The Fortress Battle (4)
Sechung's ears were numb.
No, wait. Correct that.
His ears couldn't hear a thing.
Nothing at all.
“... Ah, aa~.”
For a long time, Sechung covered his ears with both hands and puckered his lips to make sounds. He finally lifted his head.
He scanned the area around him and nearby, but found no one alive sharing the same breath.
A red flash had streaked across the mountain ridge, and he remembered someone shouting “Artillery fire!” like a newborn's cry.
Yet when the explosion's flash, the roar, and the fragments passed through his fragile mind and body in sequence, nothing remained beside him.
What in the world had just happened?
“...”
It was eerie, but beside him lay the dismembered limbs of soldiers scattered in the trench bottom, dirtied like laundry.
Sechung finally recognized the disgusting sight and, like a patient waking from anesthesia, jumped up in fright, spewing curses.
“What the hell.”
That's right.
Sechung had always complained that he was unlucky, but in truth he was a man of good fortune.
A very stubbornly fortunate man.
“How did I survive...?”
With the warning, he had begun to dodge, and right above the soldiers' heads a French howitzer shell had detonated. The rest had been blown to pieces and scattered everywhere.
Sechung was the only survivor in the trench pit where the enemy's artillery, like the devil's hand, had just swept past.
If someone asked why he had survived, Sechung would have recalled memories and answered that he had dug the pit a little more diligently than the others.
Why?
Because today, to escape, he had to avoid the suspicions of the workhouse.
So Sechung was the only survivor in this horrific pit—
“I survived! I survived-!”
“da-da-da...”
—until he had been recorded as such.
But if Daiching, who had regressed to childishness upon realizing the brutality of war and was shielding him, had not been there, he would have been recorded as the only survivor.
“da-da?”
“How did you survive-, done.”
However, unfortunately, Daiching had traded his lost intelligence for outstanding survival ability and had survived again, hovering around Sechung's side this time as well.
Sechung stared fixedly at Daiching with a stiff expression for a moment, then bent his knees.
“Let's go.”
With the same unfocused, blank expression as before, and his face even more foolish with saliva and dirt mixed at the corners of his mouth, Sechung grabbed Daiching's hand, who was waiting beside him, and stood up from the dirt pit.
At the same time, a strange bugle sound that tore the ears and the voice he had heard before echoed like cannon fire from outside the pit.
“Ah!”
Yes, that was the voice of the Joseon bastards!
Sechung, who had finally awakened from his hazy mind, shouted to Daiching with wide eyes.
“Go, go quickly! Run fast!”
“da-da... da-da-da!”
The two started running, holding hands tightly.
Red flags were waving.
From all sides, strange bugles and drum sounds rang out.
The nervous high-pitched voices of the incomprehensible savages tormented their ears.
At that moment, Sechung, who had poked his head out of the trench to check if the Korean army had arrived, immediately covered his mouth and let out a groan.
“Ugh!”
There was a huge steel human there, looking like he was over six feet tall.
“Such a fierce warrior...”
A giant wearing dark iron armor all over his body, and on his head an unusual hard helmet.
In his waist belt, nails of different sizes were scattered, and between them human hair and blood clots were tangled.
Just looking at it, it was definitely an extraordinary enemy soldier.
So Sechung quietly grabbed Daiching's wrist and led him to the opposite side of the pit he had crawled from.
Such guys were definitely the kind that would chase until death if they spotted you.
“Quietly, quietly, let's run.”
Upon Sechung's warning, Daiching nodded as if he understood.
While Sechung was searching for an escape route, he suddenly shouted.
“Now!”
“da-da-da-da!!!”
Sechung and Daiching, climbing desperately out of the pit with their nails, ignored the meat chunks and blood-soaked comrades drowned in the pit, and without looking back started running desperately toward the still standing castle.
Behind them, the killers who had seen their escape, smelling of iron, started chasing them with heavy footsteps, indifferent emotions.
*****
The distant disappearing figure.
It's jumping.
Definitely jumping!
“Hah hah, yah!!!”
Despite the armor weight, the bulky soldier, the armored giant, who had been panting after crossing several trenches and pits, shouted again, regretting the two Qing soldiers who were disappearing into dots toward the castle.
“Why! Why are you running away, you bastards!”
He was Hong Beom-do, a chamgyo (NCO) of the 3rd Regiment's Armored Infantry.
“Surrender!!”
He sighed, chasing the backs of the two Qing soldiers desperately fleeing in front of his eyes with his eyes.
Were these stupid Qing bastards so stupid that they couldn't even safely surrender by walking on their own feet?
Or did they run to the castle to fight against the Republic with whatever courage remained?
As someone who was just chasing and getting tired, he couldn't know.
But Hong Beom-do might not have known, or perhaps he pretended not to.
He definitely shouted in Korean “Surrender your weapons and surrender!” to them.
And that his side had a blood-stained ugly club and a mud-covered revolver emitting smoke.
“Eh, damn.”
But now it didn't matter.
Whether running away, surrendering, or doing whatever, it was up to them.
Without reason, Hong Beom-do kicked the body of an unknown Qing soldier whose body was half-merged into the pit with his foot, and sat down beside it.
And after sitting, he awkwardly apologized to the body he had just kicked.
“... Sorry.”
No matter what, he couldn't sit on the corpse and rest, could he?
He wasn't a Mongol who went crazy with slaughter.
So, he had moved it. Such things.
“Hah, hah.”
A short while later, Hong Beom-do took off his heavy helmet and placed it between his legs, exhaling hot breath.
It was very comfortable because it could deflect bullets and block spears and swords, but it was heavy.
His steel armor and helmet had countless scars and traces of battle left intact.
“Sigh, now I can live a bit.”
The French artillery fire was fierce.
And effective.
So effective that the Qing soldiers hiding in the pits like snakes and looking for opportunities were mixed so thoroughly with the dirt walls like kneading dough.
Hong Beom-do, who naturally swallowed the nausea rising as he recalled the strangely entangled corpses of Qing troops between the trench walls and protruding limbs, almost choked.
“If I had been in the vanguard, ugh. Just imagining it is terrifying.”
Thanks to this, the depth of the overturned trenches and pits became twice as deep, and the Republic Army might have spent a day and a half in the trench pits and corpse mazes deeper than their height.
Hong Beom-do, who took short breaths and rested, praised his regiment commander he hadn't seen for a while.
“Smart guy.”
Fortunately, Hong Beom-do's regiment commander, Han Seong-geun, was a wise general.
Thanks to him preparing strategies in advance, his soldiers and comrades could easily break through the trenches.
Hong Beom-do glanced at other soldiers throwing something into the pit and muttered.
“Huh, I didn't know why they made me carry that earlier.”
It was a mud bag.
Previously, before the Republic Army's offensive, other infantry, except for the armored infantry, had to carry a mud bag on their backs.
So, thanks to the mud bags thrown into the pits by other infantry battalions that had already stormed ahead in the vanguard before Hong Beom-do and the armored infantry, the heavy armored infantry could advance comfortably to the next pit without falling into the pit.
Therefore, many of the Qing Army's defensive facilities carefully prepared by the Qing commander had helplessly fallen into the hands of the Republic Army.
From the green fence made of cut logs and sharp stakes surrounding the castle, the trenches and obstacles dug around it, to the pits outside the very edge.
Just before, Hong Beom-do and his colleagues, holding weapons close to the enemy, had energetically and quickly occupied one of the Qing's green fences, securing the advance route for the allies.
Shooting at the guys hiding behind the fence and yelling, crushing the ones rushing out with clubs, and so on.
Even in the place where that terrible artillery had shaken and passed, the Qing soldiers were miraculously alive and writhing.
Some were running out of the pit screaming strangely, but many were running towards this side after their minds snapped, causing a lot of trouble.
They couldn't communicate, and since each had weapons, it was inevitable that the battle would happen.
Through this series of processes, the green fences and stakes placed around the castle were gradually captured one by one.
And the Republic battalions entering the castle, waving red flags and Taegeuk flags at the green fence entrances, were heading toward the castle with vigorous footsteps.
As much as the armored infantry sweated, his compatriots and Republic soldiers were safely heading to the castle.
“...”
Hong Beom-do, watching the scene fixedly, immediately pressed his heavy iron helmet deeply and stood up from his seat with vigor.
Since he had rested enough, it was time to go back to defend.
For his country and people.
*****
Meanwhile, in the rear,
“It's over!”
Han Seong-geun, who had been carefully watching the entire process through a telescope from the temporary command post on the mountain ridge, finally cheered at the sight of the red flag rising on the last green fence surrounding the castle.
He gripped the telescope tightly as if it would break, threw off his hat, and entered the barracks.
“Fortunately! As expected, today was the red flag!”
As expected, the dew-soaked trench walls from the early morning rain had turned the dirt walls of the trenches into a swampy mud, making the Qing Army's hard work in vain and instead bringing disaster to the Qing Army.
The mud that had swelled with water stuck to the Qing soldiers' armor and clothes, restricting their movement, and at the same time increased the excessive workload, making them tire early.
The French artillery fire was the final blow here.
They had lost both physique and morale before the battle, and despite occupying defensively advantageous positions, they had helplessly handed over key points and defensive facilities to the Republic Army.
The mud bags he had designed as trench countermeasures were just seasoning.
The biggest success factor of this attack was time.
“Congratulations, General!”
“Congratulations!”
“Great victory!”
As he entered the barracks, enthusiastic congratulations and cheers bursting from around greeted him.
The young Korean officers of the Republic, who hadn't intended to but had watched all the proper combat processes of today from the side, were not without worry.
Over the long two hundred years, had there been a recent history of the Republic Army conducting such a large-scale siege battle?
Of course, there was the Hong Gyeong-rae rebellion that swept Pyeongan Province tens of years ago, but that was an internal war.
The victory acquired after both sides fiercely fought in the hell-like mud trenches with nearly fifty thousand troops on each side, starting with intense artillery fire, was bound to be very meaningful.
Receiving the cheers and expectations of these people, Han Seong-geun, who thought today's victory should not be recorded simply as a win, drew his sword at his waist high into the sky and declared.
He needed to instill confidence in the young officers who would be the future.
These would soon be the pillars of the Republic.
“Great victory towards the Northern Expedition!”
“Yes, General!”
“Long live the Northern Expedition! Long live the Revolution!”
It was up to these young officers how this great first victory would be recorded under the name of the revolution.