War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1989 Wooden Man

When Wei Ran woke up again, he found himself still on the battlefield.

He tried to get up, but intense dizziness forced him to lie back down amidst a spinning sensation.

It's a concussion.
As Wei Ran made his judgment, he carefully touched his entire body.

Besides the large bump on his forehead that led him to the source of his concussion, he also noticed that one of his legs had been fractured.

Despite his dizziness, he carefully turned his head to look at both sides and quickly found Dong Weixin trapped under two Japanese soldiers' corpses.

Fortunately, although a bayonet was still stuck in his leg, and the other end of the bayonet was fixed to a Type 38 rifle, at least he was still alive.

At this moment, the shouts of battle continued all around, and the Japanese grenade launchers and mortars did not stop firing. However, the battlefield of the bayonet fighting shifted slightly to other directions.

With difficulty, Wei Ran rolled over in his dizziness and crawled slowly to Dong Weixin's side. He pushed away the corpses that were pressing down on him and then removed the Type 38 rifle that was fixed to the bayonet.

"battleground"

Dong Weixin, who was also clearly suffering from a concussion, said with difficulty that the wound on his head was more serious than Wei Ran's, and the dark red blood had almost stained his entire face.

"The position is still there, the position is still there."

Wei Ran tried to comfort the other person weakly. He didn't even dare to speak too loudly, otherwise he might vomit because of dizziness.

Even so, he still took a leg wrap from a corpse and used it to temporarily cover the wound on the man's leg and the bayonet. Then he took another leg wrap and used it to cover the wound on the man's head where the bone was almost visible.

As for infection, that's something you can only worry about after you've survived and left the battlefield.

"we."

Dong Weixin struggled to turn over. "Let's go...take...the...bullets."

"Too far."

Wei Ran lay down on the other man's back to stop him from going to his death, "We're too far away. We'll attract machine gun fire before we even get on."

"That"

Dong Weixin tried to push Wei Ran but to no avail. He continued to struggle and said, "At least we can wear it down with a whole magazine of bullets."

"Don't risk your life!"

Wei Ran managed to grab the other man's belt with difficulty. "If I survive, I can keep killing Japanese soldiers. It's a waste to block bullets."

After failing to break free from Wei Ran again, Dong Weixin simply stopped struggling, laboriously pulled a Type 38 rifle out of the pile of corpses, and shakily put a bullet into it.

Seeing that the enemy was trying to aim at the Japanese soldiers in the distance, all Wei Ran could do at this moment was to let go and, enduring the dizziness, pull the surrounding corpses over to press them down on him.

Before he could finish his work, Dong Weixin had already fired a bullet, and just then, the Japanese artillery began firing.

Amid the rumbling of artillery fire, Wei Ran wasn't sure if Dong Weixin's bullet had hit the Japanese soldier, but he had already taken out his gun-style camera and camera case. After struggling to change to a new roll of film, he once again aimed the lens at the trenches overhead.

With each press of his shutter, in the lens focused on the trench line, the ragged and wounded defenders once again rushed out of the trenches and charged at the Japanese soldiers. This charge forced the Japanese artillery to stop after inflicting a brief wave of casualties.

Almost as soon as the two sides clashed again, Wei Ran pressed the shutter button again towards the machine gun position, then turned around with difficulty to face the scene of the hand-to-hand combat.

As he repeatedly focused on the nameless protagonists in his lens and busily pressed the shutter, Dong Weixin was also pulling the trigger repeatedly.

Finally, Wei Ran finished shooting all the film in his camera, but the hand-to-hand combat in the distance was still not over.

He quickly and somewhat dazedly changed the film in the camera again, but instead of raising it to aim at the battlefield, he picked up a Type 38 rifle.

Pulling back the bolt and loading a bullet, Wei Ran thrust the muzzle through the gap between two corpses and aimed at the Japanese soldiers below the mountain.

"boom!"

The gunshots, hidden among the shouts of battle and the sounds of exploding grenades, went unnoticed by anyone. However, the Japanese soldier Wei Ran was aiming at had his neck torn open by a bullet, which then pierced the nose of another Japanese soldier.

Correspondingly, Wei Ran, who was suffering from a concussion, was also forced to gag by the recoil of the shot, and then spat a mouthful of filth onto the cap of the Type 38 rifle in his hand.

"Click"

After Wei Ran recovered, he fired another bullet he had "enchanted," then hastily wiped the vomit off the dust cover and aimed at the Japanese soldier again before pulling the trigger.

"boom!"

After the second shot rang out, another Japanese soldier who hadn't hidden properly was hit in the face. Wei Ran's vision went black due to the recoil, and his dizziness worsened.

Wei Ran glanced groggily at Dong Weixin, who was trying to load a newly found magazine into the gun, and slowly pulled the bolt to load another bullet.

"boom!"

After another shot rang out, Wei Ran missed the target this time. He only felt that the recoil hitting his shoulder and transmitting to his brain made him temporarily lose his ability to think.

Just as he recovered from the dizziness, Dong Weixin, who was next to him, pulled the trigger.

"boom!"

After the gunshot rang out, Dong Weixin lay motionless on the spot.

Wei Ran gently bit his tongue, put down his gun for the moment, took out his Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera and took a picture of the other person, then picked up his gun again and, after a few near-out-of-focus shots, pulled the incredibly heavy trigger once more.

"boom!"

The moment the gunshot rang out, Wei Ran, like Dong Weixin beside him, lost consciousness, leaving only the increasingly faint shouts of killing and explosions in his ears.

Finally, all the sounds disappeared, and Wei Ran regained consciousness in a moment, then opened his eyes.

It was completely dark by then, with only a sky full of stars overhead, and the surroundings were deathly silent, with only occasional faint breathing sounds.

Are there any survivors?

Just as he was trying to look at Dong Weixin, a question, hushed to the extreme, came from the direction at his feet.

"Are there any survivors? Make some noise." the voice asked again.

"Da da da!"

Wei Ran groped around and found a spent cartridge case, then gently tapped it a few times on a Japanese soldier's helmet.

"Where is it?" the approaching voice asked in a low voice, sounding excited.

"Da! Da! Da!"

Amidst the weak, feeble pounding of Wei Ran, two figures crawled to his side.

“Over there…save him,” Wei Ran said in a hoarse voice.

"Go look over there, maybe there are still survivors," one of the hoarse but familiar voices said. That was...
Before the dazed Wei Ran could even recognize the voice, someone pulled him onto a stretcher.

A moment later, the man picked up a few guns and slung them over his shoulder. With one hand holding the stretcher, he moved inch by inch toward the trench above him. Finally, he tied a rope to the stretcher and then tied the guns he had picked up to it as well.

Soon, the stretcher carrying Wei Ran was dragged by ropes toward the position on the hilltop. He moved along with it and saw many figures searching through corpses and picking up usable weapons and equipment.

He also saw just as many people quietly searching for those who were still alive.

They not only used every means to bring the wounded back, but also brought back as many bodies as possible from both sides—their own to be buried and the enemy's to be used to reinforce the trenches.

"call out--!"

Just then, the Japanese fired a flare, and the people around immediately lay down on the ground. The stretcher under Wei Ran stopped moving.

"Ta-ta-ta-ta!"

The Japanese machine guns suddenly began firing indiscriminately.

Under the starry night, Wei Ran clearly saw the bullet hit a Japanese soldier's corpse less than ten centimeters above his head, and he could even feel the cool, foul-smelling blood dripping onto his head.

He could see more clearly that the burst of bullets struck a figure who had just been picking up spoils of war.

But he didn't make a sound. He just grabbed the arm of a Japanese soldier's corpse and bit it hard, using hatred to counteract the pain from the bullet wounds on his body.

After an exceptionally long wait, the flare that seemed to have been hanging in the sky for an eternity finally drifted down slowly, ultimately returning darkness to the battlefield.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry! Get moving!"

In the darkness, someone called out anxiously, and Wei Ran could also smell the distinctive scent of freshly splattered blood.

He could even guess from the faint hissing sound that someone had damaged an artery, a fatal wound.

But at this moment, there was nothing he could do but let the rope pull the stretcher, and let the stretcher pull him, inching closer and closer to the trench line that was filled with the strong smell of blood.

"call out--!"

Just then, another flare rose into the night sky, and the people who were operating in the dark on this battlefield immediately froze, as if they were playing a game of wooden figures with their lives as the price.

Using the light from the flare, Wei Ran, straining to look out, finally saw Dong Weixin, who had also been lifted onto a stretcher.

"Ta-ta-ta-ta!"

Just then, the Japanese machine guns roared once again, and the barrage of bullets mixed with tracer rounds drew a deadly zigzag trajectory across the battlefield.

Wei Ran didn't know how many people were hit by this barrage, but the battlefield remained absolutely silent.

These were details and frustrations he had never seen in later records, yet they were truly unfolding under this starry night.

How many people will die quietly and without explanation? Perhaps no one can answer that.

After a long while, and a moment later, the flare fell, and the stretcher under Wei Ran began to move again, even faster than before.

Finally, just before the third flare went off, he was dragged into the trench and then carried to the rear without any rest.

Almost at that moment, the Japanese launched their flares again, and their machine guns began firing in a warning manner.

Was it Chef Feng who just carried me onto the stretcher?
If it was him, did the bullet just hit him?

Did Dong Weixin survive?

Amidst these questions, Wei Ran was once again shaken unconscious by the swaying of the stretcher.

But then, he was jolted awake by the excruciating pain from the fracture in his leg. He saw several people holding him down and someone pulling hard on his foot in an effort to reset his broken leg.

With a hoarse, almost inaudible scream, Wei Ran lost consciousness again.

This time, he had a very long dream, but in his dream, he was sitting on the Great Wall, raising his hand and counting the bones scattered all over the ground below.

Finally, just as he seemed to have counted out an accurate number, he woke up again.

Looking around, I seemed to be in a thatched hut made of stone, lying on a kang (a heated brick bed) covered with straw mats.

Smelling the familiar herbal scent in the air, Wei Ran turned his head with difficulty, only to find Dong Weixin, pale-faced, lying less than half a meter away from him.

And in a tobacco basket between the two of them, there was surprisingly Wen Laoga's wine gourd.

Beside the tobacco basket, there were four Mauser pistols and two bloodstained Kowloon belts, as well as a flower-shaped pistol that looked like it had been carefully wiped clean.

It was only at this moment that he noticed that the three characters "Wang Yimo" were engraved directly below the trigger guard of this pistol.

Is this Yi Mo's gun?
Wei Ran stared blankly at the flower-shaped gun, unsure if it was the same one that Bai Guang had hidden in the hat on his head.

Just as he was lost in thought, the wooden door of the thatched stone hut creaked open, and a voice immediately asked, "How are they?"

"He's still not awake."

A young voice replied worriedly, "Uncle Wei is alright; he's quite healthy. The other one, however, is a different story. His face is deathly pale; I'm afraid..."

"Let fate decide."

Another person said, "Why is your Uncle Wei here? And why is Yi Mo's pistol on him too?"

"We can only wait until he wakes up and ask him."

The young voice spoke, and Wei Ran recognized it as Zhao Shouxian, while the person speaking to him was Cook Feng.

"They're both in your care."

Feng, the cook, said, "When I went to carry the wounded today, I found a snake that had been blown up. You can clean it up and cook it into a soup to help them recover."

Don't worry.

Zhao Shouxian said respectfully, "Please be careful, you and Uncle Wang."

"Do I need you to remind me?"

Feng Huotou laughed and scolded, "Remember to deal with that snake the way I taught you before. Sigh! If there wasn't a war, you would come with me to open a restaurant."

“Once the war is over, Yimo and I will help you open a restaurant,” Zhao Shouxian said.

"Then I'll be waiting for that day."

Feng, the cook, walked out of the low thatched hut with a hearty laugh.

All Wei Ran could hear was Zhao Shouxian's worried sigh. He was still just a child, but that sigh sounded exceptionally weary and weathered.