It was dusk again, and the cold sun no longer had the heat of summer. Even the sunlight felt cold when it shone on people.
The sunlight cast long shadows across the forest, and within this light and shadow, Shang Zhen said, "Leave the horses and mules in the woods."
"What are you doing here?" Hu Zhuzi asked curiously.
"We have to give some compensation to those ordinary people. If we hadn't been fighting there, their homes might not have been destroyed." Shang Zhen replied.
"Tsk, you are so kind-hearted. We are helping the common people fight the Japanese, shouldn't they pay a little?" Qin Chuan didn't quite agree with Shang Zhen's statement.
Now everyone likes Shang Zhen very much, and more or less accepts that Shang Zhen is their leader.
But this does not mean that everything Shang Zhen said is effective.
If a team commander wants to win the support of his followers, he must have not only his own strength but also discipline and authority. Shang Zhen undoubtedly lacks the latter two.
"Stop saying these things to get yourself into trouble!" Old Huo, who was still within Kaba's sight, spoke up for Shang Zhen. "What do the common people want? They just want to live in peace and quiet. The Japanese burned down their homes. Do you think they paid a small price?"
As soon as Old Huo spoke, Qin Chuan fell silent.
The reason why Qin Chuan refuted Shangzhan's opinion was simply because he thought it would be nice to kill one of the mules and horses and eat their meat.
But no matter what, he couldn't refute what Old Huo said. If he dared to refute what Old Huo said, Qiu Bo and his gang would beat him up!
Old Huotou is not just an old bearded man, he is the ancestor of bearded men, and he is also the ancestor of these old soldiers in their company!
Shang Zhen and his men won a victory, so naturally they wanted to escape to the mountains.
But when it comes to escaping to the mountains and forests, they won't go too far.
They were already satisfied with the surprise attack on the Japanese artillery positions. Now they just hoped to encounter Liu Chengtuan's men who broke out of the encirclement. For them, it would be icing on the cake, and they would have more to explain when they got to the higher-ups later.
Because they were not hiding too far away, they saw black smoke rising from the direction of the small village. Without asking, they knew that it was the Japanese army who had heard the news and burned down the village after finding it.
They now need to spend the night in the mountains, and those villagers who were driven out of the village by them must also need to spend the night in the mountains. How could Shang Zhen feel at ease about this?
Only Lao Huotou and Wang Laomao know what they think about Shang Zhen's order, but on the surface they will definitely uphold Shang Zhen's authority.
After that, there were no more objections, and everyone stayed in the forest, eating and looking at the spoils.
But after all, it was already dusk in junior high school, the sky quickly darkened, the sentries were all posted, and everyone lay down on the thick dead leaves in the woods.
Although it was early winter and the temperature was already below zero, they had all changed into cotton military uniforms thanks to Captain Liu, so the temperature was still bearable.
Someone yawned in the darkness. It was Qian Chuaner.
"Oh, I'm so sleepy, my eyelids are drooping, let's go to sleep!" Qian Chuaner sighed.
The most mischievous person among them was Qian Chuan'er. When the Japanese artillery position was retreating, he actually took advantage of the situation and brought back a yellow woolen coat of the Japanese army.
It was different with this extra layer of warmth. Qian Chuan'er felt the warmth of the woolen coat and naturally felt extremely happy.
The situation at this moment was just like that of students living in a dormitory. When someone started talking, someone else would interrupt. Qiu Bo would then interject, "When did you go to bed? If you're sleepy, use a small stick to prop up your eyelids!"
Qiu Bo's words immediately caused the soldiers who were resting with their eyes closed to burst into laughter.
"Who are you cursing to death?" Qian Chuan'er cursed with a smile, and all the soldiers started laughing again.
The reason why everyone laughed was because this time they used a small stick to prop up the eyelids, which has a story behind it.
Before the battle, when they put the dead Japanese sergeant on the carriage, they could make the body sit, after all, Erhanzi was supporting it with his shoulders and hands from behind.
But Wang Laomao said that it was not possible for him to close his eyes because the Japanese had telescopes and they would become suspicious if they saw him closing his eyes.
Everyone agreed with Shang Zhen's plan of riding in a carriage and pretending to be Japanese soldiers to launch a surprise attack.
At that point, no one was willing to retreat. So what could be done? How could the Japanese army not see the loophole? The answer was that Wang Laomao actually used two matchsticks to prop up the Japanese sergeant's eyelids!
They had no intention of directly infiltrating the Japanese artillery positions. As long as they got within a hundred meters, they could open fire.
At that distance, the Japanese army could not have found anything abnormal in the dead sergeant's eyes even with a telescope. How could they see from a distance of more than 100 meters that the sergeant's eyes had turned the color of a dead fish?
When they approached to within sixty or seventy meters of the Japanese army, some Japanese soldiers discovered that one of the Japanese soldier's eyes was open and the other was closed. This was because a matchstick supporting his eyelid had fallen off.
As for when Shang Zhen fell, they had no idea and they didn't find him either.
A Japanese soldier did notice that the sergeant had opened and closed his yin-yang eyes, but the Japanese soldier was subsequently shot dead by Shang Zhen and his men.
Who would notice such details in such a tense battle? In the long river of history, such details are not even worth a speck of dust!
But now Qian Chuan'er accidentally raised his eyelids and started to fight, and Qiu Bo slipped in just in time. How could everyone not be happy?
After some more laughter and playfulness, Hu Zhuzi said, "It's still cold. How about we sleep next to the horses?"
This sentence caused everyone to laugh again.
It was true that the horse and three mules were still with them, but the problem was that the horses and mules all slept standing up.
So don’t horses and mules lie down to sleep? It’s not that they don’t, but at least these people have never seen it.
"Why don't we just let the horse and mule lie down? It's so warm to sleep on the horse's belly!" Hu Zhuzi said to himself.
"Look at the way the horses and mules look. I don't think you can let them lie down." Erhanzi snorted, and then there was a rustling sound. Erhanzi went straight to Qian Chuan'er. Without Erhanzi saying anything, Qian Chuan'er gave half of the Japanese soldier's yellow tweed coat to Erhanzi.
"Then let's get a few more people on board and push the horse down!" Hu Zhuzi's thinking was just one-sided, but he also knew that it was impossible for untrained horses and mules to lie down by themselves.
After Hu Zhuzi finished speaking, he actually got up. But at this moment, Old Huotou spoke up: "Can't you just be quiet for a while? How cold is it now? You can't stand this little bit of cold? Imagine further north in Jilin, where people are still fighting the Japanese. It's savage winter there, how can they stand it?"
What the old man said is undoubtedly reasonable.
Come to think of it, they're only just starting to freeze over here, but what about Jilin and HLJ further north? Even if the water hasn't frozen yet, the temperature there can still be over 10 degrees Celsius below zero at night. There's no such thing as a comfortable battle. I imagine the anti-Japanese volunteers there would have to sleep in the mountains.
Although they are called the three northeastern provinces, the degree of coldness there still varies with the geographical latitude.
Everyone imagines a person in a low temperature of 20 to 30 degrees below zero or even 40 degrees Celsius.
How could I sleep on the top of a mountain? I couldn't help but shiver.
What is happiness? Contentment is happiness. How does contentment come about? Contentment arises from comparison.
They imagined the hardships faced by the soldiers who were fighting the Japanese like themselves, and for a moment they felt that they were no longer cold, or rather, the coldness did not seem so unbearable.
Hu Zhuzi fell silent, and everyone else stopped talking too. Soon, snoring sounds were heard from the forest. The soldiers who had been fighting all day finally fell asleep.
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