Chapter 6: The First Victory
Hu Weidong's eyes rolled, and he immediately had an idea. Since everyone was dressed as militia members anyway, he imitated the mannerisms of that short, chubby guy he saw earlier and slowly walked towards the group of beasts who were just finishing up and preparing to leave. He called out in a bad mood, "Damn it, you're late! Let them snatch the first ones, are there any live women left? Share some with us brothers to vent our anger!"
"Get out, we're still relying on them to make money. What if you bunch of rascals get one of them killed? Who's going to compensate me?" The head of the rural militia team replied bluntly, "However, as long as you can afford it, take these women away. There are a few more unopened ones over there..."
"Oh? Name a price." Hu Weidong turned his head and winked at the team members, his right hand reaching into his pocket as if to take out money, but suddenly pulled out a pistol and pressed it against the temple of the leader of the returning village militia. At the same time, he kicked away the machine gunner beside him with one foot, stretched out his other hand to grab the machine gun, and shouted loudly, "No one is allowed to move!"
"Think you can just take our food? No way! Let's fight them...", Unexpectedly, the leader of that bandit group was not only greedy but also had a ruthless and decisive side. Just as he was about to struggle, Hu Weidong shot him in the head...
When he spoke, it was too late. Hu Weidong dodged the first few bullets with a familiar roll, and his machine gun was already firing at full force. The enemy's other machine gunner was immediately shot to pieces, and the three people next to him were also killed by Hu Weidong in the same instant.
As soon as the fight started, he took out the two most threatening firepower points of the militia team. Hu Weidong didn't relax at all, and while dodging the enemy's counterattack, he quickly searched for several machine gun magazines from the machine gunner's corpse, replaced them with ease, and avoided a few bullets heading towards him on an iron plate bridge. He immediately fired a long burst of shots, and several soldiers fell down again. At this time, the militiamen had also raised their guns and launched an attack. Although their marksmanship needed to be tempered, they couldn't withstand the large number of people and the close distance. One round of shooting knocked down many people. After running out of bullets, the militiamen immediately turned their guns over according to Hu Weidong's teachings (no bayonets were seized before), and fiercely smashed the enemy with the gun stock. Although this militia team was not weak in strength, most Chinese troops at that time generally feared the white blade war of seeing red. Now they were headless, and instantly collapsed in front of the militiamen's fierce white blade warfare. Coupled with the intimidation of Hu Weidong's machine gun, they quickly lost their will to fight and surrendered one after another.
This battle was very short, and only three people were injured. Among the women and children tied up on one side, only one person unfortunately died from a stray bullet, which made Hu Weidong quite satisfied. This militia team was well-equipped and had many people, and for the militiamen who had little combat experience, it was already very good to be able to annihilate the enemy completely, let alone achieve such a complete victory?
This village is not much smaller than Liujiacun, but now the male villagers have almost all been killed. Perhaps the villagers should thank this bandit gang for their greed, at least the women and children who were unable to resist basically survived, although if it weren't for the militia team happening upon them, their future fate might be worse than death...
"Don't be afraid, we are the Red Army sent by Chairman Mao, and we dress like this for convenience in action." Hu Weidong comforted the women and children with kind words, and had his team members quickly untie them. Since he already knew about the great man's high prestige in Xingguo County, he was naturally happy to use this to quickly calm people down. Anyway, cheating once is cheating, and cheating a hundred times is also cheating, he thought to himself that having many lice doesn't make you itch...
“Why did you come so late? We've suffered so much!”, everyone burst into tears, only a few children looked around in confusion, completely not understanding why the adults were crying. At this time, the more than 30 prisoners also underwent screening through mutual accusations and denunciations after being separated and guarded. Among them, three seriously injured people and nine extremely guilty ones were executed, while the remaining 21 were to be taken back to Liujiacun for thought reform, striving to transform into militia fighters. After all, they had received some military training and had some combat experience. As long as the thought reform was successful, the fighting capacity of the "liberated soldiers" would actually be stronger than that of the newly recruited militiamen. Of course, those who did not know the times or harbored ulterior motives, Hu Weidong would not show mercy. Later, except for the 15 people who "sincerely repented" and followed Hu Weidong, the other six were executed one after another on his orders. Anyway, even if they had relatively lighter crimes, according to the laws of peacetime, it was enough to sentence them to death. Hu Weidong gave them a chance to redeem themselves, but they did not show gratitude, so he might as well kill them all to prevent future harm to the people...
Because the village has basically no young and middle-aged labor force, the remaining 170 or so women and children are left behind, and Hu Weidong can only end today's task here. He brought them back to Liujiacun to settle down. In order to cover up their tracks, Hu Weidong asked the self-defense team members to tie up these rescued women and children again, pretending to be a victorious militia returning home with spoils of war, so as not to encounter any obstruction on the road. As a result, there was no obstruction all the way, and they encountered a militia returning home along the way. The other side also said a few dirty words from afar, but did not come over to entangle them...
This battle yielded a rich harvest, including four shotguns, forty well-made Hanyang Type 88 rifles and two light machine guns that made everyone laugh. Perhaps because of the two machine guns, the bullets brought back by the returning team were quite numerous, with more than three thousand rifle cartridges, nearly two thousand machine gun cartridges, and over two hundred pistol cartridges...
Apart from ammunition and money, the militia also seized a large amount of goods. Adding to what they had seized in the initial battle at Liu's village, the militia now has over 2,000 yuan worth of various currencies, four small gold bars (each weighing one tael, equivalent to 31.25 grams today, exchangeable for 30-40 yuan), over a dozen pieces of gold and silver jewelry, tens of kilograms of copperware, over 300,000 kilograms of grain, hundreds of heads of livestock, and even an antique pocket watch that was quite valuable at the time. However, thinking about how most of these were looted by those beasts, Hu Weidong couldn't help but wonder how many lives had been lost because of them. He wasn't happy about it, but he also wouldn't be foolish enough to try to find the original owners one by one. For the militia at this time, time was life. Therefore, over 1,000 yuan in cash and four small gold bars that could be used quickly were kept by Hu Weidong for the militia, while other seized goods were distributed among the surviving villagers...
