War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1985 That's enough!
In the student corps' camp shrouded in night, scattered piles of scarlet embers burned a hundred meters away from the trench line.

These charcoal fires served as targets for the student soldiers hiding in the trenches a hundred meters away to practice their rifles.

With the sound of the bolt being pulled back, the student soldiers who had learned the "100-meter shooting method" quickly spread the shooting skills they had learned in pairs.

The embers burning more closely, about thirty meters away, were the targets the student soldiers used to practice throwing clods of dirt instead of hand grenades.

Whenever someone throws a clod of dirt at the ashes, it's like a cluster of fireflies being startled in the darkness, drawing gasps and cheers from the surrounding student soldiers.

This is what makes student soldiers so valuable: they possess knowledge, even if that knowledge is mostly literary, it is enough for their brains to understand what "three points in a line" means and how to coordinate with each other faster than those of illiterate people.

The shortage of ammunition meant that although these student soldiers received guns, they only had two 10-round magazines of bullets, and not all of their guns were equipped with bayonets.

That's why, even when they were practicing shooting, the guns weren't loaded with bullets. So it was more like they were practicing bolt action and aiming than actually practicing shooting.

Also due to the shortage of bayonets, after Wei Ran, Guo Guanggun'er, and Dong Weixin discussed it, a new order was issued: each bayonet fighting team should have two bayonet soldiers, and they should be ready to pick up Japanese Type 38 rifles with bayonets at any time.

"Is this okay?"

In the front-line trenches, Dong Weixin asked with a worried expression.

At this moment, behind each of the three of them was a student soldier, whom they had selected to be able to use a Mauser pistol.

These three were responsible for both loading bullets onto the Mauser pistols and, when necessary, firing together to increase the firepower density.

"Whether it works or not, the Japanese will attack from here."

Guo Guanggun responded without looking up, saying that he was practicing with his eyes closed the techniques he had learned from Dong Weixin for "extending the life" of the Mauser pistol and increasing its firepower sustainability.

According to Dong Weixin's explanation, this method was popular in his father's bandit stronghold more than ten years ago.

The reason is simple: the bandits in their stronghold mostly use three-round fixed-magazine pistols. If they want to avoid being at a disadvantage in a firefight, this method of prolonging their lives is the only option, and also the best choice for ambushing others.

Let them practice.

Wei Ran, who was also practicing quickly loading the Mauser pistol, said, "Giving them something to do will at least put their minds at ease, even if it's just to boost their confidence."

"If you ask me, they should go back earlier," Guo Guanggun muttered.

"We won't go back."

The young man following behind Guo Guanggun said, "You were probably nowhere to be found when we were setting up our guns to surround the rabbit."

"You little bunny!"

"Alright, alright," Wei Ran waved his hand.

The three brothers who were with them were only sixteen years old at the time, but they all knew how to use guns. According to them, these three were not only neighbors in the same alley, but their fathers also seemed to work in the police station and were all minor officials.

"You three, shut your mouths from now on."

Wei Ran warned the three assistants they had chosen in advance, "When the fighting starts, you just need to load bullets quickly. Anyone who runs far away and can't keep up with us will be treated as a deserter."

"We're not running away!"

"Whoever runs away is a son of a bitch!"

“Mm”

"Shut up!"

With his head starting to ache, Wei Ran stopped the three chatterboxes, "You three are not allowed to fire without permission. You can only fire when I tell you to, and you can only fire where I tell you to fire."

"No rapid-fire allowed," Dong Weixin reminded him.

"Mmmmmmm!"

Although the three brothers nodded repeatedly, their restless hearts were betrayed by the darting and darting eyes in the darkness.

Unfortunately, the night was too dark, and the three brothers seemed to be used to lying, so even Wei Ran, who was distracted and thinking about how to take more photos after dawn, did not notice this small detail.

That night, the sound of repeatedly pulling the bolt seemed to never stop, and the student soldiers who had formed combat groups in advance were whispering and discussing various possibilities and countermeasures for engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the Japanese.

Compared to the excitement and trepidation, the student soldiers and rookie soldiers were filled with a mixture of fear and anticipation.

Wei Ran, Guo Guanggun, and even Dong Weixin, who were mixed in with the others, had already hidden in the corner of the trench, leaning against the wall, wrapped their clothes tightly, closed their eyes, and seized every opportunity to doze off to replenish their strength and energy.

"boom!"

After an unknown amount of time, the sudden sound of artillery fire woke Wei Ran from his dream and instantly put the student soldiers, who were finally starting to doze off, on high alert.

"Watch out for artillery fire! Watch out for artillery fire!"

Wei Ran, Guo Guanggun, and even Dong Weixin, who reacted a little later, began running and shouting in the trenches, "Load your rifles! Muzzle up! Load your rifles! Muzzle up!"

Amidst the growing shouts, the Japanese artillery fire became increasingly intense. The trench line, struck by shells, began to suffer unavoidable casualties, causing Wei Ran and his men excruciating pain that nearly broke their teeth.

"Squat down! Everyone squat down!"

Wei Ran tried desperately to stop the student soldiers who were going to rescue their comrades, but the students seemed to have been deafened by the sound of the artillery fire and forgot their fear of the shelling as they ran towards their comrades who had been hit by the shells.

"boom!"

Just then, another shell landed nearby, and more than half of the overly impulsive student soldiers fell.

"Damn it!" Wei Ran cursed fiercely, but it was of no use at all.

In the end, he could only desperately crouch and run over, kicking the remaining few terrified student soldiers to the ground.

"Save the officer! Save them! Please think of a way to save them!" one of the student soldiers pleaded, weeping bitterly.

"Snapped!"

Wei Ran's response to him was a resounding slap in the face. He couldn't save the student who had already been killed by the shell, but he had to calm the student in front of him down.

"Crouch down! Don't stick your head out again!"

Wei Ran roughly shoved the student soldier's head against the trench wall, pressed his ear close to the soldier's, and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Kill a few more Japanese devils to avenge them!"

After saying that, he pressed the other two surviving student soldiers against the wall, shouting to warn the surrounding student soldiers while risking his life to continue moving through the trenches, preventing these purest-hearted rookies from making those fatal mistakes—at the cost of their own heart-wrenching pain.

Finally, the Japanese shelling stopped for a moment, and Wei Ran stopped as well. He mustered his strength and shouted, "Raise your guns! Raise your guns! Aim at the figures! Shoot when you see them!"

"boom!"

The student soldier closest to Wei Ran was the first to pull the trigger, followed by a joyful shout, "I hit him! I hit the Japanese soldier! I hit the Japanese soldier! Damn it, he's rolling around in pain!"

"Load! Reload immediately after firing! Keep firing once loaded! Don't stop!"

Wei Ran shouted and continued to remind them, "Fire a few more shots for those around who didn't survive!" As he ran and shouted repeatedly, these student soldiers, who had only received their guns a few hours earlier, silently recited the three-point alignment technique that Wei Ran and the others had taught them, while suppressing their panic and tension, all in order to fire a few more bullets.

Almost as soon as these student soldiers fired their second bullets, the Japanese machine guns and grenade launchers began to fire.

Fortunately, after a brief period of casualties, these suppressive fire units were subsequently eliminated by the veterans of the officer training regiment and special operations brigade who remained there.

"beep--!"

Almost at the same time, almost the instant the Japanese entered the 30-meter range, Guo Guanggun blew his whistle in the distance, and Wei Ran immediately put his dirty fingers into his mouth and blew a hooligan whistle.

At the sound of the whistle, the student soldiers put down their rifles, which had just fired their third shot and were only loading their fourth, and instead picked up hand grenades and pulled the pins.
"Grenade! Pull the pin! Throw!"

Accompanied by slightly more detailed commands, grenades were thrown forcefully by these young bodies thirty meters away, like clods of dirt picked up during practice.

"Boom! Boom boom boom!"

Amidst the chaotic explosions, the screams of the Japanese soldiers were already clearly audible, but the student soldiers had already thrown their second grenades in response to the whistle.

"Prepare bayonets!"

Wei Ran gave the order first, "Load the gun! Fire when you're three meters away! No need to aim carefully! Just keep your gun straight! Follow me and charge!"

Before he finished speaking, he was the first to jump out of the trench, followed closely by the middle school student who had been following behind him to load bullets for him.

"Da da da!"

As Wei Ran fired his gun, the "loading guy" beside him also started firing from a Mauser pistol with a wooden gun case.

Seeing that the young man's aim was pretty good, and that even if he didn't kill him with one shot, he would definitely wound him, Wei Ran didn't say anything. He wished someone would help him fire the shot.

A little later, the student soldiers also rushed out of the trenches with their guns.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The distinctive gunshots of the Type 38 rifle rang out frequently in the night. Those Japanese soldiers who were about to stab the student soldiers either had their bellies pierced by bullets or their thighs broken by bullets. Some were even more fortunate and were simply blown up by a single shot.

"kill!"

"kill!"

Before they could even counteract the recoil of their rifles, the student soldiers instinctively roared along with Wei Ran. At the same time, they instinctively thrust their bayonets forward with all their might, or slashed at their unbayonet-less rifles, forcefully smashing away the bayonets thrust at them from the opposite side.

This was a rare opportunity for classmates, companions, and comrades wielding broadswords to rush forward and, with a brutal, almost head-on approach, kill the invaders and seize their weapons.

Amidst shouts of battle, Wei Ran and the young man beside him worked together, using their guns to take down the Japanese soldiers around them, creating opportunities for the student soldiers who were still holding broadswords or rifles without bayonets to pick up the Japanese weapons.

"careful!"

Wei Ran, who was loading bullets into the Mauser pistol, exclaimed in surprise, quickly pulled out the magazine clips, and pulled the trigger at a Japanese soldier.

"boom!"

The moment the gunshot rang out, a Japanese soldier who was right next to Wei Ran was shot in the forehead and fell to the ground, but the Type 38 rifle in his hand also pierced the young man next to Wei Ran who was helping him load bullets into his gun—his Mauser pistol jammed.

"I"

The young man, whose name Wei Ran hadn't even had a chance to ask, tremblingly reached out his hand amidst the intermittent flashes of flares, and said, "I hit Seventeen."

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Wei Ran raised his gun and used the last three bullets he had left after firing to hit three Japanese soldiers who were charging at him. He then helped the student, whose abdomen had been pierced by a bayonet, to lie down and took his gun and the Nine Dragons Belt from his body.

"thank you"

Wei Ran thanked the young corpse that had already died, then quickly put on the Kowloon Belt, cleared the jammed bullets from the Mauser pistol, and loaded it with bullets.

He still couldn't protect the student he had specifically chosen, who looked the youngest, under the guise of helping load bullets.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Wei Ran discarded the wooden box and, like Wen Laoga had done before, took a Mauser pistol in each hand and fired alternately, like a mother hen with her chicks, scrambling for food with all her might, just so that the student soldiers who shouldn't have come here, but still came here, could find rifles with bayonets.

In this seemingly endless battle, many student soldiers around Wei Ran fell down. Immediately, other student soldiers would drop their old pistols, pick up the Type 38 rifles with bayonets attached from their fallen comrades, load them with as many bullets as possible, fire them to make a "good deal," and then begin their desperate fight.

"I've gotten my money's worth! I've made a fortune in this life!"

With a roar, almost as Wei Ran inadvertently saw the first ray of sunrise, a student soldier whose abdomen had been pierced by two bayonets shouted out, and at the same time pulled out two grenades from his chest and pulled the fuse.

"boom!"

After the devastating explosion, the three Japanese soldiers in front of him were also blown to pieces!
"Om-"

At this critical juncture, along with the rising sun, came Japanese planes into the sky!

"Kill! Killing one is enough! Killing more means we'll make a profit!"

With increasingly desperate screams, these young but passionate student soldiers disregarded their own lives, suffering ten times the casualties of the enemy, and dragged the Japanese soldiers into hell.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Just as the enemy had finally gained a slight advantage in this hand-to-hand combat due to the heavy cost, Japanese planes began bombing and strafing the Nanyuan position.

This is the point of despair at this moment. The 29th Army stationed here is not lacking in air defense experience as later generations have said, but rather that it simply does not have any air defense weapons at all.

Even those few machine guns faced a difficult choice: either raise their heads and use their limited ammunition to shoot at the planes, or ignore the bombs and bullets falling from above and fight the seemingly endless Japanese invaders.

Without any hesitation, the machine gun teams that occupied the high ground such as walls and rooftops did not even raise their guns to waste a single bullet. Instead, they tacitly decided to fire as many bullets as possible before being killed by the planes.

If they could empty their machine guns before they died, those student soldiers and those veterans who had miraculously survived from Xifengkou would have avoided one less-than-advantageous hand-to-hand combat and might have survived—at the cost of their own lives.

"boom!"

As a bomb exploded upon landing, Wei Ran, who had emptied all the bullets from his Mauser pistol, put away his weapon, took out his gun-style camera, stood in the middle of the battlefield, aimed the lens at the machine gunners in the distance and the Japanese planes flying overhead, and pressed the shutter again and again.

Until the film in the camera ran out, until the machine gun fire stopped, until those Japanese planes flew overhead with impunity.

"I've had my money's worth."

As Wei Ran muttered to himself, he put away his gun-style camera, bent down to pick up a Type 38 rifle still stuck in the student soldier's body, and pulled the bolt to load a bullet.

"boom!"

After accurately hitting a Japanese soldier wielding a sword, Wei Ran reloaded his gun and charged towards the front lines of the bayonet fight.

Ruins Explorer – Please read, vote, add to favorites, invest, tip, and introduce female readers to the group.