War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1919 Having a Brain

On the banks of the Unak River, the tug-of-war between Wei Ran and others and the German paratroopers did not end with the paratroopers and gliders falling from the sky; on the contrary, it intensified and seemed to be a fight to the death.

Amidst the sounds of gunfire, especially the roar of machine guns, the partisans stationed here risked heavy casualties to drive back the German paratroopers attempting to cross the river time and time again.

Ultimately, as the resistance dwindled, more and more German soldiers crossed the Unak River and launched an assault on their position.

Fortunately, at that moment, another wave of guerrillas arrived behind Wei Ran and his men, and promptly threw a string of grenades, driving the paratroopers back to the riverbank.

"Has the instructor left?"

In the trench, a guerrilla fighter in his thirties asked the reinforcements who had arrived.

"We'll be notified after he leaves, but we need to buy some more time for now!"

Among the arriving reinforcements, a uniformed soldier hadn't even finished speaking before he started firing a submachine gun.

With the addition of these fresh troops, the precarious front line was stabilized once again. Wei Ran no longer competed with Milos in speed, but instead slightly raised his gun barrel, searching for targets of higher value on the other side of the river.

"You're the one."

Wei Ran quickly spotted an enemy holding a telescope.

The German paratroopers were on the north bank of the river, while Wei Ran and his group were on the south bank.

This small advantage is a huge benefit for a sniper – he can clearly aim by looking at the reflection from the enemy's binoculars.

"Dragan, Milos."

As Wei Ran adjusted the scope, he reminded her, "The telescope is reflecting light on the other side of the river."

There are four people.

After Dragan moved the telescope's focus point over, he said, "Less than 500 meters, 450 meters."

“Let’s play together,” Wei Ran said. “I’ll play the one on the far right.”

“Leave the reflective ones to me,” Milos said.

"The one in the middle is mine."

As Dragan spoke, he had already replaced his binoculars with a semi-automatic sniper rifle that he had recently stolen.

"3, 2, 1, fire!"

At Dragan's command, Wei Ran and Milos pulled their triggers simultaneously, and half a second later, Dragan also pulled his trigger.

"Bang! Bang!"

After the crisp gunshot, the flash from the binoculars in the distance disappeared, and two other people next to him were shot in the chest.

"boom!"

Milos fired a second before Wei Ran could react. The only person left on the opposite bank, who appeared to be standing with the commander, hadn't even had time to fully retreat into cover before his paratrooper helmet was struck by a bullet.

Before the men they killed could cause any chaos on the other side, the three men turned their guns on the machine guns on the opposite bank that were providing suppression.

However, whether it was the recent reinforcements or the sniping of the enemy's frontline commander, their situation became difficult again as more and more paratroopers launched attacks on their positions.

"Does anyone have any spare bullets?"

Just then, a young soldier in the trench asked, "I only have five bullets left!"

"How many of you two have left?" Dragan asked.

"Two magazines," Wei Ran, who had been keeping an eye on the remaining ammunition, immediately replied, "One of them is on the gun."

“A magazine is already loaded into the gun,” Milos replied.

I have three magazines left.

As Dragan spoke, he took out two of the magazines and handed them to Milos, who did not refuse and let him put the two magazines into his shirt pocket.

"Conserve ammunition and focus on the machine gunners and mortars," Dragan cautioned.

"boom!"

Wei Ran and Milos responded with gunfire.

As each of their guns ejected a spent cartridge, the machine gun opposite them fell silent.

After the guerrillas in the trenches began to conserve ammunition, the paratroopers on the other side were able to rush up more easily and get closer to their positions.

"Grenade!"

Following the command from afar, Wei Ran and the other two put down their rifles and picked up the various grenades placed beside them.

These grenades included those from Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, and even Britain.

What Wei Ran picked up at that moment was a difficult-to-use RGD33 hand grenade.

The grenade's fragmentation sheath and the "cigarette fuse" are still intact, which is perhaps the only good news.

Wei Ran peeked out and glanced at the approaching enemies. After roughly estimating the distance between them, he and the others threw the grenades with explosive force.

"Boom boom boom——!"

Amidst the continuous explosions, the paratroopers who had rushed up the slope were killed or wounded even though they managed to lie down in time. The second round of grenades thrown afterward successfully drove them back.

Just then, a guerrilla fighter ran along the trench and found the person in charge of the position.

"Machine gunners provide cover, the rest of you retreat!"

The commander of this position issued the order, and the guerrillas in the trenches immediately began to retreat, carrying the wounded.

Once the guerrillas, including Wei Ran and his two companions, had retreated to a more distant position, the machine gunners in the trenches also began to retreat under everyone's cover.

Correspondingly, the German paratroopers who had just been driven back also noticed something amiss and quickly began to cross the river again.

Using this time difference to create distance, the guerrillas, led by their commander, began to retreat while covering each other.

"Are we just going to hand over the position to them?" a guerrilla fighter asked.

"Let's go to the more concealed trenches up in the mountains."

The frontline commander explained loudly, "This way, at least we can avoid the German fighters and avoid losing many of our men!"

As he explained, the group dispersed, hiding in caves or behind rocks on either side of the ravine.

This time, at Dragan's suggestion, Wei Ran and he deliberately avoided standing with Milos.

Wei Ran could naturally see that Dragan had started letting Milos fly solo; he was helping Milos grow a hunter's mind.

"Aren't you afraid something might happen to him?" Wei Ran asked Dragan, who was squatting beside him.

"Even fledglings must eventually leave the nest."

Dragan said confidently, "Miloš is a smart lad; he definitely knows what to do."

"boom!"

As they spoke, the two fired simultaneously. One shot and killed the enemy carrying a machine gun, while the other shot and killed an enemy carrying a radio.

This place is indeed more defensible than the previous bank, but it is also an undeniable fact that more and more Germans have successfully crossed the Unak River.

As the two sides engaged in a protracted battle, it gradually came to noon, and a second batch of German transport planes suddenly appeared in the distance.

This time, however, before the gliders and paratroopers could even deploy their parachutes, they were visibly subjected to heavy fire from anti-aircraft machine guns and artillery.

At this moment, their unit received another order to retreat, and they completed their withdrawal from the mountaintop while fighting their way out. But the battle was not over. Although their unit had suffered heavy losses, after a quick replenishment of ammunition, they immediately maneuvered back to the outskirts of the town and began a counter-encirclement of the German paratroopers.

From this point on, Dragan seemed to be intentionally letting Milos fight alone, instead choosing to continue partnering with Wei Ran.

In this battle, which was primarily about stalling for time, the paratroopers who descended from the sky began to show signs of fatigue after their initial fierce assault, as their ammunition was depleted, and they became increasingly unable to sustain their attacks.

As the fighter jets began to return to base, the surviving paratroopers were driven to a cemetery on the edge of town to hold out for reinforcements. Wei Ran and Dragan also reunited with Milos, who had been fighting alone.

"The three of us survived by hiding near the cemetery."

In a dilapidated house less than 400 meters from the cemetery, Milos said, “In Kozala.”

"yes"

Dragan glanced instinctively at his mutilated right hand. "Back then, we owed it all to you guys and to that German doctor. Wei, what was that gentleman's name again?"

“Gerhard, Gerhard Schäfer,” Wei Ran answered almost subconsciously.

I thank that gentleman.

As Dragan removed the wooden board that served as a finger from his right hand, he said, “But we haven’t invaded anyone’s land, so we won’t let anyone hiding in the cemetery get away with it.”

"boom!"

After saying that, Dragan raised his gun to his left shoulder and fired a shot toward the cemetery, hitting a paratrooper squarely in the face.

"I'm relieved that you think that way."

As Milos spoke, he also raised his gun to the corner of the wall and pulled the trigger—he also hit a paratrooper in the face, instinctively.

This time, Wei Ran did not rush to fire. Instead, he took out the Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera from his metal notebook and took several photos of Dragan and Milos respectively. He also risked taking a few photos of the distant cemetery and the surrounding guerrillas.

Unperturbed, Wei Ran hid in the rubble of the bombed building and retrieved a wooden box containing sesame cakes. He took out a sesame cake filled with sausage and immediately put it away.

With a sesame seed cake in his mouth, he used an entrenching tool to chisel a firing hole in the wall, then spread his Soviet cloak on the ground and lay down before raising his gun to aim at the paratroopers in the cemetery while still eating.

"boom!"

With a crisp gunshot, Wei Ran also hit a paratrooper in the head, and then pulled the trigger a second time, planting a small seed in the brain of a second paratrooper.

In this roll call game where lives were at stake, as time passed and darkness fell, Wei Ran and his two companions had to stop their game due to decreasing visibility.

When he emerged from the building where he was hiding, Dragan and Milos had already disappeared.

Seeing this, Wei Ran didn't bother looking for it and simply crawled back into the half-collapsed house.

Finding a dark corner, he took out a long bag of horsehair from his metal notebook, lit an alcohol lamp and brewed a pot of coffee. Then he took out a box containing sesame flatbreads and took out two more flatbreads with fillings for dinner.

Almost as the brewed coffee dripped into the kettle through the drain tube, Dragan's voice called out to him from outside.

Wei Ran quickly stuffed the coffee maker into his bag and took out a few extra sesame seed cakes with fillings before responding to the other person's call.

Before long, Dragan and Milos came in from outside, each carrying a lunchbox and a water bottle.

"I was terrified. I thought you had been shot and died."

As Dragan spoke, he plopped down next to Wei Ran, then placed a candle lamp with a glass shade on a chair with a broken back, and lit it with a match.

As the faint firelight illuminated the small space, Milos handed Wei Ran a slightly hot German mess kit.

"It's a dinner similar to a shepherd's stew."

Dragan leaned against the wall and opened his lunchbox, explaining, "At noon, German fighter planes strafed Alexander's sheepfold. All his goats died, and he died too."

"His wife, Mrs. Nada, took out all the sheep that had been killed and cooked them for dinner."

Milos added, "I heard she's from Croatia."

She is also a member of the Communist Party.

Dragan said, "It doesn't matter where she comes from, it doesn't matter even if she comes from Germany."

“Like that doctor?” Milos asked.

“I don’t know,” Dragan replied after a moment of silence.

"What if I meet that doctor?"

Before Milos could finish speaking, the candle lamp, whose glass cover hadn't been closed properly, was blown out by the evening breeze, plunging the dilapidated house back into darkness.

“What if I encounter that doctor through my scope?” Milos asked again.

"I do not know"

Dragan answered again, pulling Wei Ran along, "Wei, do you have an answer?"

"It depends on where you are, how many times you've run into him, and what he's doing."

Wei Ran replied sullenly, "Killing a person is easy, especially for those of us who are pretty good with a gun."

But it's difficult to let a truly innocent person go, especially for those of us with decent marksmanship.

“I’m a little confused,” Milos said blankly.

"You'll have your answer when he appears in your scope," Wei Ran sighed.

Have you ever encountered such a situation?

The question was asked by Dragan, who came from Romania—at that time, Romania was still a friend of the Germans.

"What are you worried about?" Wei Ran asked bluntly.

"It's nothing," Dragan said, his voice betraying a barely concealed panic.

"Are the suitcases from the basement of that abandoned church still there?" Wei Ran changed the subject.

“If it hadn’t been discovered, it would still be there,” Dragan sighed. “I promised to take them home.”

"I hope it's still there."

As Wei Ran spoke, he took two sesame seed cakes from his nest of cups and handed them to Dragan and Milos. “Try these. A guerrilla fighter I don’t know brought them to you before you came back.”

"What is this?" Milos asked curiously as he took a flatbread filled with pickled vegetables.

"I don't know either," Wei Ran replied haphazardly, "but it tastes pretty good."

Using food as a pretext to change the subject, the three of them tacitly avoided mentioning the people who might appear in the scope.

But both Wei Ran and Dragan knew perfectly well that when Milos began to think about who might appear in the scope and whether or not to shoot him, he had already started to develop a brain—a hunter's brain.

After filling their stomachs with what was already a rather lavish dinner, Wei Ran generously shared some espresso mixed with water from the kettle with the two of them. Then the three of them raised their guns again and aimed at the cemetery a few hundred meters away.

If he had to express his gratitude at this moment, and if Wei Ran had to choose, he would definitely choose the FG42 Paratrooper Cripple Gun used by the other side.

The massive muzzle flashes from those broken guns were like an auto-aiming cheat, drawing their gun barrels toward them and causing them to pull the trigger.

Similarly, following Wei Ran's reminder, Milos and Dragan also followed the rule of turning over immediately after firing a shot to avoid any potential enemy snipers.

That night, Wei Ran neither knew nor counted how many enemies he had killed, but the battle continued until the early hours of the next day before they received the order to relocate.

At the same time as receiving the order, everything in front of Wei Ran was completely enveloped in white light.

has it ended?

It's probably not over yet.
Wei Ran sighed inwardly; a bad premonition was beginning to creep into his heart.