War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1757 Going to Death

In the battlefield shrouded by the last ray of sunset, Wei Ran carried Rios to a bed and laid him down, carefully helping him tidy up his clothes.

Pulling a blanket over and shaking it, Wei Ran looked at the other rag doll on his waist before covering the corpse.

After a moment's hesitation, he reached out and carefully pulled out the blood-stained doll and pinned it on his belt.

Wei Ran picked up the blanket again to cover Rios' head, patted his shoulder gently through the blanket, turned around and walked out of the room.

After he carefully removed the grenade that was pressed by the corpse on the stairs and re-secured the pressure plate with the safety pin, he climbed up to the third floor.

At this time, Aaron was already sitting in the corner, with the backpack containing the baby on his legs, feeding the little one with a bottle.

"Where did the bottle come from?" Wei Ran also sat down against the wall and asked curiously in a low voice.

"The young man I'm carrying just escaped," Yu Yanlin explained.

"What's your name?"

Wei Ran switched to Spanish and asked the young man.

The little guy "Manu Banderas" introduced himself weakly, "I am 7 years old."

"What is your relationship with her?" Wei Ran pointed at the baby who was still breastfeeding.

“I don’t know her”

Manu pointed to the room with the ceiling blown off with his uninjured arm and said in a baby voice, "My house was also bombed, just like this room. My parents were killed in the bombing. I saw her when I ran downstairs."

After catching his breath a little, Manu continued, "Her mother held her in her arms, but the lady was crushed under the collapsed wall."

"So you took her away?" Wei Ran asked in a low voice.

"sorry"

Manu wiped away tears and said, "I could only hold her and her bottle. I tried, but I couldn't pull her mother out."

"It's not your fault. It's not your fault." Wei Ran helped the other person wipe away her tears. "Do you know her name?"

"Paz"

Manu wiped away tears with his uninjured hand and said weakly, "Her name is Paz. Her mother told me, but I don't know her last name."

"Rios," Wei Ran said, "Call her Paz Rios."

"Is that the grandfather's surname?" Manu asked, "He also..."

“He delivered the milk and left.”

Wei Ran spoke, took out the bloodstained rag doll from his waist and handed it to the other party, "This is a gift from him to you. He hopes that you can grow up in a strong and prosperous Spain."

"Thank you"

Manu took the dirty rag doll in a daze. He was only six or seven years old and could not understand what kind of expectations were hidden in this blood-stained rag doll.

"How do we go next?" Wei Ran asked Yu Yanlin in French, "How far are we from there?"

"Very far away" Yu Yanlin gave a vague and desperate answer.

"Let's wait until she has eaten her fill," Aaron said, "and then we'll set off after dark."

“We can’t delay too long”

Wei Ran pointed at the little boy Manu and said, "His condition is not too good. By the way, does anyone know where the doctor Joseph from the Soviet Union is?"

Hearing this, Yu Yanlin and Aaron looked at each other and shook their heads together.

"I haven't seen him for a while," said Yu Yanlin.

“I haven’t seen him either.”

Aaron, who was still breastfeeding baby Paz, followed up, "I hope he's still alive."

When the topic reached this point, the sound of gunfire was heard on the street downstairs, and the three of them immediately shut up.

Wei Ran stood up and approached the broken wall. Before he could even look outside, he heard dense gunfire in the distance, followed by a few screams and sporadic counterattacks from downstairs.

Wei Ran reacted quickly and hid behind the wall, then crouched down and left the room. A moment later, he heard screams and messy footsteps coming from downstairs.

After waiting a few more moments, he clearly heard a conversation in Spanish downstairs, as well as the sound of returning fire that seemed to come from Rios' "bedroom".

You guys really know how to choose a place.

Wei Ran muttered helplessly. There were only a few ruins left on the third floor. If they wanted to leave, they had to go downstairs, which would inevitably attract the attention of those downstairs.

In other words, if they want to leave, they must get rid of the people below.

Fortunately, maybe the baby had adapted to such a war-torn environment, but as long as she had milk to drink, she didn’t seem to be frightened by the sound of gunfire.

Are her ears also...

Wei Ran's heart trembled for no reason. He quietly approached the little girl, carefully lifted the helmet that was too big for her, and looked at her ears.

It was not until this time that he noticed that the little girl's ears seemed to be stuffed with cotton wool and medical tape was used to stick them to her tender skin.

But even so, he found that the cotton wool in one of the little guy's ears had been stained red with blood.

Thinking that it was just as he expected, Wei Ran looked around and gestured to hand the little guy over to Yu Yanlin, then pointed at Aaron's submachine gun.

The latter nodded, crouched down, handed the baby Paz, the bottle and the kettle of milk to Yu Yanlin, then picked up the submachine gun and followed Wei Ran out of the dilapidated room with wind blowing in from all sides quietly.

"Fire when the other party shoots," Wei Ran whispered in Aaron's ear, "Try to finish it with a single shot. I'll shoot first."

"Okay," Aaron nodded and mouthed silently.

"It's getting dark, watch your step."

Wei Ran whispered in the other's ear again to remind him, then switched the box gun in his left hand to single-shot mode and pulled out the bayonet from his waist.

The two men went downstairs one after the other, and the gunshots from the room where Rios was buried became clearer.

He leaned over the wall and took a look. As far as he could see, he could only see two people hiding behind the window, who were now firing back at the building across the street outside the window.

In addition, inside the door, there was a wounded person lying who seemed to have just been pulled up from downstairs.

The wounded man was leaning against the bed where Rios was lying. He had been shot in the leg and had been tied up with the butt of a gun to stop the bleeding.

There was a rifle leaning against his side, and the wounded man was trying to tear open a first aid kit.

As luck would have it, when he looked up inadvertently, he saw Wei Ran peeking inside.

"puff!"

Before he could grab the gun or shout, Wei Ran had already swung out the bayonet and accurately stabbed him in the throat.

At the same time, Wei Ran also rushed out, grabbed the handle of the bayonet that the other party subconsciously held, stabbed it forward with force and turned it at the same time.

After dealing with the wounded man, Wei Ran could already see from this angle the third enemy in the inner room who was fighting back.

Without any pause, he raised his box gun and aimed at the enemy in the innermost room.

At the same time, Aaron ran in with his 1911 pistol.

"boom!"

After the two gunshots that almost completely overlapped and were almost perfectly covered by the sound of the submachine gun firing, the only enemy left in the room was the one closest to Wei Ran who was still holding a submachine gun.

"boom!"

Wei Ran and Aaron pulled the trigger at the same time again, and the two bullets hit the back of the enemy's head and heart respectively.

"That little guy's ears must have been deafened"

Wei Ran held up his gun and searched for possible missed enemies in the room while saying, "So the sound of the gunfight probably won't scare her. Go up now and bring them down with Louis. We need to move to another place immediately."

"I'll go right away"

Aaron said, turned around and left the room and ran to the third floor, while Wei Ran walked to the window and risked waving to the other side of the road. Not long after, someone on the other side also waved the red scarf in his hand at him.

After greeting each other, Wei Ran immediately left the dangerous window. When he arrived at the door, Yu Yanlin and Aaron had already come down with the children.

Looking at the baby hanging on Aaron's chest, still sucking on the bottle, Wei Ran made a gesture, and silently led them to the first floor, walking along the dim corridor towards the end.

The sun had already set completely at this time, and the visibility inside was not very high. Even because the sound of gunfire had stopped, the sound of baby Paz sucking milk became particularly clear.

But these slight noises also made the corpses everywhere in the corridors and rooms exude a strange and terrifying feeling.

They arrived at the end of the corridor safely. There were no windows in the corridor of this building, so Wei Ran simply pushed open the door of a room and took the two of them in.

This room facing the street was also a shop, and a barricade was also built facing the street.

This place had also been fought over repeatedly, so that in addition to overturned shelves and scattered debris, there were also many bullet shells and bodies of soldiers from the Republican Army, the National Army and the International Brigade.

"Wait for me here"

As Wei Ran spoke, he had already propped up the door handle with a high-back chair. Then he crouched down and touched the barricade made of sandbags to observe outside.

The street was not much better than the room, with corpses, wounded people, bomb craters, and burned cars and telephone poles everywhere.

But compared to these, what is even more terrible is that the buildings they are heading towards next are no longer apartments with long corridors, but instead single-family houses.

Looking up at the sky, Wei Ran quietly retreated into the shop on the street. It was still too bright, so they had to wait a little longer.

"hide"

After Wei Ran returned to Yu Yanlin and the others, he whispered, "We will continue moving forward after dark."

"it is good"

Yu Yanlin and Aaron nodded, and took the two children into a small room that looked like a bedroom. The only window in the room was two meters above the ground. In addition to a bed, there were two bodies in a wrestling position.

After putting the two children on the bed, Yu Yanlin and Aaron moved the old corpse with the red scarf and the young corpse of the National Army soldier out to use as barriers to the door.

While they were busy, Wei Ran also found some grenades and pistol bullets from the bodies in the shops on the street and brought them back to the small room.

The three men silently loaded the spare magazines of their weapons with the appropriate bullets. Aaron picked up the sleeping baby again and asked, "How far are we from there?"

"It's several blocks away," Yu Yanlin replied in a low voice, "even if you ride a bike, it will take a quarter of an hour."

“We have one night.”

Wei Ran searched the room for a while, but finally found only a can of coffee beans, which was barely edible.

"Are you hungry?" Wei Ran asked the little boy named Manu.

Then, at this time, the little guy seemed to be in a daze and did not answer Wei Ran's question at all.

"We have to hurry," Yu Yanlin said worriedly.

"It's not too late, it's not too late." Wei Ran whispered, "They won't die."

“I have some food here.”

Aaron said, rummaging around in his clothes and finding two chocolates that had been crushed and deformed, "We still have a jug of milk."

"Leave it for them to eat," Wei Ran pointed at Manu.

Aaron nodded, tore open a piece of chocolate and tried to put it to Manu's mouth, then shook his head and gave up.

The three of them looked at each other and were about to say something when they heard faint footsteps outside the door, which made them subconsciously pick up their weapons.

"crunch"

Almost at the moment when Wei Ran opened the half-closed door a crack, the door blocked by corpses and debris was also pushed open a crack with difficulty by the people in the corridor.

"Da da da!"

The man outside the door thrust the muzzle of his submachine gun in and fired a series of shots. Wei Ran and the other two immediately fell to the ground.

"Clang!"

The can of coffee beans that Wei Ran had just turned out was hit by the stray bullet that bounced off the wall and fell to the floor. The coffee beans, which were not very full, were also scattered all over the floor.

"Da da da!"

The person outside the door once again fired a series of aimless bursts of shots through the crack in the door.

Raising his hand to hold down the pistol that Aaron was about to raise, Wei Ran shook his head slightly.

A moment later, the door was pushed open completely from the outside, and a National Army soldier holding a submachine gun came in cautiously, pointing the gun at the lounge where Wei Ran and others were hiding.

"boom!"

Just at this moment, a crisp gunshot was heard from across the street. The enemy who was about to pull the trigger at the door of the lounge suddenly felt his knees go weak, and he fell on his back and began to twitch unconsciously.

Glancing through the crack in the door at the corpse's bleeding nose and the bullet-ripped skull, Wei Ran resisted the urge to seize the opportunity and open fire.

It doesn’t matter who is helping them now. What matters is to avoid firefights as much as possible and try not to attract the enemy’s attention.

"boom!"

Just at this moment, another gunshot was heard across the street, and a muffled groan and a "thump" were heard outside the corridor at the door.

"Tu tu tu tu tu—"

From the nearby corridor came the roar of the Lewis machine gun firing and the crisp sound of bullets hitting the floor.

After exchanging a glance with Yu Yanlin and Aaron in the room, Wei Ran resisted the urge to throw a grenade. He couldn't take the gamble now.

After a moment, Lewis's machine gun stopped firing, and Wei Ran, who was only separated by a door, clearly heard someone shout in Spanish, "Let's go upstairs, there is no height advantage here."

After he finished saying this, the sound of footsteps gradually receding outside the door was heard.

However, at this moment, Wei Ran and the other two climbed up one after another, cooperated with each other tacitly, opened the door and rushed out one after another.

“Da da da da da—!”

Yu Yanlin and Aaron, one standing and the other half squatting, stretched the muzzle of the submachine gun out and pulled the trigger.

At the same time, Wei Ran pulled out the rings of two grenades and threw them out one by one.

"Boom! Boom!"

After two explosions, only a few wailings were heard outside the corridor. At the same time, two figures with guns ran over from the other side of the street.

"Come here! This is not our territory1"

One of them urged loudly in Spanish. It turned out to be a woman, and her voice sounded very young.

"Go and pick up the child!" Wei Ran immediately said in French.

Without delay, Yu Yanlin and Aaron immediately returned to the small compartment, each picked up a child, and left Wei Ran to cover their retreat. Under the leadership of the woman and another soldier, they crossed the street as quickly as possible and arrived at the building opposite.

"How do you bring your children?"

The woman asked accusingly almost as they ran across the street into the barricaded shops, already reaching out to take the baby Paz from Aaron's arms.

"We are war postmen"

Wei Ran explained in Spanish, "These two little guys are injured. We need to take them away from here."

'This is too dangerous'

Another person who had just picked them up said, this old guy who looked to be almost 60 years old, as he walked over, "Come to the corridor, it's safer here."

“Both of them were injured.”

Wei Ran, who was walking behind, explained, "Especially the little boy, his consciousness is blurred. We need to send them away as soon as possible."

Having said that, they all passed through a wet quilt curtain.

Compared to the dimness in the barricade, there were many oil lamps hanging in this corridor. It was also through these oil lamps that they saw many soldiers and wounded among them.

Among these people there were Republican Army soldiers and International Brigade soldiers, but more of them looked more like young students.

“We are all students at the Madrid School of Philosophy”

The young woman who brought them said, "I'm Maria, and this is Mr. Francesco, our philosophy teacher."

"I'm."

“Now is not the time to waste time introducing yourself.”

Francisco, holding a submachine gun in his hand, said, "You are lucky. We have some seriously injured soldiers to be sent out. You can take the children and leave with the seriously injured."

At this point, Francisco turned around and said, "Maria, take them to see our doctor and let him check on the two little guys."

"Come with me"

Maria, who was holding Paz in her arms, called out, and led Wei Ran and the other two, as well as Manu who was carried by Yu Yanlin, through the crowded corridor and into a room with kerosene lamps.

"Joseph?"

Without even stopping, Wei Ran and the other two recognized at a glance the doctor who was bandaging the wound of a wounded man!

"Hey! Lenin bless you! Why are you here?!" Joseph asked in surprise.

"Do you know each other?" Maria, holding the baby in her arms, asked in Russian.

"Yes, we are friends."

Joseph walked over as he spoke, and then he noticed the little boy Manu carried on Yu Yanlin's back.

"He lost too much blood. Do you know his blood type?" Joseph asked seriously.

“I don’t know,” Wei Ran responded in Russian.

“This child needs to be sent away immediately”

Joseph also didn't bother to reminisce about the past. He said to Maria in a serious tone, "His life may be in danger at any time."

“That’s why I brought them to you.”

Maria said, "Do we still have room?"

"There's room for them," said Joseph.

“I plan to stay”

But after listening to Wei Ran's translation, Aaron said in French, "I want to stay and fight."

"I also."

“We will be back”

Joseph said simply, "Let's go together. I just need a driver who may be killed at any time."

"I'll go with you." Aaron immediately changed his mind - as if he was volunteering to die.