Chapter 235: Battle In The Mud
“Click!”
The heavy tripod legs sank deeply into the suction-filled mud. The assistant gunner shoved a long canvas belt of ammunition into the M1919’s feed tray, then slammed his hand down on Old Cao’s helmet.
“All set, Old Cao!”
Old Cao didn’t hesitate. His bloodshot eyes, filled with anger and fatigue, were locked onto the boulder he had identified above the slope. He leaned forward, gripping the D-shaped handles tightly, his thumb unmercifully pressing the butterfly trigger.
“Wooooooh…”
A beastly roar instantly tore through the battlefield!
It wasn’t gunshots, but a storm composed of steel, fire, and death!
The muzzle of the M1919 Browning heavy machine gun erupted with a dazzling, continuous stream of blinding fire.
The shroud of the air-cooled barrel, under the violent vibration, even steamed faintly white from contact with the humid air.
The golden .30-06 rifle casings ejected from the ejection port at astonishing speed, like a swarm of golden bees, drawing chaotic and deadly arcs in the air before clinking into the muddy water below, instantly swallowed by the murk.
The deadly barrage, led by tracer rounds, gnawed at the Japanese positions on the hillside like an invisible, high-speed chainsaw.
Bullets struck the muddy ground, kicking up continuous, forward-surging fountains of earth.
They hit the massive rock, erupting in a dense, blinding spray of sparks, tearing off large chunks of rock that scattered in all directions; they ripped through the hastily piled sandbags of the Japanese, their contents spewing outward like blood.
A Japanese soldier who had just poked his head out to shoot had his helmet instantly struck. With a crisp “clang,” the helmet, along with half his skull, spun backward, spraying red and white matter in a gruesome arc through the air.
“You sons of bitches! Die for me!”
Old Cao roared, pressing down on the constantly jumping gun, sweeping the destructive chain of fire left and right, completely enveloping the area in a storm of death composed of shrapnel and debris.
His comrades beside him were not idle.
“Here, you little devils!”
Several soldiers roared, expertly biting open the safety pins of their MKII grenades with their teeth, then swinging their arms in wide arcs to hurl the pineapple-shaped iron lumps towards the slope.
The grenades tumbled through the air, tracing perfect parabolic arcs before landing precisely in the Japanese positions, pinned down by the machine-gun fire.
“Boom… boom…”
A series of dull, violent explosions sounded!
Fiery orange light flashed, and large clouds of black smoke mixed with mud, gravel, broken weapons, and human limbs blasted into the sky, forming several towering, grotesque fountains.
A powerful shockwave washed over them, making Old Cao’s cheeks sting. The air was instantly filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder and a sickening stench of burnt flesh.
However, the Japanese were not lambs to the slaughter.
As the smoke from the explosions had yet to dissipate, a highly distinctive series of gunshots, like a woodpecker pecking at dead wood, rang out.
“Clack… clack-clack… clack-clack-clack…”
It was a Type 92 heavy machine gun! Its slow but steady, powerful firing sound was exceptionally cold and deadly amidst the M1919’s savage roar.
The 7.7mm heavy machine gun bullets whizzed through the air. They were not as dense as the barrage from the militia’s side, but each one carried a heavy killing intent. The bullets “thud, thud, thud!” burrowed fiercely into the mud near Old Cao, each one like a heavy hammer strike, kicking up clouds of mud and sand mixed with gravel.
A sharp whistling sound grazed a soldier’s scalp as he ducked sharply in fear.
Immediately after, a bullet struck the muddy ground in front of Old Cao. The flying gravel and mud acted like shotgun pellets, hitting his face and helmet with a “pitter-patter” sound. Though not fatal, the stinging pain and the chilling sensation of being brushed by death made Old Cao’s pupils contract sharply.
“Damn it!” He spat out a bloody phlegm, adjusted his aim, and pulled the trigger…
………
Katsuhiko Nakata felt like an earthworm pinned in the mud, the cold, slippery muck seeping through every gap in his uniform, constantly stealing his body heat.
He pressed his cheek firmly against the cold stock of his Type 38 rifle, trying to draw a sliver of courage from the familiar wood and steel.
But the battlefield offered no mercy.
Visibility was extremely poor.
The black and gray gunpowder smoke from the grenade and artillery explosions, mixed with the moisture in the humid air, formed rolling walls of smoke so thick they couldn’t be dispersed, dyeing the entire world in shades of despair. He could only see blurry, shifting figures about ten meters ahead, unable to distinguish friend from foe.
Suddenly, a sharp blast that tore at his eardrums, “Crack!” exploded right beside his right ear!
It wasn’t the “whizz” of bullets passing by that he was used to, but something purer, more violent, like the air itself being brutally ripped apart.
Every muscle in Katsuhiko Nakata’s body tensed into a spasm. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. His heart felt as if it were crushed by an invisible hand, causing him to stop breathing for a moment.
Almost as he instinctively flinched to the right, about a tenth of a second later, a dull “bang” of a gunshot sounded in the distance.
His mind was in chaos.
The gunshot came from the front left, but the deadly explosion was to his right! This strange discrepancy in sound and direction made it impossible for him to pinpoint the enemy’s exact location, and he could only shrink himself tighter, like a startled rabbit, in vain.
He didn’t know that this was the physical phenomenon of a supersonic bullet’s shockwave arriving before the gunshot. All he knew was that death had just danced by his scalp.
Immediately after, a string of tracer rounds from the Chinese machine gun tore through the humid and murky air with a speed almost imperceptible to the naked eye.
In his extremely fearful and dilated pupils, Katsuhiko Nakata saw with horror that at the front of those scarlet light spots, a small, translucent misty cone instantly formed, like the scene of a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier in legend, except this sight was rushing towards him at a deadly speed!
The fleeting “steam cone,” with its eerie and terrifying beauty, was deeply imprinted on his retinas.
Boom!
A heavy machine gun bullet slammed into the hastily constructed parapet less than half a meter in front of him!
He wasn’t hit, but the invisible shockwave felt like a heavy hammer smashing directly onto his skull through his helmet.
A violent wave of dizziness washed over him, the smoke and fire before his eyes began to spin and distort, his stomach churned, and an intense urge to vomit surged into his throat.
His pupils dilated uncontrollably, not from excitement, but from the purest neurological stress response of vestibular-ocular reflex dysfunction.
He couldn’t see or hear anything clearly. All that remained in his ears was a high-frequency hum and the frantic thumping of his own heart.
Before being completely consumed by fear, his survival instinct took over his body. Mechanically and frantically, he pulled the cold bolt. With a “whirr,” a hot casing ejected. He pushed a new 6.5mm round into the chamber and, without even taking the time to aim precisely, pulled the trigger in the direction he remembered the enemy to be.
“Bang!”
The butt of the rifle slammed into his shoulder. The resulting pain momentarily cleared his confused mind. He lay in the mud and water, gasping for breath, his mouth full of the foul taste of gunpowder and dirt, like a dying fish.
Fear, like a cold tide, completely overwhelmed Katsuhiko Nakata’s reason. He lay in the mud and water, becoming a machine that only repeated two actions: pull the bolt, pull the trigger.
“Whirr—bang!”
“Whirr—bang!”
He no longer aimed, no longer thought, and no longer even looked ahead.
In his world, only the cold, rough feel of the bolt and the pain of the stock hitting his shoulder, the only proof that he was still alive, remained.
Hot casings repeatedly ejected from the chamber, falling into the mud and water beside him with a soft “hiss,” then being swallowed by darkness.
Where the bullets flew, what they hit, he had no idea, nor did he want to know.
He was merely using this frantic and futile action to fight against the boundless fear that was about to tear him apart.
Just as he descended into this mechanical frenzy, a familiar sound came from his right.
“Clack… clack-clack… clack-clack-clack…”
It was the sound of the Type 92 heavy machine gun! It was Senior Takeuchi’s voice!
Katsuhiko Nakata quickly turned his head. Through the gaps in the rolling smoke, he saw the familiar figure.
Takashi Takeuchi was lying prone on the dirt mound at that commanding height, almost pressing himself entirely onto the constantly vibrating Type 92 heavy machine gun.
He gripped the handles tightly, his body shaking violently with the gun’s recoil. Even from dozens of meters away and obscured by smoke, Katsuhiko Nakata could clearly see that Senior Takeuchi’s face was completely contorted.
His mouth was stretched open wide, emitting a silent, beastly roar from his throat, his eyes wide like bronze bells, filled with a mad bloodshot glaze. His face, which had once held a trace of simple kindness and timidity, now showed only the ferocity and hysteria of someone pushed to the brink.
He was spewing his rage and fear at the world that had pushed him into hell with the last of his life’s madness.
Seeing this, Katsuhiko Nakata’s heart sank, and an indescribable sorrow and coldness spread throughout his body.
He was no longer the raw recruit who had just entered the battlefield. Having participated in several battles, he knew better than anyone that Senior Takeuchi… wouldn’t live much longer.
Those Chinese, those devils with their terrifying firepower, would absolutely not tolerate a heavy machine gun spitting fire at them so brazenly.
As expected.
As if to confirm his thoughts, in the next second, the focus of the battlefield’s firepower instantly shifted.
Countless scarlet tracer rounds, like a swarm of enraged, bloodthirsty bees, converged from all directions, weaving into a dense, shimmering net of death that fiercely pounced upon that small, isolated dirt mound.
Bullets struck the sandbags and earth around Takashi Takeuchi with terrifying density, the “thud, thud, thud” sounds merging into one. Mud and sand erupted skyward like fountains, instantly engulfing the small machine gun nest in a cloud of dust kicked up by the hail of bullets.
Katsuhiko Nakata stopped breathing. His eyes were wide open, staring fixedly at the area shrouded in death.
Suddenly, amidst the dense rain of bullets, an exceptionally thick and bright tracer round, like a sword slicing through the night, accurately and without a doubt, plunged directly into the blurred figure within the smoke.
Time seemed to slow down infinitely at that moment.
Katsuhiko Nakata clearly saw the steel-helmeted head of Takashi Takeuchi, like a watermelon smashed by a sledgehammer from the front, jerk violently backward, and then… with a muffled “thump,” it exploded entirely!
This was not a movie special effect, but a more primitive, more brutal, more nauseating physical phenomenon.
The helmet was blown into the air by a massive force, tumbling and deforming. Where the head had been, a shocking cloud of red and white mist, a mixture of pure white, viscous brain matter and hot, bright red blood, instantly burst forth!
The viscous brain matter and hot blood, still carrying the warmth of the body, sprayed violently outward, splattering the Type 92 heavy machine gun, which was still steaming, and the body of the assistant gunner beside it, which had also been riddled with bullets.
Takashi Takeuchi’s headless body, under the impact of the immense kinetic energy, lurched backward and then slumped limply, lifelessly, onto the machine gun, now smeared with his own brain matter and blood.
Everything returned to normal speed.
The gunfire continued, the explosions continued.
But Katsuhiko Nakata’s world had fallen completely silent. He lay there blankly, staring at the familiar figure that was no longer recognizable as human, his mind a complete void.
Senior Takeuchi… was dead.
The senior who had asked him to look after his fiancée, the senior who had placed his last hope in him, had turned into a pool of rotten flesh before his very eyes.
Katsuhiko Nakata lay blankly in the mud and water, his eyes vacant as he stared at the small dirt mound in the distance.
The image of Senior Takeuchi’s head being blown off was like a red-hot branding iron, searing itself into his blank mind again and again.
That cloud of red and white mist, that limp, collapsing body, constituted everything in his world at that moment.
The surrounding gunfire, explosions, the roars of his comrades… everything else became distant and blurred, as if through a thick curtain of water. His auditory system, out of instinctive self-preservation, automatically filtered out the noises that his brain deemed “meaningless.”
He couldn’t hear people shouting his name at the top of their lungs, nor could he feel the flying mud splattering on his face. He just watched, numbly watching.
Until a brutal force kicked him hard in the lower back.
“Thud!”
The intense pain and impact made him instantly lose his balance. He lunged forward, his face slamming heavily into the cold, sticky, foul-smelling mud.
Mud filled his mouth and nostrils. The sensation of suffocation and the biting cold felt like a drill, forcibly yanking his drifting soul back into this trembling shell.
“Cough… cough cough!” He suddenly raised his head, coughing violently, spitting out a mouthful of mud and water.
A pair of military officer’s boots, splattered with mud, appeared in his blurry vision. He looked up along the boots to see Captain Komada’s face, extremely contorted with rage.
“Bastard!” Komada’s roar sounded like thunder in his ears.
Before Katsuhiko Nakata could react, a rough hand grabbed his collar, yanking him up from the mud.
“Slap! Slap! Slap!”
Komada swung his other hand in a wide arc, giving him several resounding slaps without mercy.
The force of the blows made Katsuhiko Nakata see stars, his head buzzed, his cheeks burned, and his mouth immediately filled with a metallic taste of blood.
“You coward! You useless bum! Is this why the Empire feeds you, to stand here daydreaming and waiting to die!” Komada’s spit sprayed his face. “Your senior is fulfilling his duty to the Emperor! And you lie here like a dead dog! Pick up your weapon! Fight! Fight for the Empire!”
Komada pushed him back towards the parapet like trash, prodding his Type 38 rifle, which had fallen into the mud and water, with his officer’s sword.
After scolding him, Captain Komada seemed still not satisfied. He glared at him fiercely one last time before heading off down the narrow trench with his sword, still muttering curses.
Katsuhiko Nakata’s mind was still a muddle. He passively picked up his rifle, leaning against the parapet, the sound of Komada’s roar and the stinging pain on his cheeks still echoing in his ears.
Captain Komada had only walked about ten steps.
Just then, a small, gray-green, pineapple-shaped object, tracing an inconspicuous arc through the air, landed with a “plop” at his feet in the mud and water.
Time seemed to freeze.
Komada instinctively looked down and saw the iron lump emitting white smoke. On his contorted face, the expression of rage instantly turned into extreme fear, his pupils contracting to the size of pinpricks.
He opened his mouth, seemingly to let out a shrill scream or an order, but it was too late.
“Boom…”
A deafening explosion ripped through the narrow trench!
Fiery orange light and a violent shockwave instantly consumed Captain Komada’s figure. Katsuhiko Nakata felt an irresistible wave of air smash him against the mud wall behind him, shaking his internal organs out of place.
He watched with his own eyes as Captain Komada’s robust body, like a ragged doll, was hurled high into the air by the blast wave. In mid-air, his body twisted at a grotesque angle, then slammed back into the trench with a heavy “thump,” like a sack filled with water, splashing large amounts of blood and mud.
As the smoke and dust cleared slightly, a sickening sight appeared.
Captain Komada was alive.
But his thick right leg had completely disappeared from the thigh down.
In its place was a bloody, ragged, gaping wound, exposing stark white bone fragments and torn muscle fibers to the air. Blood, like a fire hydrant with its valve opened, gushed out from the horrific wound with a “splish, splosh” sound, forming a shocking fountain of blood that instantly dyed the muddy ground beneath him into a viscous, crimson swamp.
“Ahhhhhhhh…”
In the next second, a scream, not humanly possible, so heart-wrenching and piercing, erupted from Komada’s throat, echoing wildly in the narrow trench, drowning out all gunfire and explosions.
