn't believe it either. We started from the Japanese stronghold called 'Gifu' in the southwest of Mt. Osteng, and made a detour to Mt. Kaima and Mt. Benza from the south. The jungles in this area are full of defeated Japanese stragglers. We hunted some, but there was no love war. These unorganized Japanese troops have nothing to do with the overall situation. We continued deeper to the west in an attempt to attack the enemy's command organs. ”

He squeezed the lice with his fingernails and put them in his mouth, explaining: "Once upon a time, I heard a prisoner say that cockroaches are the only source of protein in prison. Not at all, not at all, nor are lice. We eat everything. Eat snakes, eat ants, it's sour and numb. Eating mice, Karnal's rat is like a very large dormouse, hungry even if it is fur than skinning.

We crossed the Ponaji River upstream and turned north. The jungle is thinning out here, and there are more and more Japanese troops. They are busy and are building positions. I noticed that some of the Japanese troops were older and better equipped. It was in Doma that he set up a night attack and captured a Japanese soldier.

A miracle happened. Through the interrogation of my Japanese officer, White, the mystery of the Japanese was finally clarified. The captured Japanese private was named Masaosuke Hashimoto and belonged to the Yano Brigade of the 38th Division. He confessed: Yano Katsura led their troops, received orders in June and July, inspected their uniforms on the 10th, set out from Rabaul on the 12th, and with Staff Officer Imoto as a liaison, they arrived at Shortland Island in the middle of the night on five destroyers, and on the 14th they reached Cape Esparnes in Guadalcanal. No wonder I looked at Hashimoto's military uniform neatly and cleanly, with a good complexion, and Hu Yu was also shaved well, unlike other Japanese soldiers. ”

"Are you saying that the Yano Brigade to which Hashimoto belongs is a reinforcement?" Wang Huiqing was a little puzzled and asked, "What is the connection between this and retreat?"

"It's the Yano Brigade to blame." Anger said. "I repeatedly interrogated Hashimoto about what other reinforcements there were besides the Yano brigade. Hashimoto said no. I think he's telling the truth. ”

"If Imamura wants to capture Karnal, Yano's seven hundred and fifty soldiers alone can only commit suicide; If it's a change of defense, it's even more pointless. Our strength on the land, sky, and sea of Karnal is increasing day by day, and it will cost us a lot to replace two tired divisions and send two elite divisions, and the result will not be the same, and this old devil Imamura has studied in the United States and England, and he is not a fool. He understands war. Lieutenant Colonel Anger smiled confidently and continued: "The only explanation is that Yano's troops served as cover after landing and allowed the entire Seventeenth Army to withdraw from Guadalcanal. ”

Wang Huiqing's blood rushed to the top of his head at once, he jumped down from the hammock on a high place, and held on to the rope of Ange's hammock: "But our command headquarters doesn't know anything, and now the division headquarters is still carefully preparing to capture Cape Esparnes, Verdun in the Pacific Ocean." The battle on Mount Osteng showed that the Japanese army was still a formidable force as long as it wanted to fight to the end. ”

Anger also jumped out of the hammock and solemnly said to Wang Huiqing: "I gave up the opportunity to kill more Japanese, don't rush back, not to drink your beer, not to go back to enjoy the peace of the rear." My radio station has long been broken, and I will tell the division commander personally: do everything possible to stop the retreat of the Japanese and wipe them all out at Karnal. ”

Wang Huiqing shook Ange's hand and shouted uncontrollably: "Ange, you big fool, what are you sleeping here!" Don't delay the work, let's go and tell the division commander together. Hurry up!"

The guard whose voice was alarmed, the guard hurriedly said, "What's wrong?" Don't shout. ”

The other assault battalion soldiers in the hammock jumped out of the hammock like a sulphur, alertly picked up their weapons, found a tree to hide, and questioned each other.

Looking at Wang Huiqing, who was in a hurry, Anger smiled helplessly, and greeted his subordinates, "Give the order: march." Destination: Karnal Airport. ”

The assault battalion disappeared into the gloomy and sultry rainforest.

The days of the Netherworld are coming to an end, and for both parties, this is the Netherworld.

The boat of Caron, the ferryman of the River Styx in Greek mythology, sailed through the river, was about to reach the other side of life. The closer people get to victory, to success, to the light, the more people waver, doubt, self-denial, trembling, and not daring to take a step beyond the thunderstorm.

Wang Huiqing covered her faintly sick stomach and groped forward. In any case, the battle for Guadalcanal is coming to an end. China won the first and most important island battle in the Pacific. Despite the gloomy rainforests, poisonous insects, plagues, and bitter rains, despite the Japanese army, pilots, and fleets, despite the horrors of those nights with the "Tokyo Express", and despite the frenzied onslaught of the Japanese soldiers, the Marines withstood it, survived, and won. Their deeds will surely go down in history.

The night slipped quietly through the rapid march. As they approached the shore, the sky turned a dark blue, and a red morning glow reflected in the east. The mountain peaks blocked out the sun, and only the surface of the sea was dyed with golden waves.

The clouds of light change between wine red, ruby green and milky white, becoming more brilliant and transparent. Finally, the dazzling sun leaps out of the rocks of the cape. Wang Huiqing never felt that the sun would be so beautiful as it is today. (To be continued......)