Chapter 1058: Rootless Duckweed

“Your Excellency, General! Brigade Commander Akino has just been killed in action on his position, along with 50 wounded soldiers!” The chief of staff, his head bowed, reported to Major General Ishida, who was standing at the mouth of a cave, looking down at the smoke and flames that covered the Japanese positions. “The Nakamura Battalion, which is guarding the port, is on its way. If they can stop the Americans from occupying the field hospital, we can still hold the line.”

“The airfield on that side of the island needs to be demolished as soon as possible…” Major General Ishida said, lowering his binoculars. He ordered his men in a flat tone, “Also, all supplies, if they can’t be used, are to be destroyed immediately. The caves where the food is buried… all soldiers who know the locations must be ‘shattered like jade.’ You will supervise this personally!”

“Your Excellency, General! As long as we can hold out until night, we can use the Americans’ weakness in night combat to counter-attack and retake our positions!” the chief of staff urged anxiously. “We still have more than 2,000 men in reserve. We can still hold on! Your Excellency, General, please don’t give up.”

“Three, two, one.” At the port, the Japanese sappers were counting down for the demolition. Takemoto Tarō clutched his rifle in a sandbag emplacement, watching as the smallest pier in the distance was lifted a dozen meters into the sky by explosives, then shattered into pieces and fell onto the nearby sea, sending up a massive column of water.

“Pier 1 is demolished! Begin demolition on Pier 2!” the commander of the sapper unit shouted in the distance. His men, carrying boxes of tools, ran to Pier 2, where the holes for the charges had already been drilled, and began to connect the fuzes to the prepared explosives.

“The stones we carried with our own hands, piled up there, are about to be blown up,” Takemoto Tarō muttered to himself. The comrade who had carried stones with him had already died on the position. The image of his mangled lower body, and his dying plea for Tarō to find his lost foot, was something he couldn’t forget.

To watch the pier he had built with his own hands be so easily blown up was a very unpleasant thing. Takemoto Tarō held his rifle, watching the sappers bustling on the pier, who from time to time had to dodge the American planes flying over. The anti-aircraft guns nearby had all been taken by the Nakamura Battalion. That was the only weapon they had to use against tanks, so the pier now had no air defense and could only let the American planes run rampant.

We are fighting and bleeding here. Will our homeland really be better off for it? Takemoto Tarō thought gloomily, watching his sapper comrades in the distance, who were fumbling with the wires under the harassment of the American fighters.

At the same time, in the rolling mountains of the distant Caucasus, by the side of a highway, a Soviet partisan was lurking behind a patch of weeds, his eyes warily fixed on the end of the road in the distance.

A German truck drove over slowly from that direction. On the truck bed stood four fully-armed guards, and in the cab sat two more German soldiers. German vehicles often passed along this road, but many of the vehicles that passed were packed with fully-armed German soldiers.

From the radio, they had heard Stalin’s call to all Soviet partisans behind enemy lines. The great leader had demanded that they do everything possible to destroy the enemy’s transport lines, to support the combat operations on the main front. They had gathered all the help they could find and were lurking here, hoping to cut this supply line, which was very important to the German army.

Until the Germans could clear and open the oil transport railway line from Baku to Saint Rudolph, this highway was an important supply line for the German army in the Caucasus. To be able to create trouble for this supply line was clearly a very beneficial thing for the Soviet Union.

So this partisan slowly aimed the muzzle of his gun at the distant German truck. Finally, at a very suitable position, he pulled the trigger.

Crack! With the sound of the gunshot, the German soldier in the driver’s seat clutched his chest, cried out, and then slumped over the steering wheel. The truck’s horn, pressed down by the already-dead German, began to blare, and the German soldiers on the truck were immediately thrown into a panic.

In the end, this truck overturned directly on the road. The food and some of the ammunition it was carrying were scattered in a ditch on the side of the road. The German soldiers on the truck were thrown into the ditch as the truck overturned and were soon surrounded by the Soviet partisans who had charged over.

Crack! A German soldier, using the overturned truck as cover, fired a shot at a partisan in plain civilian clothes. The running partisan immediately clutched his chest and fell to the ground. The German soldier frantically worked his bolt, chambering a new round. But he was immediately cut down by the surrounding Soviet partisans and fell on his back, dead, in the spot where he had fired from.

The German soldier in the passenger seat had just climbed out of the truck. He had only just stuck his head out of the window when he was hit in the head by a bullet and hung, face up, on the roof of the overturned truck, his two hands dangling powerlessly. Another German at the back of the truck had been crushed by the overturning vehicle. Only his two legs and a pool of blood could be seen.

The remaining two German soldiers quickly threw their weapons to the ground and raised their hands high. They repeated the word “surrender” over and over in German, their terrified eyes looking at the large group of partisans who were pointing their weapons at them.

Crack! A partisan, without the slightest hesitation, pulled the trigger of his weapon. A bullet accurately struck one of the surrendering Germans in the chest. The other’s body shuddered, and then he fell backward with the force of the bullet.

The other German soldier watched as his comrade was shot. Before he could even react, his own head was shattered by a shot, and he also toppled into the ditch. All six of the Germans who had been escorting the truck were thus killed in this nameless place. The Soviet partisans began to rummage through the things on the truck, taking as many useful things as they could.

A partisan on lookout in the distance began to gesture frequently. And so these men, no longer lingering over the already-plundered truck, picked up some flour sacks and baskets of vegetables and ran towards the woods on the side of the road. This ambush, for them, had been very successful. At the very least, what they had done for their motherland was something worth cheering about.

A German armored patrol car drove over. The German soldiers inside had clearly spotted the overturned truck on the road. And so this armored car stopped, its 20mm cannon aiming at any place that might pose a threat.

“Calling command! We’ve found one of our own trucks on the road. There are soldiers killed in action. We need support.” There were only three German soldiers in the armored car. They clearly had no intention of risking getting out to check this already-looted battlefield. To deal with this kind of situation required caution, because no one could be sure if those partisans would come back.

“This is Route 6 defense command. Our men will be there soon. Please maintain your alert status!” the German commander in the armored recon vehicle’s headset heard the voice of the duty officer from the distant command post.

Soon, two wheeled-armored vehicles, covering a truck full of soldiers, arrived at the scene. The German army began to set up a perimeter, and then to carefully examine the traces at the scene that had not been erased in time. These things were not of much help in fighting the partisans, but they could help the German army to confirm the approximate scale of the partisans in the vicinity.

“About 40 men. It’s a large group,” a German sergeant said, looking at the chaotic footprints. He walked around for a bit and then reported to the NCO who was leading the team. “It should be the same group that attacked the truck last time. Their numbers have grown. It seems they’ve gathered some scattered routed soldiers.”

“One of them was killed,” the sergeant said, pointing to a pool of blood by the side of the truck, and the long drag marks. “These people took their comrade’s body, but because our patrol car came too quickly, they didn’t have time to deal with the traces they left behind.”

“Strengthen the patrols and search in this vicinity…” the leading NCO ordered with resignation. “Notify battalion headquarters. We need support.”

The partisans, carrying flour and holding vegetables, returned to their village. This was their stronghold, and also the home of many of them. If it weren’t for this village, they would have no way to hold out in these mountains. Most of the things they had looted were to be distributed to the villagers who supported them.

But when they reached the entrance of the village, they found that this place was not the same as when they had left. The village entrance, which had in the past been lively, was empty. At a time when they should have been lighting their fires to cook, not a single chimney was letting out any smoke. These partisans cautiously approached the village, only to find that all the people here had mysteriously disappeared.

They found a dozen or so bodies of elderly villagers in the village. These old people were all the oldest in the village. There was one survivor who had been deliberately left behind. He was digging a grave for his dead neighbor.

“It was the Germans! The Germans took them all away,” the old man said, his face expressionless. He didn’t even stop his movements as he dug in the ground with a wooden stick. “They said there were partisans active in the vicinity, and that everyone had to go with them. We didn’t want to go at first, so they killed the old ones.”

“Those bastards! This is to cut off our roots!” one of the partisans was so angry he almost threw the basket of vegetables in his hand to the ground. The rest of the men were even more dejected—now they were rootless duckweed. It seemed it had become even easier for the Germans to find them.

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