Crossing the Ice River (1)

  Chen Zizhong wore pants covered with icicles and ran limpingly at the front of the team, the cold wind cut his skin like a knife.

  "Take it off!"

  Fifty-two Han men stood naked in two rows, letting the cold wind whip their dark and thin bodies, their straight backs like unyielding military flags, propping up the vast white snowy wilderness.

  The men have a clear, ancient copper-colored skin, seemingly calm and unruffled, but with iron-like muscles bulging out as they lift their arms, and the shiny old calluses on their hands seem to be provocatively staring at people.

  Fifty-two Han men, fifty-two warriors with sharp knives in three rows.

  Cook Liu held a deep green metal can, walking and scooping out walnut-sized butter into the soldiers' palms. The rectangular metal can had white five-star and a line of English letters printed on it, which was authentic US military supplies. Among the materials captured by Sharp Knife Company, food accounted for the majority, while blankets and military coats were scarce. Chen Zizhong didn't want the blanket, but took away a bucket of butter.

  Chen Zizhong detested the US military blankets from the bottom of his heart. He had seen Korean soldiers who abandoned their guns and ammunition wrapped themselves in the blankets, rolling down the hill like balls, fleeing with their pants wet. He didn't want his soldiers to be tainted by such bad luck, and besides, two blankets couldn't keep all the soldiers warm.

  Their bodies, frozen to a deep purple color, were smeared with butter, and the warriors reversed their uniforms, revealing white linings, as white as snow. The warriors suppressed their shivering bodies in the cold wind, slowly putting on their uniforms, as if they would be half a head shorter than others if they put them on a second earlier.

  Thin military uniforms and this layer of cow butter are the only winter clothing, since entering the war, field hospitals have been busy with frostbite casualties accounting for more than 20% of the total number of officers and soldiers.

  Other troops were equipped with three eight big covers, butter guns, and Thompsons of various weapons. The third row was different, and the warriors were uniformly equipped with bright Soviet-made rifles, revealing a sense of pride. The dry food bag at the waist was also different from other troops, and it was made of sheepskin stitching.

  The sheepskin dry ration bag was invented by cook Liu. He wrapped clean sheep intestines in sheepskin, carefully sewed them up, and then filled them with fried flour. Sewing a waterproof and moisture-proof dry ration bag required the time it took to boil six pots of water.

  Old Liu was a veteran who had experienced the Long March. When crossing the grasslands, many soldiers fell into the swamp with grayish-black toxic water, and some sacrificed themselves. The rescued soldiers also faced the threat of death as the toxic water soaked through their coarse cloth ration bags, turning the crisp and refreshing highland barley into poison. On the Long March route, Old Liu had no conditions to sew sheepskin ration bags. When liberating Siping, the Kuomintang army's artillery killed a flock of sheep, and Old Liu threw the sheep meat with gunpowder smell into the military pot, making dozens of food bags out of the sheepskin. The sheepskin ration bags followed the soldiers as they fought across Northeast China, liberated Hainan Island, and traversed half of China. When soldiers sacrificed themselves, Old Liu tied the blood-stained ration bags to the waist of new recruits.

  A warrior's ration bag with a bullet sewn on it, some warriors' ration bags are sewn with more than a dozen bullets, majestic and revealing sorrow.

  "Bring enough dry rations for three days, except for warmth and killing tools, throw away everything else!"

  "What's going on? What are we eating and drinking?" Some soldiers didn't understand.

  "Surrender! Our transportation team leader has been replaced, it used to be Chiang Kai-shek, now it's an American." The old soldiers jeered.

  Chen Zizhong, while inspecting the equipment, shouted: "Right, if we capture Thompson it's a submachine gunner, if we capture a machine gun it's a machine gunner, and if one person captures an recoilless cannon, then we're an artillery squad."

  The warriors were freezing terribly, but they laughed loudly.

  The warriors' equipment was meager, and the ceramic jars used for drinking water and soaking instant noodles were barely considered surplus. Thus, fifty-two worn-out ceramic jars stood in formation on the snowy ground.

  Chen Zizhong paced back and forth in front of the warriors, scrutinizing this elite troop that had been tempered to perfection. As he walked, he inadvertently licked his palm, his movements somewhat greedy, and two of the warriors were stunned for a few seconds, one thinking of beef stew with potatoes, the other remembering pork fat stir-fried with cabbage.

  Two warriors looked down in shame for their own thoughts, as the third row had said before, "The third row is not short of mouths, when hungry, bite the American devils."