Chapter Thirty-Four

  The plan was quickly finalized, and it would be done my way.

  It turns out that this method, which I previously thought was just a childish game of playing house and was too ashamed to show others, actually has many benefits when put into practice.

  First of all, it's convenient to get materials. The materials needed for this method are only rope and bamboo sticks. Rope is everywhere in the army, and as for bamboo sticks, just take a machete and walk through the forest for a while, you can bring back several at once. So within half an hour or so, these piles of bamboo sticks like fishing rods were all ready, and then the soldiers tied ropes and hand grenades to each one.

  Secondly, this method does not require training. Children playing house will do it, right? Just find anyone, unless they are stupid, and throw a hand grenade into the "skylight" and shake the bamboo pole, what's difficult about that?

  The most important thing is that this method can obviously reduce casualties, throwing hand grenades with a fishing rod from a distance... This also means that people don't need to get close to the "sky window", and it also means that the devils can't hit us at all... On the battlefield, you can kill the enemy without risking your life, who wouldn't want to do that?

  Before long, piles of bamboo poles appeared in front of the empty space, and the soldiers were busy tying hand grenades to one end of the bamboo poles with ropes... It's just that it's a bit frustrating for us: at least one-third of the hand grenades in our troops won't explode, so to ensure that we don't do useless work, we usually tie two or three hand grenades on the rope.

  "Everyone is ready! Prepare for battle......" Half an hour later, with the company commander's order, I and the soldiers carried a "fishing rod" each and crept towards the enemy's trench.

  Why is it always our unit this time?

  The reason is that this idea was thought of by me, and other troops wouldn't dare to brazenly take the ideas that belong to our troop and use them openly. Moreover... our superiors also want us to try out this method to see if it's useful or not.

  I led the soldiers to crawl on the muddy ground for a while, and soon we crawled to a skylight. Several people dispersed around the "skylight" and took out their entrenching tools to dig individual foxholes... This was to defend against the enemy's hand grenades. Although hand grenades look scary when they explode, their killing power is not great. They mainly rely on shrapnel after explosion to kill, so as long as we repair the scattered trenches and hide inside... the enemy will have no way to deal with us.

  Although we have already experienced several battles at this time, our hearts are still tense when the battle is about to come. Especially me... Now the whole army can be said to follow my way of doing things. If this method doesn't work, it's not just that I'll lose face, but also make us unable to hold our heads up in front of other armies!

  Especially the squad leaders of the first and third squads in the same row as me...

  Isn't there a saying? The people most prone to red-eye disease are one's own family members. If someone else's family has achievements, that's their business; if one's own brothers have achievements... then they've surpassed oneself.

  Now I'm facing this situation, originally I was the class leader for only a short day, and I'm still a new soldier, so the third class leader didn't take me seriously. But after I took office, I achieved several great successes in a row, which made them unhappy. The third class leader is slightly better, just with a dark face not speaking, but the first class leader is not convinced, saying all sorts of things to his soldiers, saying that I'm just lucky and so on...

  If it were up to my old temper, I would definitely not let him off the hook and would have to argue with him until our faces turned red. He's risking his life for this, and you say I'm just lucky?

  But now it's different, whether we can keep our lives or not is a problem, and still care about this?

  After more than ten minutes, the signal soldier waved two small red flags left and right a few times, which was the signal for the captain to start fighting with us. So I didn't have time to think about anything else, shouted "Action", grabbed the hand grenade hanging on the bamboo pole, pulled the string and threw it into the skylight...

  Gunfire quickly rang out, and the enemy's reaction was also quick. They almost immediately fired guns and threw hand grenades as soon as we made a move, but unfortunately, the skylight openings were only one meter square, and due to the angle of fire, bullets couldn't hit us who were lying on the ground. The hand grenades did have some effect, but there weren't many thrown out, and since we were all hiding in the trenches we had dug, they basically didn't pose much of a threat to us... Of course, if any hand grenades happened to land in our individual fortifications, that would be a different story.

  And what are we going to do? After throwing the hand grenades into the "sky window", all we need to do is wave the bamboo pole and shake the other end of the bamboo pole with the hand grenade... I think, the devils in the tunnel may still rush up like before, trying to grab these hand grenades and throw them out, or at least they will have prepared sandbags or even their bodies to press down on these smoking hand grenades.

  But... this time they will be surprised to find that it's not easy to get to this point, because these hand grenades are bouncing in front of them!

  Then, as if it were expected yet unexpected, a burst of chaotic noise and screams came from the tunnel, but before these explosions stopped, another series of even more muffled blasts followed... Listening to the explosion sounds, it seemed that hand grenades had exploded deep in the tunnel!

  What's going on?

  When I heard this sound, I was also confused. Even if the soldiers threw the grenade accurately, it would only be thrown into the "sky window", right? No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't throw it deep into the tunnel! Later, I found out that it was because the grenade explosion had a delay. Think about it, we threw dozens of grenades in at once, and many of them were suspended in mid-air by strings. So when the first few grenades exploded... the huge shockwave naturally carried those suspended grenades deeper into the tunnel, and the killing power... The Vietcong inside the tunnel were blown to pieces on the spot!

  This is an unexpected gain, to be honest, I didn't think there would be such a benefit before... This time the devils in the cave didn't resist at all, no one shot or threw grenades out, only those mournful cries and groans seemed to protest against us... But these protests were useless, as soon as the soldiers saw that this trick worked, they didn't wait for my order to throw hand grenades again, after a muffled sound, there was not even a groan in the cave.

  "Good!" Many warriors outside the battlefield watched and saw that we easily won such a big victory, and they couldn't help but cheer loudly.

  "Squad leader!" At this time, the bayonet-wielding soldier suddenly raised his gun and shouted at me: "The devils seem to have been bombed out, let's rush in and give them a good beating..."

  "You're crazy!" I responded irritably: "We were doing fine fighting out here, why did you have to rush in? Are you tired of living or what?"

  "Huh, yeah... " The bayonet looked a bit silly rubbing its head, seemingly still not quite understanding where it had gone wrong.

  Actually, bayonet charges are not wrong either. They should be said to be right according to the ideology of this era. The political education of this era requires soldiers to be brave, tenacious, and not afraid of bloodshed or sacrifice... In fact, many commanders also want to do so, after all, it is the lives of soldiers that are sacrificed, as long as they can win, they can get promoted and rich, right?

  But to me, the battlefield is a place where you get the maximum benefits with the minimum cost. To me, the lives of soldiers are the most precious, and if possible, we would use all our resources to exchange for their lives.

  I loudly commanded the soldiers: "Everyone, follow the trench and continue to blast 'sky windows', blow out all the devils!"

  "Yes!" The warriors responded loudly and took action, for them my order was of course a better choice, who would be willing to rush into the trench with guns like bayonet said and fight with Vietnamese devils.

  The subsequent battle became simple, the warriors only needed to open a "sky window" along the trench and throw in a large number of hand grenades... After a dull roar, the Viet Cong inside were blown to pieces, and the chemical soldiers sprayed flames into the trench with flamethrowers... This section of the trench was cleared!

  "Comrades of the Liberation Army! Comrades of the Liberation Army..." A few hours later, the Vietnamese devils who were forced to stay inside finally couldn't take it anymore. Along with a few stiff Chinese phrases, a white flag limply emerged from the tunnel, and a Vietnamese civilian with a face full of dirt stretched out his head and said to us: "Comrades of the Liberation Army... we surrender, the Liberation Army treats prisoners of war kindly... we surrender!"

  "Put down your gun and come out!" I nodded at him and said: "Surrender without killing, we treat prisoners of war leniently!"

  Although I am deeply resentful of the Vietnamese devils in my heart, I also know that there are not only Vietnamese soldiers but also many Vietnamese civilians in this tunnel. No matter how our political axes clash, no matter how much hatred we soldiers have, the civilians are always innocent.

  The Vietnamese civilian crawled out with the help of two soldiers, his whole body shaking like a frightened little bird. As soon as he emerged from the tunnel, he squatted on the ground, holding his head and shouted a few sentences in Vietnamese to others inside the tunnel, presumably urging them to come out...

  Then several Vietnamese civilians came out from inside, and seeing this my heart couldn't help but feel a little relief: we soldiers aren't butchers, if the battle can end with the enemy surrendering, then no one wants to see any more deaths.

  But on the battlefields of Vietnam, things rarely turned out as planned and nothing was ever as simple as I had imagined.