War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 331 Live Together or Die Together ([-]-in-[-] Update)

Seeing that he was about to be surrounded by German soldiers several times larger than himself, Wei Ran looked left and right, retreated a few meters under the cover of his hiding place, and crawled to the side of another pine tree through a naturally formed depression. Behind.

Putting the semi-automatic rifle back into the metal book, Wei Ran took off the submachine gun on his shoulder, leaned out from behind the pine tree, aimed at the soldiers who were still firing at their previous hiding place, and pulled the trigger.

The intensive firepower that was different from the rifle not only swept the two German soldiers, but also attracted most of the firepower, while the remaining half subconsciously lay down on the ground or hid behind the pine tree.

Taking advantage of this rare opportunity, Daniela dragged the panicked Nurse Lano down, quickly changed positions, and then fired one after another, knocking down two German soldiers who were suppressing Wei Ran.

But even though they cooperated with each other in this way, the remaining enemies quickly divided into two groups, each hiding behind the pine tree, and for a while, the three of Wei Ran couldn't find a chance to fire.

So far, the exchange of fire between the two sides has also entered a stalemate stage, but this is not a good thing for Wei Ran and others. Once the other party gets reinforcements if it is delayed for too long, they will not last long at all.

However, at the edge of the battlefield where the three of them could not see, Revley and artillery observer Andre, who had already left, returned to the battlefield in a circle.

"Andre, if we rush over and throw a few grenades in the past, we will definitely help them!" Revley said in a low voice.

"How many people can the grenade kill?"

Andre handed the binoculars in his hand to the former, pointed in the direction and said, "Did you see those two half-track motorcycles? Let's touch them and suppress the Germans with the machine guns on them."

Raffle glanced at the two motorcycles that were still rampaging through the forest with corpses on them, and then at the two German soldiers chasing the two motorcycles. After returning the binoculars to Andre, he was about to run forward.

"wait first"

Andre grabbed Revley, "Don't worry, let the two Germans catch up with the motorcycle first, and when they fire, they must have their backs facing us. It will be much safer for us to go over then."

"But."

"Danila they are not fools"

Andre continued without waiting for the other party to finish speaking, "There are only two German soldiers, and they are each chasing a motorcycle. So don't worry, they can only fire on the spot, and it is impossible to drive the motorcycle back to the battlefield."

Just as Andre predicted, in less than 2 minutes, the two German soldiers had already caught up with the uncontrolled motorcycle on the edge of the battlefield.

After the two of them pushed the corpses of their companions aside, they directly manipulated the machine gun mounted above and began to suppress the hiding places of Wei Ran, Daniela and others.

The more ferocious firepower than the submachine gun immediately made the situation of Wei Ran and the three of them more dangerous. With the suppression of these two machine guns, the rest of the German soldiers were able to come out of their hiding places and quickly shorten the distance between the two sides.

Seeing this, Andre immediately took off the radio that had been carried on his shoulder, picked up the submachine gun and rushed towards the two half-track motorcycles with Revery.

Thanks to the huge noise cover when the machine gun was fired, the two of them did not find them until they were less than 10 meters away from the two soldiers manipulating the machine gun.

Without hesitation at all, Andre raised the submachine gun in his hand and fired two bursts, easily eliminating the two machine gunners.

The moment the machine gun fire ceased, the German soldiers who were only 60 meters away from Wei Ran and the others immediately hid behind the pine trees, and some soldiers even pulled out the wooden-handled grenades attached to their belts.

However, when Revley and Andre stepped on the corpses of the German soldiers and jumped on the half-track motorcycles, and pulled the triggers of the two machine guns one after another, dense bullets immediately penetrated into the bodies of these German soldiers from the side. , and then rolled and drilled out of the body and chiseled into the trunk of the pine tree where they were hiding.

Wei Ran and Danila, who were always paying attention to the battlefield, felt the pressure drop suddenly, and immediately came out of the hiding place at the same time, rounded their arms and threw a lemon grenade that they had prepared long ago into the distance!
"boom!"

After two explosions that were almost side by side, the German soldiers who had almost surrounded them just now changed their roles and became the surrounded side.

After Wei Ran, Daniela and Nurse Lano solved the last two German soldiers with the help of Revley and Andre, the two parties finally got together again.

Daniela complained while pressing the bullets in the semi-automatic rifle in his hand, "Didn't I tell you to run quickly? Why are you back?"

"If we don't come back, you will be caught by the Germans. Who will protect me then?"

Andre took it for granted, "Besides, with the three of you, without our help, do you really think you can solve so many Germans?"

Nurse Lano waved her hand, "Stop talking about it now, we'd better get out of here quickly."

"Gather their weapons first, it won't take long." The postman Raffle said hastily, "With so many weapons, they might be useful in the future."

"Then hurry up!" Daniela said, and had already bent down to remove an MP40 submachine gun from the body of a German soldier.

"Raffle, where's our horse-drawn sledge?" Wei Ran asked while taking weapons and ammunition from a corpse.

"I tied it far away, so let's bring it back!" Raffle said, carrying a bloody Mauser on his shoulder, and ran away without a trace.

"Speaking of which, where did these Germans come from?" Daniela muttered while gathering up the captured weapons.

"It doesn't matter where it came from"

Nurse Lano said as she untied the water bottle from the belt of a dead German soldier, "The more important thing now is how we can escape their pursuit. There are Germans around here."

"This kind of thing will cause a headache later, I'll go back to the radio station first." Andre said and walked to the hiding place in the distance.

After the three of Wei Ran collected all the weapons, ammunition, food and drink from the corpses of the German soldiers around them, Raffle also ran back with a horse-drawn sledge.

"What about the two half-track motorcycles?" Andre asked after carrying a blood-stained MG34 general-purpose machine gun onto the sledge.

"Find a place to hide, or just blow it up." Daniela said without thinking, "Of course, you can also hide it, and hide a grenade inside by the way."

"Then hide it and put a few grenades in it by the way."

While Andre was speaking, he had skillfully opened the engine hood, stuffed several wooden-handled grenades captured not long ago, and then carefully tied the fuse of one of the grenades to the drive belt. .

Daniela followed suit. After the two set up the booby trap, they immediately got on the sledge, climbed over the distant slope and escaped from the scene of the firefight as quickly as possible.

All the way over the slope cautiously through the dense bushes, when an open space with an area of ​​only five or six hundred square meters suddenly appeared in front of it, a woman's voice sounded from behind a pine tree not far away.

"Revri, it's me, Yuna! Don't shoot, I'm coming out!"

"Come out! We've put down our guns." Raffles quickly yelled at the horse to stop as he responded.

Almost on foot, a girl who had been rescued in the mine came out from behind a thick pine tree.

The dress of this girl is also interesting. She is wearing a set of loose clothes, a German helmet on her head, and a Bobosha submachine gun in her hand.

"Why are you here?"

Revley asked in confusion, "Where's Mitya? And Joya, is he back?"

"Mijia is taking care of Joya, he is injured." The girl named Yuna pointed to the clearing behind her worriedly, "Joya was shot, and he escaped back last night."

"Come on, let's go and have a look!" After Raffle finished speaking, he immediately shook the reins and steered the sledge to finish the last few tens of meters.

In the middle of this not-so-large open space, there is a semi-underground shack made of logs. The size of this shack is slightly larger than the one that Wei Ran and others saw when they first met Qiao Ya. , There is even a small window on the roof, and the sunlight from above happens to shine on this window less than one meter square.

Everyone rushed into the shack that was warmed and brightened by the sun, and immediately saw Joya lying on the wooden bed, and another girl, Miya, was half kneeling by the bed, wiping Joya's forehead with a wet towel and palms.

Without waiting for anyone to ask, the girl named Mitya took the initiative to say, "He was shot in the thigh, and he started to have a fever this morning."

Wei Ran leaned over and unwrapped the coarse cloth wrapping the wound, and then heaved a sigh of relief. There was some redness and swelling around the scorched bullet hole, and the black blood around the bullet hole was also flowing very slowly.

"The bullet should still be inside," Nurse Lano said from the side, "it should already be inflamed."

"Indeed." Wei Ran nodded, "Show me your medical kit."

Hearing this, Lano immediately took off the medical bag on his shoulder and opened it. Although there were not many instruments and medicines in the medical bag, it was barely enough to support this minor operation.

Without wasting any time, Wei Ran and Nurse Lano invited the unrelated people out of the shed, and then cooperated with each other to cut open the wound on Joya's thigh, and successfully completed this small operation that was not too big.

After meticulously suturing the wound, Wei Ran found an excuse to send Nurse Lano away to get his backpack on the sledge, quickly took out the medical kit from the metal book, took a few penicillin and morphine into his pocket, and immediately took it back medical kit.

After giving Qiao Ya a shot of penicillin, Wei Ran put away the injection bottle, and finished the final bandaging without haste.

Before Lano came back, Wei Ran picked up the bullet he took out from Qiao Ya's wound not long ago, and took a closer look at it through the sunlight from the window above his head.

Although the first half of this bullet has been deformed, it can still be vaguely identified as a 9mm pistol bullet through the tail of the second half.

The biggest suspect for firing this bullet is undoubtedly the MP40 submachine gun equipped by German soldiers.In other words, Joya also encountered German soldiers in the past few days?So the patrol team they encountered just now came to chase Joya?
After thinking for a moment, Wei Ran took the bullet and left the shack, and asked the girl named Yuna carefully.

It was also through Yuna that everyone knew that after they parted with Joya, the latter not only led the two girls to ambush the German patrol with animal traps, but also led them in the wrong direction.

No wonder it took so long to ambush the German artillery positions and didn't meet the patrols. It turned out that Qiao Ya helped them attract the firepower!Wei Ran and the others looked at each other, not knowing what to say for a while.If it weren't for Joya, they might not even have time to call for artillery, and the German patrols would be running for their lives like rabbits chasing rabbits.

And according to another girl, Miya, Joya once told what happened to him after he came back. He planned to come back after leading the German patrol to the depths of the forest, but unexpectedly encountered a scattered German patrol soldier. .

And the gunshot wound on his leg was shot by the German soldier with a submachine gun in a panic.Correspondingly, Qiao Ya also used the Bobo Sha sent to him by Wei Ran to deal with the soldier.In Mi Jia's words, since Joya came back with a gunshot wound, he has been showing off about it.

"I'm afraid we have to change places." Daniela and Wei Ran said in almost no particular order.

"It's really necessary to change the place." Artillery observer Andre nodded in agreement, "I just wiped out one of their patrols, and I'm afraid other Germans will catch up soon."

"But where are we going to escape?" the girl named Yuna asked blankly.

"Of course there is a place to escape"

Revley gave the answer confidently. Seeing that everyone was looking at him, he immediately explained, "There are at least a dozen of this kind of shacks in this forest, and they are all built by rangers and hunters. Yes, as long as Qiao Ya wakes up, he will definitely take us to a more hidden place."

"You don't know?" asked the girl named Mitya.

"I'm not Joya"

Revley spread his hands, "Joya is familiar with every tree in this forest, but I can't do it, I will only come over to grab a meal when he catches prey, and help him sell the animal skins by the way. "

"So the only problem now is how to get rid of the German patrol behind you?" Daniela said and looked at Andre.

The latter thought for a while, and said helplessly, "The best way I can think of is to find an excuse to let the artillery on our position loosen the soil around here, or simply fire a round of incendiary bombs."

"That would burn us too"

Daniela shook his head helplessly, and turned to Raffle and asked, "Is there a river near here? We need to find a river to cover up our tracks and smell."

"There is a small stream more than a hundred meters away." Revley gestured with his hands, "but it's only so wide."

"That's not enough"

Daniela shook his head, "Well, let's get out of here now, and plant some trip mines near here by the way, and when Joya wakes up, ask him if there is anything he can do."

Hearing this, Revley and Andre immediately got into the shack, moved Joya out who hadn't regained consciousness, and prepared to put it on the sledge.

"Can't use the sledge"

Wei Ran, who had been silent for a while, said, "The marks it left behind are too obvious. I suspect that the patrol team we met just now followed the marks left by Joya's sledge to catch up."

"With a stretcher?"

Seeing that Wei Ran nodded, Revley immediately signaled Andre to help temporarily put Joya on the sledge, while he went back into the shack, and soon came out with an axe, and went straight into the forest.

While Raffle was making a stretcher, Wei Ran and the others, with the help of the two girls, picked and packed some seemingly useful things into bundles and tied them to the horse's back. By the way, they also used the hand grenades they had just captured , A large number of accompanying mines were arranged inside and outside the shack.

When they were done with all this, Revley also made a stretcher out of two wooden sticks and twine and a blanket.And those two girls also took the initiative to undertake the work of carrying the stretcher.

Led by Raffle, the crowd led the heavy-duty draft horse and the chubby female donkey, and continued to move toward the depths of the forest.

At the end of the team, Wei Ran and Daniela, who used to be a hunter, also cleaned up the traces left by them during their march by their own abilities.

"Victor, where did you learn it?" Daniela asked as she sprinkled a few fallen leaves on the bushes she walked by.

"I learned from a forest farm." Wei Ran casually said, "I used to be a veterinarian in that forest farm."

"I used to be a hunter"

Daniela sighed full of nostalgia, "My favorite thing to do before was to go to the hibernating brown bears with Lano in winter. Those big guys like meat mountains can not only provide expensive bear skins, but also bear fat. It can also be sold for a high price, and even the bear meat will not be wasted, the meat of one bear is enough for me and the Lano family to eat for a week."

"Why do you want to join the army?" Wei Ran asked without beginning or end.

"The recruiter passed by my door that day, and I joined."

Daniela said as a matter of course, "How can such a thing need a reason?"

"Lano must have a reason to join the army, right?" Wei Ran asked without raising his head, as if all his attention was focused on eliminating the traces left by everyone.

"She never got my letter, and then she signed up for nursing school, and after a few months of training, she was sent to the battlefield."

Daniela sighed, "I didn't expect to meet Lano here, let alone this silly girl would come to the front line to find me."

"It must have taken a lot of hard work and hard work for her to be assigned to be near you from the nurse training school."

While speaking, Wei Ran put a lump of donkey dung into the sack, and covered the conspicuous horseshoe prints with a handful of fallen leaves.

"It's like she insisted on following me to die this time." Daniela shook her head helplessly, "She can always persuade others easily, and she won't be easily persuaded by anyone."

Wei Ran said with half teasing and half blessing, "I can foresee that your future life will definitely be very happy."

"Let's survive this mission first."

Speaking of which, Daniela stood up, opened the corner of the cloak, showed a sunflower-shaped gold brooch on the inside, and said in a low voice, "This is a wedding gift I prepared for her. If this If she survives for the first time, I must help her wear it on my own during our wedding. If you are alive then, you must help me take pictures."

"No problem!" Wei Ran was stunned for a while after seeing the brooch, and then made a promise, "It's no problem if I help you publish that photo in the newspaper!"

"Then it's settled!" After showing off the brooch, Daniela hurriedly fastened the buttons on the cloak again, and while cleaning up the traces, she changed the topic to other places.

During the chatting between the two, everyone walked farther and farther away. When the sun set and the fog shrouded the forest again, Joya, who was lying on a stretcher, finally woke up, and successfully pointed them to the nearest hunter's hut. s position.

However, before the postman Leif who was walking in the front changed direction, Andre, who had already turned on the radio at the same time as the sun was setting, suddenly called everyone to stop, and at the same time his face showed disbelief. Sluggish color.

"What's wrong?" Daniela asked nervously.

"From the news from our position, the artillery positions added by the Germans may not be the one that was blown up by us in the morning." Andre said tremblingly, "Just before dark, another of our positions was destroyed by the Germans." The cannon exploded."

"Which position?" Nurse Lano and Revley asked in unison.

"It's not the position that Valentin is in charge of, but the position on their right, the 673rd Regiment."

Andre swallowed, and continued with a pale face, "Almost all the trenches over 200 meters were blown up, and now the Germans have launched an attack there."

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief at first, but then tightened their nerves.

It is undeniable that people are selfish. There are too many people they are familiar with in the position that Company Commander Valentin is in charge of. It is good news that the positions where these people are located have not been bombarded.But once the position bombarded by the Germans is completely torn apart and collapsed, more people they care about will have to bear the pain caused by the war.

"Andre, what can we do?" Daniela asked firmly, and even Nurse Lano, who was leaning on his arms, sat up straight and picked up the sniper rifle beside him again.

"Looking for other artillery positions of the Germans"

After turning off the radio, Andre said decisively, "The Germans picked a good time. Now that the fog is so heavy, I'm afraid we can only rely on us to find their artillery positions."

While talking, Andre opened the map he carried with him, searched it with a pencil, circled an area and said, "According to the preliminary observation and calculations on the other side of the position, the German position should be at this area."

"Where are we now?" Wei Ran was the first to ask.

Hearing this, everyone, including Andre, set their sights on the postman Revley.

The latter moved to the edge of the map to look at it, took the pencil in Andre's hand, pointed to a location on the map and said with certainty, "This is probably the location."

"It's not too far away," Andre murmured, turning his head to look at Qiao Ya who was still lying on a stretcher not far away.

"Don't worry about us"

Joya sat up with difficulty, and grinned, "The Germans couldn't find us, and it's not too far from the hunter's lodge. It won't take much time for the three of us to walk there slowly."

"We have to hurry up," Andre urged, frowning. "We have to find their artillery position before dawn."

"Lano, you go with Joya, he needs to be taken care of." Daniela said abruptly.

"Let the reporter comrades stay." Nurse Lano said without thinking.

Qiao Ya obviously didn't realize what it meant to stay and take care of herself, so she said without thinking, "No, I won't"

Before he could finish speaking, Raffle poked his arm lightly to signal him to shut up.

"As Joya said, he doesn't need to take care of him."

Lano said that he had already stood up, took down the kettle on his waist and took a sip of the vodka in it, then handed it to Daniela, and while the other party took the kettle, he turned to Andre and said, "Okay, we Let's go now."

Andre sighed helplessly, "To be honest, I don't want to get involved in the affairs of the two of you, but you'd better decide as soon as possible, we don't have much time."

After finishing speaking, Andre simply stood up, and after identifying the direction with the compass on his wrist, he immediately took a step.Seeing this, Wei Ran patted Revley on the shoulder, then got up and chased after him.

"I'm sorry, my friend." Revley said apologetically, "I have more important things to do now, and I can only rely on you, Yuna, and Mijia. I hope you can survive."

"Go, go." Joya patted Revley on the shoulder, "Take the horse, you will definitely need it. We have that donkey as long as we have. I hope you can survive."

"If I can survive, I will go to the hunter's hut you mentioned to find you." After Raffle finished, he stood up and untied the harness horse, and took the rein to catch up with the man who was about to walk into the mist. Wei Ran and Andre, whose figure could no longer be seen.

"Let's go too"

Lano looked at Daniela, "Before we set off, we agreed that if we can survive, we will hold a wedding at Company Commander Valentin's position. If we can't survive, we can at least die together."

After a moment of silence, Daniela sighed, took Lano's hand and pulled him up, "Then live together, or die together.

(End of this chapter)