A depressed and dilapidated village to the north of Gaoyou City exudes a chill in the morning mist. A row of corpses of villagers hanging on tree trunks in front of the village have been dried, and the torn cloth strips are swaying in the wind.
"There are no devils or idiots."
A middle-aged man with dirty and torn clothes had a tense face. He poked half of his head out from behind a field bank and observed for a while, then lowered his voice and gestured behind him.
Soon, messy and heavy footsteps sounded, and more than thirty disheveled Chinese with haggard faces came out of the wormwood where they were hiding.
Their bodies were covered with scars, many of them were still wearing rotten straw sandals in this freezing weather, their feet were scratched and bruised, and they looked extremely weak.
The row of dried corpses hanging on tree trunks at the entrance of the village were completely rotten. They were all corpses of villagers, including men, women, and children.
Seeing these hanging and swaying corpses, this group of weak middle-aged people paused slightly in their steps, but there was no emotion at all on their numb and empty faces. They glanced at them and hurried into the village as if they were escaping.
.
They had seen too many scenes like this along the way. At first they were angry and hateful, but now they are completely numb.
The Japs and puppet troops brutally suppressed and raided villagers who supported the Chinese troops, often killing entire villages.
The corpses of these slaughtered villagers would be hung up to shock the surrounding villagers and local guerrilla forces. The Japanese tried to use this bloody method to intimidate the resistance forces and break their fighting spirit.
But the Japanese made a mistake. China's culture has been passed down for thousands of years, and it has never bowed its head in the face of countless massacres by aliens. How could it lower its head now?
The more bloody the Japanese suppression and massacres, the more they aroused the resistance of the Chinese people and soldiers, because hatred has been buried deep in their hearts.
The usually honest farmers began to fight with the little devils with weapons. In front of the devils, they looked as docile as Mianyang.
But once they encounter a lone Japs, they will definitely attack them in groups, so that Japs soldiers continue to disappear.
Every time a lone Japs disappeared, the Japs' commanders would vent their anger on nearby villages and recruit some suspected suspects to kill them, but it was still difficult to curb their disappearances.
This is like a vicious cycle. The more the Japs kill, the more intense the Chinese people's resistance becomes. The result is that many areas are massacred into no man's land.
"Everyone is looking around to see if there is anything to eat."
Acting company commander Luo Feng weakly ordered a few lightly injured officers and soldiers to look for food, and he took the seriously injured to find a house that was not destroyed and sat down to rest.
They broke out from Gaoyou City after being dispersed. At the beginning, they followed the first guerrilla commander, General Ma Yuren, to storm Gaoyou City. Although the attack was frustrated, the Japanese did not feel comfortable either.
But just as they were preparing to launch a night attack on the Japanese, their guerrilla headquarters encountered a powerful Japanese attack from behind.
Half of the guard battalion of the Guerrilla Command was killed in just half an hour of fighting, and their commander, General Ma Yuren, also died for his country.
Although Luo Feng and other troops who turned around for reinforcements desperately wanted to retain the Japs who attacked their headquarters and avenge the sacrifice of General Ma Yuren.
But the little devils were so powerful that they lost more than two hundred brothers without being able to stop the enemy, and finally allowed the enemy to break through calmly.
As the command structure of the first guerrilla force was attacked by the Japanese, the troops in the Japanese city launched a counterattack. The two sides fought bloody battles under the city for two days. The guerrilla force finally lost strength and was forced to retreat.
During the retreat, they encountered an ambush by a puppet brigade. As a result, the guerrilla troops retreating from Gaoyou City suffered heavy losses and had to break out separately.
While all war zones were launching large-scale counterattacks against the Japs, the battle under Gaoyou City had ended, and the guerrilla forces had ended in a complete defeat.
Luo Feng and his small force, which fought bloody battles for several days, were ambushed by the puppet army and tore a bloody road. They also gathered some skirmishers along the way, and the number at their peak was more than a hundred.
However, in the battle with the pursuing puppet troops, after several battles, the remaining thirty or so people were all scarred and hungry, and they no longer had the ability to fight.
They were originally troops heading south from the southern Jiangsu area, but now they are being chased by the puppet army and its search troops and have gone to nowhere.
The villages and towns along the way were either guarded by puppet troops or burned into ruins, leaving them unable to find a place to ask for directions.
Seeing that there was a village here, they didn't care about anything now and wanted to look around the village to see if they could find something to fill their stomachs.
The village was dilapidated and dead, with burnt-black ruins and broken walls everywhere. The lightly wounded were digging through the ruins, searching for anything to eat.
However, this place has been brutally raided once by the Japanese and puppet troops. It can be said that no humans or animals were left behind. They searched several rice vats, but they were all empty.
"You little devil, you mother, didn't even leave us a grain of food..."
Some of the lightly wounded people roared in despair and kicked over the rice vats, wanting to vent their anger. If they couldn't find anything to eat, they would either freeze to death or starve to death.
"There is something!" When this brother was holding his head with a look of despair on his face, one brother saw out of the corner of his eye that there was a wooden board under the overturned rice vat.
The Chinese people have suffered too much, so they have learned to hide things and hide the most precious things.
Several wounded guerrillas showed surprise in their eyes and hurriedly moved the wooden boards away. This was a small cellar for storing food.
Soon they found about fifty or sixty kilograms of rice in the area. Seeing this bag of rice, their gray faces were filled with life again, and some even cried with joy.
"Let's go, take it and cook it quickly."
They were so hungry that they couldn't wait to eat. They had forgotten the last time they ate.
"This is the food that the villagers have hidden. If we eat it, they might starve to death if they come back without food." Some injured people stopped taking everything away.
Some people sneered at the idea of leaving food behind: "Didn't you see that everyone in the village was killed by the devils, and there is no one left alive."
"Who says there are no more people alive? What if there are people hiding or escaping early? We can't finish the job, we must leave half of it behind." Some of the wounded argued with their grain bags.
During the stalemate among the people, acting company commander Luo Feng heard the quarrel and came over. When he saw the food bags in everyone's hands, his blood-stained and blackened face lit up.
"Keep half of it and hide it, take out the other half and cook it." Luo Feng thought for a moment and then made his decision.
Seeing the acting company commander speak, the wounded soldiers stopped arguing, found a wooden barrel, poured half of the rice out.
The other half was put back into the cellar, the empty rice vat was put back on and covered, restored to its original state, and then he hurriedly left with the rice in the barrel.
Soon, smoke began to appear in the village, and amidst the gurgling sound of boiling water, the sweet smell of rice filled the air. The hungry soldiers gathered around the iron pot for cooking, swallowing their saliva one by one.