Volume 1: The First Battle Chapter 21: Battle of Jiulong River (V)
"Old squad leader." I crawled out of the air-raid shelter, pulled my clothes and asked in confusion, "The clothes are a bit loose, where did you get them?"
"This!" The old squad leader hesitated for a moment and said with difficulty: "It was stripped from the body of a fallen comrade. At the moment... I can't find a suitable one. Platoon Leader Cui, you just have to make do with it! And these, I brought your gun too..."
I was stunned for a moment. The first thing I thought of was whether stripping the clothes of the fallen comrades was disrespectful to the dead. But then I thought again, the battlefield is a cruel place, and you have to do your best to protect yourself and kill the enemy.
Therefore, when the volunteer army was short of food and clothing, it was .
Thinking of this, I tightened my collar, straightened my hat, took the box pistol from the old squad leader, hung it around my waist, grabbed the big eight-ball and ran to the front line.
"Platoon leader!"
"Platoon Leader Cui!"
…
Along the way, wherever I passed, the soldiers turned sideways and cast admiring glances at me, which made me feel a little elated.
"What?" I turned a corner and was shocked by the battlefield in front of me. The snow, which was originally as white as a freshly painted wall, was now completely unrecognizable.
The battlefield was in disarray with craters, corpses, blood, and soil turned up by bombs. Even more unacceptable was the corpse at the foot of the mountain.
Because of the slope of the high ground, many corpses slid to the foot of the mountain under the action of gravity, and then were randomly stacked together in various postures. There were those of puppet soldiers and those of volunteers. It was no exaggeration to say that there were so many corpses that they were piled up like a mountain.
Although I can say that I have fought in a few battles, this is the first time I have seen so many corpses.
"How could it be like this?" I turned around and asked the old squad leader anxiously: "Didn't the stone bridge get blown up?"
"How can it not break? How can it not break after those dozens of kilograms of explosives explode?" The old squad leader chuckled and said, "But the American planes are amazing. We blew up the stone bridge, and he immediately dropped a few pontoon bridges with his planes. Isn't that right? There..."
Following the old squad leader's gesture, I saw a few floating bridges in the upper reaches of the Longxing River. There were people on them. It seemed that the reinforcements from Jiangnan were still continuously coming here.
"Then was the stone bridge blown up in vain?" I couldn't help but feel a little annoyed.
"How can that be possible?" The old squad leader shook his head and said, "The pontoon bridge can't handle the load. Tanks and cars can't get across. And the bullets still need to be transported box by box! Otherwise, our regiment would have been gone long ago."
After hearing what the old squad leader said, I looked carefully and saw that it was indeed true. Many puppet soldiers on the pontoon bridge were carrying ammunition boxes on their shoulders and were constantly transporting bullets over here.
"It took a lot of effort for those puppet soldiers to build the pontoon bridge!" The old squad leader continued, "Captain Chu dispatched a company to attack the people who were building the pontoon bridge. After a long time, the puppet soldiers lost hundreds of people and became smarter. They first set up artillery on the opposite side and then built the pontoon bridge. Our people couldn't get on, so we let them build it."
"What is the enemy's situation? How many are there?"
" I don't know about that. I'll have to ask the company commander."
"Where's the captain?"
"It's right in front." The old squad leader pointed to the edge of the trench and said, "Turn two corners forward."
"Company Commander..." After running in the trench for a while with his back bent, he soon recognized the tall and thin figure of Company Commander Zhang.
"Platoon Leader Cui." Captain Zhang was quite surprised to see me: "Are you awake? Why don't you rest a little longer? "
"I'm fine, I just caught a cold! How many enemies are there?"
"Caught a cold? They almost got frozen in the river and still caught a cold!" Captain Zhang replied with a smile, "The three regiments retreating from the north are from the Puppet Sixth Division. Captain Chu and his men are holding on to the north. The three enemy regiments are running for their lives, using all their might. Captain Chu also looks nervous.
We have about one division here, with more than 30 tanks. It's all thanks to you, Platoon Leader Cui, for blowing up the stone bridge. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to withstand the attack of those tanks. "
The volunteer soldiers who entered North Korea in the early days had almost no anti-tank equipment. The best anti-tank weapon was only a rocket launcher, but there was only one per regiment on average, so they could only rely on explosive packs, cluster grenades and blasting tubes to attack tanks, but this was almost impossible with a large number of enemy infantry following up.
If those thirty-odd tanks were really allowed to cross the bridge and attack the Volunteer Army's positions, it would really be a big trouble, just as Captain Zhang said.
After a pause, Captain Zhang continued, "Now that the enemy's heavy weapons can't get through, we can still deal with them with the combat effectiveness of the puppet troops. Look, they have been beaten back several times. As soon as it gets dark, they will have to fend for themselves!"
"Oh!" I looked up at the sky. It would be dark in more than an hour!
During the Korean War, whether it was the puppet army or the US army, they were most afraid of fighting the Volunteer Army at night, because as soon as it got dark, their firepower advantage would not be fully reflected, on the contrary, it would be much easier for our Volunteer Army soldiers to fight them in close combat. Isn't there a saying circulating on the battlefield of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea - the night belongs to the Volunteer Army.
Now, with the Volunteer Army reinforcements arriving at any time, darkness almost marks the victory of this battle, because then we can spend the whole night quietly waiting for the arrival of reinforcements.
Captain Zhang looked at the sky and breathed a sigh of relief. He took out a pack of cigarettes and handed me one. I looked and found it was an American-made "Coffee Brand" with a filter tip.
"What nice cigarettes, Captain! Where did you get them?" I stared at the pack of cigarettes in the captain's hand with admiration on my face.
"You're jealous, right?" Captain Zhang raised his hand proudly, pointing at the pile of corpses at the foot of the mountain and said with a smile: "There are a lot of corpses on those puppet soldiers, go find them yourself!"
"This... let's forget it!" I smiled awkwardly.
Are you kidding? For a pack of cigarettes, I jumped out of the trench, ran to the foot of the mountain in the hail of bullets to touch the pockets of the corpses... My addiction to smoking is not that serious.
After striking a match and lighting both of them, Captain Zhang took a deep breath, exhaled a cloud of thick smoke and said, "You are amazing, Platoon Leader Cui. I never thought you would blow up the bridge from the water! You didn't know it yet! When you blew up the bridge, everyone in the company was staring at you!"
"No way! The whole company is watching?" I felt a little embarrassed.
"That's right!" A soldier next to him added, "All the soldiers in the company have forgotten about fighting and are cheering for you!"
"Isn't it?" Captain Zhang said with a smile, "We blew up the bridge right under the enemy's nose. In a word - it's great! OK, you have done another meritorious service and bought precious time for our troops, which is the key to the victory or defeat of this battle! We can just wait until dark."
"That's not right, Captain!" I was stunned when I heard that: "We are waiting until dark, but what are the puppet soldiers waiting for?"
"What?" Company Captain Zhang looked at me in confusion.
"I think they are waiting for the plane." Thinking of the bombing we had just experienced, I couldn't help but feel a lingering fear.
