Chapter 234: Entrusting
The spring chill had not yet receded; a biting morning breeze blew through the mountain hollow outside Xincounty city, rolling up the dry leaves on the ground and making a desolate “rustling” sound.
A clear stream wound through the mountain rocks, the water crashing against pebbles and making a pleasant “gurgling” sound, but this noise could not dispel the tension and oppression permeating the air.
Private Nakata Katsuhiko sat by this stream, clutching his well-maintained Type 38 rifle tightly in his arms.
He wore a khaki Type 5 uniform with the collar open, looking somewhat disheveled; his leggings were covered in mud, making him appear exceptionally unkempt overall.
He missed home, more than he ever had before.
He had been on the Chinese battlefield for over half a year now and had fought in several battles, but none had made him feel this desperate.
The rumbling heavy artillery, the rain of bullets like falling hail, and the warplanes whistling overhead had brought them endless death and suffering; less than two days into the battle, their squad had already lost more than half its men, and even their squad leader was wounded.
The cold feel of steel came from his arm, giving him a faint illusory sense of security.
He did not look at the babbling water nor at the faintly visible city walls of Xincounty in the distance; he just kept his head down, silently drawing incomprehensible symbols on the damp mud with a dry twig.
He was only nineteen, less than a year away from the fields of his hometown; the childishness had not fully faded from his face, but his eyes already held a numbness unfit for his age.
“Katsuhiko.”
A familiar voice came from behind. Nakata Katsuhiko did not turn around; he knew who it was.
Footsteps stopped beside him, carrying a heavy tobacco smell and a faint tremor.
Superior Private Takeuchi Takemasa plopped down next to him, casually tossing his rifle onto the grass, then pulling a crumpled pack of “Homare” brand cigarettes from his pocket, shaking one out and putting it in his mouth, but not lighting it for a long time.
“Thinking about home?”
Takeuchi Takemasa was three years older than Nakata Katsuhiko and had enlisted two years earlier, making him his senior from the same village.
In the army, this bond from the same hometown was the last thread holding onto their humanity.
“No.” Nakata Katsuhiko shook his head, his voice very low.
Takeuchi Takemasa let out two dry laughs, sounds more unpleasant than crying.
“Don’t lie; whenever you miss home, you like to draw that river in front of your house on the ground.”
He spat out the unlit cigarette from his mouth, hugged his head with both hands, and painfully leaned back onto the grass, staring fixedly at the overcast sky.
“Baka… baka!” he suddenly muttered curses under his breath, his voice thick with depression and fear, “That bastard… Kameda that bastard!”
Nakata Katsuhiko stopped what he was doing and turned his head to look at him.
“Just now, that beast Kameda notified me.”
Takeuchi Takemasa’s voice trembled; he pressed the back of his hand tightly over his eyes. “He promoted me… to Type 92 heavy machine gun gunner… haha… promoted…”
The word drilled into Nakata Katsuhiko’s ears like a red-hot iron poker, making his whole body stiffen.
Type 92 heavy machine gunner… on the current Shanxi battlefield, especially facing that devil force called the “Shanxi Militia,” this position was almost equivalent to an invitation from hell.
He had seen it with his own eyes: on the enemy lines opposite, those called “snipers” would precisely send bullets into the heads of heavy machine gunners like hunting wild rabbits.
And their overwhelming mortars always targeted the Type 92 that kept going “kukukuku” first; often one shell would blow the entire gun crew, men and gun, into a pile of parts.
“Takeuchi-senior…” Nakata Katsuhiko’s voice was dry.
“Don’t comfort me!” Takeuchi Takemasa sat up abruptly, his eyes bloodshot like a beast cornered to its death. He grabbed Nakata Katsuhiko’s shoulder, nails nearly digging into the flesh.
“Katsuhiko! We’re from the same village! You have to help me! You must help me!”
“I… what can I do…”
“Listen to me!”
Takeuchi Takemasa’s breathing was rapid, carrying a desperate air. “I… I probably won’t make it back. I know it; once the battle starts, I absolutely won’t survive the first assault.
But… but Haruko… my Haruko is still in the city!”
Haruko… Takeuchi Takemasa’s fiancée, a woman as gentle as cherry blossoms.
Nakata Katsuhiko had seen her photo; in it, she smiled so sweetly. As a nurse in the medical team, she had come to this damned county city with the troops.
“Katsuhiko…”
Takeuchi Takemasa’s voice softened, full of pleading. “If… I mean if… I die… you must go to the medical team and find her. Tell her it’s my fault, tell her to forget me, find a good man… go back home and live well…”
He pulled a small cloth bundle warmed by his body heat from his bosom and tremblingly stuffed it into Nakata Katsuhiko’s hand.
“Inside… is my pay, and… and the letter I wrote to her… please, Katsuhiko! For the sake of growing up in the same village, please!”
Nakata Katsuhiko dumbly clutched the small cloth bundle, feeling it weigh a thousand pounds. Looking at this man before him, snot and tears streaming down his face with none of his senior demeanor left, his throat felt stuffed with cotton; he couldn’t say a word.
He wanted to refuse; he didn’t want to imagine Takeuchi-senior covered in blood slumped over the machine gun, didn’t want to face that woman named Haruko’s despairing eyes.
But looking at Takeuchi Takemasa’s bloodshot, pleading eyes, he couldn’t get the words of refusal out.
After a long time, amid the monotonous sound of the stream, Nakata Katsuhiko finally nodded with difficulty.
“I… promise you, Takeuchi-senior.”
Hearing this, all the strength seemed to drain from Takeuchi Takemasa’s body; he let go and slumped dejectedly to the ground, burying his face in his knees like a child, emitting muffled, intermittent sobs.
In the distance, a sharp assembly whistle suddenly rang out, like the reaper’s death knell, shattering the momentary silence in the hollow.
That shrill assembly whistle pierced the silence of the hollow like an icy awl, stabbing into the ears of Takeuchi Takemasa and Nakata Katsuhiko.
Both men shuddered all over, springing up from the ground almost by reflex.
Takeuchi Takemasa’s face, twisted from crying, instantly turned deathly pale; he hastily wiped the tears and snot from his face, grabbed the Type 38 rifle from the ground, and scrambled toward the direction of the whistle.
Nakata Katsuhiko followed close behind; he stuffed the cloth bundle still warm from Takeuchi Takemasa’s body into his chest pocket, the cold gun barrel and heavy promise weighing him down so he could hardly breathe.
By the time they stumbled to the assembly point, Squad Leader Kameda was already standing there with an ashen face like a corpse.
His eye sockets were sunken, bloodshot eyes scanning every soldier who ran up to assemble.
The squad, originally over fifty strong, now had only these scattered twenty-odd men, each face etched with exhaustion and fear.
Once everyone was assembled, Kameda wasted no words; his hoarse voice, like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing, rang out in the cold wind: “Listen up… just half an hour ago, the first defensive line ahead was breached by the Chinese army.
We’re the first line now!
Those Chinese could appear before us any moment! Buck up! Warriors of His Majesty the Emperor have no cowards!”
He gave his usual admonition, but his words held no inspiring power, only raw despair and commands.
The soldiers listened numbly; no one dared make a sound, the air thick with the scent of death.
“Now! Everyone! Get to positions immediately! Hurry! Hurry!”
After the admonition, Kameda drove the remaining twenty-odd soldiers forward to the makeshift trench ahead like herding livestock, using rifle butts and shouts.
It was less a position than a hastily dug muddy ditch, filled with the stench of urine, sweat, and earthy dampness.
“Takeuchi… you!”
Kameda’s gaze fixed on the dazed Takeuchi Takemasa like a viper. “You’re the new gunner; go to that high point, set up the Type 92 for me.
If Chinese shells blow it up, commit seppuku to the Emperor yourself!」
He pointed to a prominent dirt mound on the flank of the position, the spot with the best view—and the easiest to become a live target.
Takeuchi Takemasa trembled violently all over, the last trace of color draining from his face. He wanted to say something, but under Kameda’s murderous glare, all words stuck in his throat as silent shivers.
Before Nakata Katsuhiko was shoved into the trench by another squad leader, Takeuchi Takemasa suddenly stopped, turned his head abruptly, and gave Nakata Katsuhiko a heavy, intense stare.
It was a look indescribable in words, mixing a dying man’s plea, the terror of being pushed onto the altar of sacrifice, a man’s final entrustment to his love, and a faint, almost invisible hope that the other would keep his promise.
He said nothing, but his eyes wailed, wept, pressing a man’s last dignity and concern entirely onto this nineteen-year-old countryman’s shoulders.
Nakata Katsuhiko’s heart felt gripped by an icy hand. He could clearly feel the outline and warmth of the cloth bundle in his chest pocket.
He looked at Takeuchi’s despairing face, at his lips trembling from fear, a sense of powerlessness nearly crushing him.
Amid Kameda’s impatient urging and cursing, Nakata Katsuhiko met Takeuchi Takemasa’s gaze and slowly, heavily nodded.
This nod was silent, yet weighed a thousand tons.
Seeing Nakata Katsuhiko nod, the last light in Takeuchi Takemasa’s bloodshot eyes seemed to extinguish.
As if all his energy and spirit were drained, he turned like a walking corpse, hugging the heavy tripod, stumbling step by step under the assistant gunner’s shove toward that high point that was almost certainly his grave.
Nakata Katsuhiko was assigned to a corner of the trench; he leaned against the cold, slippery mud wall, resting his Type 38 rifle on the parapet, but his gaze involuntarily drifted to the figure busily setting up the machine gun on the upper flank.
………..
“Hurry! Damn it, keep up! Wanna spend the night in this mud?”
Old Cao’s roar was hoarse and brutal; he was half-crouched, struggling up the muddy slope, each step squelching into the yellow-brown muck with a “squish,” submerging his ankles with a suction that seemed to want to swallow him alive.
The M1919 Browning heavy machine gun on his shoulder, plus the ammo box, weighed dozens of kilos; the cold steel pressed painfully on his shoulder blade, like carrying a small mountain.
His originally well-tailored Type 36 German-style uniform, symbol of elite status, was now unrecognizable in color, soaked into a heavy brown crust by mud and rain, clinging wet and cold to his body.
His leather boots were filled with muddy water; each lift felt like wrestling the earth.
As the absolute mainstay of the Shanxi Militia, First Regiment, they were the sharpest knife in the regiment commander’s hand.
From the moment the battle erupted two days ago, they had been at the forefront of the assault. Casualties were huge; Old Cao’s company, full strength 193 men, now had only over 120 still breathing.
But no one complained, because regiment staff had made it clear: only by thoroughly smashing the enemy’s 24th Division—or even swallowing it whole—would they have a chance to breathe.
This was a battle of trading lives for lives; everyone knew it.
Just as they slogged deep and shallow to the foot of a slope, preparing to use the terrain to regroup…
“Zip!”
A sharp, ominous whoosh suddenly rang out!
Immediately after, a young soldier beside Old Cao jerked backward as if shoved hard by an invisible giant hand. A vivid blood flower burst from his chest, staining his muddy uniform red.
The soldier’s eyes bulged wide with incredulous shock; his mouth opened but no sound came out before his body went limp and lifeless, crashing “thud” into the mud with a splash of turbid waves.
“Enemy attack… hit the dirt!”
Someone yelled hoarsely.
No need for orders; instincts honed on the line of life and death made everyone react instantly.
Soldiers dropped like cut wheat, splattering mud on faces and heads without care. Some rolled in place, seeking any cover—a rock, a depression, even a comrade’s still-warm corpse.
“Bang! Bang bang!”
“Da da da!”
Militia soldiers immediately laid down suppressive fire toward the direction of the shots, their semi-auto rifles and submachine guns spitting angry flames.
Old Cao instantly dropped to one knee, yanking the heavy M1919 from his shoulder; the gun slammed into the mud, splashing a big spray. His eyes blood-red like an enraged beast, he stared fixedly at the source of the gunfire on the slope above.
“Damn it! Set it up!”
He bellowed at his assistant gunner and ammo bearer nearby. “Behind that big rock! Find that son of a bitch for me! I’ll blast him and the rock to smithereens!”
Adrenaline surged madly through his veins, dispelling all fatigue and cold, leaving only the most primal, burning killing intent.
