The War of Resistance Against Japan: Starting with a Calm View of Life and Death

Ren Wuliu didn't answer immediately. He adjusted the position of the box on his shoulder before saying in a gruff voice, "We did make a fortune, but so many soldiers died."

He paused, then said, "However... we have enough guns, ammunition, and food. Those damn Japanese devils are actually quite nice; they deliver to our door."

The procession continued.

The mountain road became increasingly steep, sometimes requiring one to climb using both hands and feet.

The stretchers for the wounded and fallen comrades were difficult to carry, so the soldiers worked in groups of several, carrying and lifting them up by force.

No one complained of being tired. The burlap sacks chafed their shoulders, blood seeped out, mixing with sweat and soaking through their tattered cotton-padded coats, but no one stopped.

As dawn approached, the team ventured into a secluded ravine deep in the mountains.

It's more than 20 miles away from Duanjiazhuang as the crow flies. The mountains are high and the forests are dense, with only a few small paths worn out by herb gatherers and hunters.

"Rest where you are! Stay alert!" Zhou Jindong stopped and shouted in a hoarse voice.

Once the order was given, the exhausted soldiers finally dared to put down what they were holding, and either sat or lay down, panting heavily.

Some people took out their water bottles and sipped the cool water. Others pulled out cold cornbread that had been warming in their pockets all night and slowly ate it.

Zhou Jindong didn't sit down. He walked to a slightly higher, larger rock, took out his pocket watch, looked at it, and then looked up at the eastern sky.

The morning star was still shining, but the eastern mountain ridge was already showing a faint bluish-white hue.

Wang Quan, Zhang Fang, Zhao Laosi, Ren Wuliu and a few others gathered around, their faces showing signs of fatigue from the long journey, but their eyes were all fixed on Zhou Jindong.

"Dongzi," Wang Quan spoke first, his voice hoarse, "how long... shall we rest?"

Zhou Jindong didn't turn around, still looking east: "Rest for another fifteen minutes. Let the soldiers quickly eat something and drink some water. Re-bandage the wounded immediately. Where's Lao Liu?"

"I'm here!" Liu Heiqi squeezed in from behind. He was exhausted, but his spirits were high. "The villagers have all dispersed back to their villages, and as you said, everything is hidden. We've used every available space—caves, cellars, hidden walls—the Japanese won't find us!"

"Where is the North Korean driver?" Zhou Jindong asked.

"They're keeping watch over him, with two soldiers guarding him," Zhang Fang replied. "They've been behaving fairly well the whole way."

Zhou Jindong nodded and turned to look at his comrades who had crawled out of the pile of corpses with him.

Their faces were stained with gunpowder, blood, and exhaustion; their cotton-padded clothes were tattered, with cotton showing in some places, but their backs were ramrod straight.

"We're back," Zhou Jindong said slowly. "We've also retrieved the spoils. But in this battle, we suffered 130 casualties, 47 of whom died." He paused, his gaze sweeping across everyone's faces. "More than a thousand men couldn't defeat two hundred, and it was a surprise attack, taking advantage of the terrain, yet we still ended up like this."

No one said a word.

The torchlight had long since gone out, and the deepest darkness before dawn enveloped the mountain valley, with only the heavy breathing of the soldiers remaining.

"Our people," Zhou Jindong continued, "rely on their fearlessness and courage to fight. That's true."

But mere courage isn't enough. You all saw the Japanese soldiers' marksmanship, tactical coordination, and how they used heavy machine guns and grenade launchers.

What should we do? Charge in, throw grenades, fight with bayonets. That won't work.

"Captain, you mean..." Zhang Fang asked tentatively.

"Train!" Zhou Jindong declared decisively. "Starting tomorrow—no, starting today! While the Japanese are still reeling from their defeat and haven't recovered yet, and before spring plowing begins, let's launch a massive training exercise across the entire brigade!"

"How do you train?" Zhao Laosi asked.

"First, take inventory of the captured weapons, repair what needs repairing, and clean what needs cleaning. Then, train separately in company-level units!"

Riflemen practice aiming, holding their guns, and how to fire accurately at different distances. Machine gunners practice burst fire, shifting positions, and suppressing enemy fire.

"Since we're short of grenade launcher operators, we'll pick the quick-witted ones from each company, gather them together, and have those who know how to use them teach them! Demolition, bayonet fighting, earthwork operations, night marches, signal recognition... we'll train them one by one from scratch!"

He looked at Wang Yuan: "Brother Yuan, you are the political commissar, so you are responsible for developing the training plan."

Starting tomorrow! The training ground will be set up in the open area behind Dongzhai Town.

Each company commander, return immediately and compile a list of weapon and ammunition losses and a detailed inventory of captured supplies, reporting back to me before dawn.

"Yes!" the group replied in unison.

The break time passed quickly.

The team got moving again.

As dawn broke, the team finally returned to Dongzhai Town.

The militia and women's salvation association members from the base area, who had received advance notice, were already waiting at the village entrance.

When the troops returned, when the soldiers were laden with supplies, carrying them in their hands and on their shoulders, and especially when they saw the fallen comrades being carried back on door panels, the crowd fell silent for a moment, then erupted into a suppressed murmur.

"They're back! They're back!"

"Good heavens, so much stuff!"

"That's...that's Sanwazi? Why is Sanwazi lying there...?"

"Quickly! Get the wounded to the clinic!"

"Place the seized items at the threshing ground at the east end of the village! Be careful! Handle with care!"

The crowd stirred. Women from the Women's Salvation Association rushed forward, took the wounded soldiers, and helped the exhausted soldiers walk back to the village.

The militiamen helped the soldiers unload the heavy loads from their shoulders and carry them to the threshing ground.

The children weaved through the crowd, curiously looking at the long guns and short cannons they had never seen before, yet fearfully avoiding the stretchers covered with blankets.

Zhou Jindong stood at the edge of the threshing ground, looking at the bustling yet vibrant scene before him.

A small mountain quickly formed on the threshing floor: piles of grain made of burlap sacks, piles of ammunition stacked in wooden crates, piles of guns covered with tarpaulins, bundles of cloth and quilts, and several medicine boxes.

Wang Yuan, holding a notebook, led several literate soldiers and began counting.

He counted the numbers aloud as he did so, while someone else recorded them.

"Type 38 rifles, 867 in total! Of these, 792 are in good condition, and 75 require repair!"

"Twenty-five Type 96 light machine guns! Twenty-one are in good working order!"

"Type 92 heavy machine guns, eight in total! Frames intact, gun barrels require cleaning!"

"Type 65 rifle ammunition, preliminary count: 123 boxes! 1440 rounds per box!"

"Hand grenades, 28 boxes of Japanese-made melon-shaped hand grenades, those made in the border region are a separate item!"

"530 infantry shells! 1070 mortar shells!"

"Rice, 430 bags! Wheat flour, 380 bags!"

"One hundred and fifty cases of canned beef! Eighty cases of canned fish! Two hundred cases of compressed dry rations!"

Each time a number was announced, a suppressed gasp of surprise rose from the busy crowd around them.

Wang Yuan, who had never seized so much stuff before, became increasingly excited, and in the end he was almost shouting.

Liu Heiqi rubbed his hands together, pacing back and forth beside the pile of supplies, his eyes wide with disbelief: "My goodness... when... when will we ever finish eating this? When will we ever use it all?"

Zhou Jindong's face remained expressionless; he simply listened and watched quietly.

Wang Quan finished reading the last number, closed his notebook, wiped the sweat from his brow, and walked up to him.

"Captain, everything has been inventoried. Food, ammunition, clothing, medicine... enough for our entire county's brigade and the villagers in the base area to eat and drink as they please for one or two months. Weapons... plus what we already have, enough to arm the entire brigade for two more round trips and still have some left over." Wang Yuan's voice trembled slightly.

Zhou Jindong nodded and said only one sentence: "Store them first. Distribute the grain to each village and household according to the number of people. Register the weapons and ammunition and store them in a unified manner. Have the wounded been taken care of?"

"The medical team is busy. The five seriously wounded have been sent to hospitals in the rear, and the other wounded have been accommodated in a few rooms vacated in the village."

"What about the comrades who sacrificed their lives?"

"...They are all in the open space in front of the ancestral hall at the west end of the village. The villagers...are helping to clean and tidy up the remains." Wang Yuan's voice lowered.

Zhou Jindong didn't say anything more. He turned around and walked towards the west end of the village.

In the open space in front of the ancestral hall, forty-seven simple wooden planks were neatly arranged, covered with white cloth.

Several women from the Women's Salvation Association, with tears in their eyes, carefully wiped the blood and gunpowder from the martyrs' faces with clean gauze and hot water that they had captured.

Their movements were very gentle and slow, as if they were afraid of hurting these young people who would never open their eyes again.

The area was filled with people—soldiers, militiamen, elderly villagers, and children—all standing silently without uttering a word.

Only suppressed sobs could be heard occasionally in the crowd.

Zhou Jindong walked closer and looked at each body one by one.

Some of the soldiers were very young, with childlike faces, and their eyes were still open when they died.

Some were older, their faces etched with wrinkles from years of hardship.

Most of their cotton-padded clothes were patched, and some didn't even have shoes, with rags wrapped around their feet.

He walked up to a young soldier, knelt down, and gently closed the soldier's wide-open eyes.

Zhou Jindong's hand trembled slightly when his fingers touched the cold skin.

He stood up, faced all the fallen soldiers, slowly raised his right hand, and gave a standard military salute.

Behind him, all the soldiers of the county brigade, whether wounded or unharmed, snapped to attention and raised their hands in salute.

The surrounding villagers also silently lowered their heads.

After a long pause, Zhou Jindong put down his hand and said, "Find a propitious burial site for them... to rest in peace."

In the days that followed, Dongzhai Town and even the entire Ningwu Northern Base Area were caught up in a tense yet energetic and busy atmosphere.

The funeral was simple and solemn.

The forty-seven martyrs were buried on a sunny hillside in Heifenggou. There were no tombstones, only freshly turned yellow earth and sharpened wooden plaques stuck in front of the graves, with their names branded on the plaques with red-hot iron bars.

The day after the funeral, intensive military training began.

As dawn broke, the open area behind Black Wind Gully, covered in snow, came alive with activity.

The twenty-five instructors sent by Brigade Commander Chu of the 358th Brigade played a particularly important role.

"First rank! Mound 150 meters directly in front of the target! Prone position, load!"

The instructor in charge was named Gao Jun, a veteran of the Red Army.

He yelled at the top of his lungs, a whistle hanging around his neck, and a hastily whittled wooden stick in his hand as a pointer.

In front of him, a row of soldiers lay prone on the cold snow, taking off their newly issued, gleaming Type 38 rifles from their backs.

"Butt of the rifle firmly against your shoulder! Cheek against it! Eyes! Eyes level! Notch, sights, target, three points in a straight line!" Gao Jun walked over to a soldier and tapped his arm with a wooden stick. "Elbow! Stick it out! Be steady! Do you think it's a fire poker?"

The soldier's face turned red, and he quickly adjusted his posture.

The old-fashioned rifles and Hanyang rifles they used before were quite different from the newly captured Type 38 rifles, and they had to readjust to the feel and aiming methods.

"Breathe! Slowly exhale, inhale, exhale... Once you're steady, pull the trigger! Don't pull it hard! Use the first joint of your index finger to apply even pressure!" Gao Jun shouted as he demonstrated.

He himself held a Type 38 rifle and practiced the prone shooting posture. Although his movements were a bit stiff due to an old injury, he was meticulous in setting up the gun, aiming, and breathing.

Not far away is the machine gun training area.

Another instructor, Feng Shaohui, was also a battle-hardened soldier.

He crouched behind a Type 92 heavy machine gun that had been set up, surrounded by seven or eight selected soldiers.

The heavy machine gun was mounted on the tripod.

"This thing is different from the Type 96." Feng Shaohui patted the gun. "It has a slow rate of fire, but it's accurate, it can shoot far, and it's powerful."

It uses 7.7mm bullets, a hook-feed system, and a 30-round magazine.

He picked up a bent metal magazine and inserted it into the feed port. "Look carefully, install it like this. When firing, there are two grips. The one in the back is for firing, and the one in the front is for azimuth, controlling left and right. Use this dial to adjust elevation."

A soldier tried to grip the handle and put his finger on the trigger.

"Don't rush!" Feng Shaohui pressed his hand down. "Get familiar with the gun first! Learn what each part does! A heavy machine gun is for suppressive fire, not for you to hold and fire away!"

When firing, choose a good position, calculate the firing arc, and pay attention to heat dissipation! Replace the barrel with a spare if it gets red-hot! Anyone who doesn't take care of it and damages the gun will be severely punished!

In another corner, instructor Zhao Yi was leading a dozen burly soldiers in bayonet practice.

They used rifles with the tips removed, or simply sharpened wooden sticks.

"Thrust! Kill!"

Zhao Yi shouted and made a standard thrusting motion, the wooden stick whistling as it pierced the straw man in front of him.

The scarecrow was made of twigs and wrapped in a tattered cotton-padded coat.

The soldiers roared and thrust in response.

The movements were varied; some used too much force and leaned too far forward, while others were unsteady on their feet and thrust out crookedly.

"Stop!" Zhao Yi's face was as black as the bottom of a pot. "You call this bayonet fighting? This is just blindly stabbing! Bayonet fighting is about speed, accuracy, and ruthlessness! But it's even more about teamwork!"

Two people per group, back to back! Three people per group, in a triangle formation! Offense and defense combined! Just blindly charging in is suicide!

He pulled one soldier aside, then pointed at another: "You, defensive stance! You, attack! Come on, try stabbing him!"

Two soldiers stood facing each other, one holding a "gun" in both hands in defense, and the other trying to thrust.

The attacking soldier used too much force, and the defending soldier couldn't block in time, almost getting poked by the wooden stick.

"Look! It's already fallen?" Zhao Yi shoved the two aside, grabbed a wooden stick, and said, "Watch this! Defense isn't about blocking head-on; it's about deflecting force, parrying while simultaneously looking for opportunities to counterattack! Offense requires a combination of feints and real attacks!"