Volume 3 The Third Battle Chapter 15 Shoes
When I led the recruits to climb the cliff, the battle was over. The entire battle took only a dozen minutes to break through the so-called "Imjin River iron wall" defense line of the United Nations.
There were bullet holes , corpses, broken barbed wire and various firearms discarded by the puppet soldiers when they fled everywhere. The damaged cars kept spewing black smoke into the sky, as if accusing the world of the evil of war.
Hu Zi and I and others finally pulled up the recruits one by one, and then we sat down on the ground. We were so tired! Even fighting with the Americans with bayonets had never been so tiring. This was not how we could lead troops in a war. As the company commander, I might as well appoint myself as the recruits' chief babysitter.
"Captain! Let's chase them!" Hu Zi was so anxious that he jumped up and down: "All the people in our regiment are chasing the puppet army to capture prisoners. If we are late, we won't be able to catch any prisoners."
"Huzi!" I shook my head weakly, pointing at the shivering recruits sitting beside me and said, "Look at them, can we still chase them?"
"Company commander!" Hu Zi said in embarrassment, "How about...letting them rest here, and you take us veterans to chase the enemy?"
"That won't do!" Instructor Zhao shook his head and said, "Comrade, if we abandon the new recruits to chase the enemy, I'm afraid they will never catch up with us. Most of our company are new recruits. The superiors gave them to us so that we can take care of them, support them, and train them into organized and disciplined revolutionary fighters who can fight and kill. How can we just abandon them?"
"But... this..." Hu Zi looked at the group of recruits beside him, then looked at the large army that was gradually moving away, gritting his teeth in hatred.
"Huzi! Instructor Zhao is right!" I responded, "Most of our company members are new recruits. If we lose them now, not only will they be in danger, but our company will also be almost gone."
"Oh!" Hu Zi took off his hat and sat on the ground sulking.
"Each platoon should count the number of people." I ordered: "Change the shoes and cotton clothes that got wet when crossing the river as soon as possible. Shoes can be exchanged for the enemy's, and military uniforms should be exchanged for the fallen comrades'. Watch out for mines, and walk in the craters and footprints. Rest for ten minutes before setting off!"
"Yes!" The three platoon leaders responded and went back to work.
I was about to stand up when I felt a chill under my feet. I looked down and found that my shoes were also soaked by the river water. The cold wind blew on them for a while and the whole shoes were frozen. After walking a few steps, the ice on the shoes fell down. I was so nervous in the battle that I didn't pay attention. Now I felt that my whole feet were frozen and I had no feeling.
I found a pair of suitable deerskin combat boots on the enemy's corpse and sat down. I took them off and sat down on the spot. When I was about to put them on, I found that my pair of rubber shoes were almost frozen to my feet and could not be taken off no matter how hard I tried.
"Tiger!"
"arrive!"
"Come and help!" I pointed to the shoes on my feet.
"yes!"
Huzi ran up, grabbed my shoes and started pulling them, but even if he pulled me whole, he still couldn't pull the shoes off.
"Stop, stop..." I hurriedly called out to Hu Zi who was still trying to pull. It was not a good idea to keep pulling like this. When I sat up, I realized that I was not the only one in this situation. Soldiers everywhere were busy taking off their shoes.
"Captain Cui, we need this!" At this time, Jin Qiulian came up and started to burn my shoes with a torch without saying anything.
After a few minutes of baking, I took it off gently, but the smell caused a huge uproar among the soldiers, and its impact was no less than that of the TNT bomb dropped by the American plane, because it directly made the soldiers around me stay away from me for more than ten meters.
In fact, not to mention the soldiers, even I couldn't stand the smell. I covered my nose, quickly put my feet in the snow and rubbed them, then hurriedly put on the military boots...
Sorry, I haven't washed my feet for almost a month, but which volunteer soldier doesn't do this? Those new recruits haven't been here for a few days and don't know this fine tradition of our volunteer army. I think they will get used to it soon.
"Captain Cui!" When the company set out again, the instructor came to my side and said, "We have a lot more people in our team, a total of more than 290 people. Almost all the new recruits in the regiment have been left behind and we have picked them up."
"Hmm!" I looked at the team behind me with a little surprise. It had indeed become much stronger, but it was a pity that they were still without combat effectiveness for the time being.
But aren’t combat-ready veterans and incompetent recruits the same?
I quickly thought of the Volunteer Army's third battle, which was a charge all the way down, and it did not stop until it recaptured Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
The volunteers killed more fiercely, and the supply line was also stretched from 100 kilometers to 400 kilometers. This directly led to our army running out of bullets and noodles after seven or eight days, and then suffered heavy casualties in the fourth battle when the enemy launched a counterattack.
With no bullets left and no food to eat for days and nights, how much better could those well-trained veterans be than the completely untrained recruits?
Hey! At this time, I saw the guns and ammunition left by the puppet soldiers when they fled. I was stunned. I knew that the volunteers would soon be short of food and ammunition, so why didn’t I save some for the future?
The reason why the large troops chasing the enemy deserters did not pick up these guns and ammunition was, firstly, to reduce the weight and speed up the pursuit; secondly, they were worried that the bullets supplied by the rear would not match the guns they used. Therefore, most of the volunteer soldiers knew that the large eight-ball bullets on the ground were better than the Type 38 rifles in their hands, but they did not dare to replace them.
What they didn't know was that as they continued to chase the enemy, their logistics supply lines were stretched so long that bullets from the rear could not be delivered at all.
"Everyone!" Thinking of this, I gave the order: "Stop advancing, clean up the battlefield on the spot, throw away all the Type 38 rifles and unnecessary equipment, and replace them with the Type 8 rifle. Every soldier is required to bring at least..."
At this point I stopped and weighed the M1 rifle in my hand. It weighed about 10 pounds. It was not a problem for a soldier to carry four rifles. So I continued, "Each soldier is required to bring at least four large eight-guns. Bring as many bullets as possible, as well as bread, canned food, and anything edible as possible! If you can't take them all, you have to drag them away..."
"Yes!" The recruits responded promptly and scattered to clean up the battlefield.
"Damn it!" I cursed in my heart. As long as you are not allowed to fight, you will just be so straightforward and just follow orders. When did you learn all my previous skills?
