Manchuria-Western (3)
The Patrol Guerrilla Battalion consisted of two infantry companies and eight cavalry companies.
The unit's only heavy weapons—two field guns—were distributed one per infantry company.
My assignment this time was one infantry company, one cavalry company, and a single field gun.
Considering that our battalion was made up of two infantry companies and eight cavalry companies, as I'd said before, that meant the bulk of the infantry was effectively in my hands.
Ah. Of course, this was because I'd drawn the short straw.
'I'll take the cavalry.'
'Me too.'
'Forget the infantry~ hand me the cavalry!'
Our battalion had far too many men hopelessly in love with their horses.
Horse thieves needed horses. And the former bandits who used to make a virtue of stripping a man bare and vanishing before the government troops arrived had no time to waste on slow-footed infantry. They wanted instant mobility and instant easy kills.
So most of the company commanders had dumped the infantry on me and ridden off into the mop-up campaign at the head of their cavalry—and yet.
"Still, with me around, you feel secure, don't you?"
"Is Baocheon-zwa a god? Is that man a god?"
"Ha! Calling me -zwa now? You flatter me."
If Zhang Baocheon hadn't handed over a cavalry company to escort me out, I'd have been charging into bandit territory with nothing but naked no-upgrade no-medic riflemen.
Not that I'd claim to handle cavalry well, but better to have them than not.
So we rode side by side until we reached a low hill, where we both pulled out our binoculars.
This was definitely the spot according to the map.
"Staff Officer. Over there."
Zhang Baocheon tapped my shoulder and pointed at a gray smudge in the distance.
I quickly raised my binoculars in that direction.
"Ah, there it is. Looks like cooking smoke, all right."
"Judging by the smoke, I'd say about three hundred people. Strip out the civilians and it's a little over a hundred."
"As expected, they must have split the gang into smaller groups because of the food supply."
"If we can defeat them in detail, that's all the better for us."
At the smoke curling up near the horizon, the two of us confirmed our suspicion and called the troops together.
Does anyone happen to know how you go about wiping out a thousand-man bandit gang?
Well, I don't.
What's that? Why don't I know?
How the hell would I know? My former profession was Republic of Korea Army manning the northern border, not the Mexican army hunting drug cartels.
The ROK military's entire doctrine boils down to agonizing over questions like 'How exactly do we harvest Kim Jong-un and his cronies' heads across the DMZ?' and 'Hmm. Hiding in tunnels would be a problem, so let's just slap some ten-meter missiles on it, shall we?'
No one fires a Hyunmoo missile at bandits holed up in the foothills of Jirisan, or calls in fighter jets to bomb Jurchen raiders swarming the Yeongsan River.
So I had no choice but to bench-mark and blend the anti-guerrilla doctrine I'd learned at the academy with the Indian-fighting tactics I'd seen in American movies.
You know the one—advance in wagons, and on contact with the enemy, circle them up into a barricade and fighting position, then push forward.
Apparently, to our battalion, my idea sounded monumentally sacrilegious.
"You want us to make wagons, sir?"
"I'm sorry, you want the cavalry to dismount and use their horses to pull wagons?"
"Staff Officer, I'll grant you things might be different inside Shanhaiguan, but out here in Manchuria, cavalry is king. And you're telling us to dismount them and fight them as infantry?"
"I didn't say dismount all of them. Only half dismount; the rest stay mounted as cavalry—"
Hm. Their eyes are thick with suspicion.
It's fine. Honestly, I don't trust you people either.
How could I trust former bandits who open their eyes that crooked? The second things go south, they'd shed their uniforms and bolt on horseback. Watching them bristle at me made me want to slam helmets on their heads and boot them down the street—but sadly, expensive steel helmets do not exist in a ragtag outfit like ours.
"Staff Officer, just end it quick and clean! Let the field gun turn the village into a moonscape, then send in the cavalry and sweep every last one of them!"
"Denied. Are you planning to kill the civilians too?"
"Ah, c'mon, what difference does it make if a few commoners die? They're just peasants—they'll grow back in time."
Son of a—grow back? What do you think civilians are, mint chocolate chip?
They're people, you idiot.
Yep—just as I thought. Every single word out of their mouths is laced with casual disregard for human life, and the effect is genuinely surreal.
"Staff Officer, forget this and just do it our way—"
Zhang Baocheon paid no mind to whether the platoon and squad leaders below were jabbing at me or not. He just watched me with an amused look, rubbing his eyes against the irritation.
Right.
So the mission is to whip these bastards into shape and bring them to heel for good?
Got it. Understood perfectly.
I drew the revolver from my belt and flipped open the cylinder.
"You all seem to have an awful lot of complaints about me."
"S-Sir?"
I held the muzzle skyward, and the cartridges tumbled from the cylinder with a bright clatter of metal.
I picked up all six rounds and stood them neatly on the table, then pointed at the platoon leader who'd been mouthing off at me the hardest.
"You there."
"Y-yes?"
"Let's play a little game of probability."
I slipped a single bullet into the cylinder, its brass glinting in the lamplight, and spun it closed.
Skrrrrk—the distinctive grinding whir of a revolver.
When I thumbed back the hammer, it clicked into place, ready to strike the chamber.
I swept my gaze once around the dead-silent room, then spoke.
"Odds of getting shot when you march onto a battlefield—somewhat north of ten percent. Odds this gun fires if I pull the trigger right now—one in six. Call it roughly the same."
I raised the revolver and leveled it at the platoon leader.
"N-No, sir!"
"Now let's add to the probability, shall we? The enemy will be holding a fortified position, hiding behind cover. That pushes your odds of dying up another ten percent, give or take."
I lowered the gun, opened the cylinder, and dropped in one more round.
"Besides, they know this terrain better than we do. There's another bump in your odds."
Another round in.
"What if their numbers turn out to be greater than ours? What if that cooking smoke actually belongs to the bastards themselves?"
The round slid home into the chamber.
Four of six chambers loaded. I spun the cylinder—it turned with the heavy scrape of steel on steel, then stopped with a firm click.
The revolver rose with my hand and settled on the platoon leader.
"By my math the odds come out about even. What do you think?"
His face had drained bone-white somewhere along the way, and I stared straight into his trembling eyes.
"Now. Let's do the math again."
I opened the cylinder and removed a bullet.
"The enemy is besieging a fortified point. In that case, wouldn't the better odds come from skipping the cavalry and raising the infantry count instead, closing in slowly alongside our heavy weapons? Advance with wagons as cover, and fewer men die to their blind, wild gunfire."
"······."
One, two—I kept drawing bullets until only a single cartridge remained in the cylinder.
I set the revolver, one round left, down on the table.
Then I swept my eyes around the room one more time, taking in every face.
"The world runs on probability. So I won't stand here and promise that no one dies or gets hurt."
"““······.””"
"Whether you like my way or not doesn't matter to me. Whether you fall in behind me or not—that's your business."
I slid the revolver back into my holster.
"But I intend to return to Fengtian with as many of my men alive as I can manage."
"Vice Chief! Government troops!!"
"What? Government troops?"
Zhang Il, the vice chief of the bandit gang and commander of the detachment occupying Black Dragon Village, shot up from his seat in alarm.
"How many? Where did they come from?!"
"About ten or so cavalry, sir! They appeared from the east!"
"Looks like scouts, Vice Chief. What's your call? Do we abandon Black Dragon Village and fall back to the Chief's position?"
"Hmm."
Zhang Il stroked his scraggly beard, thinking it over.
"No. No reason to go outside and invite trouble. Black Dragon Village has decent walls, doesn't it? When they come, we just shoot every last one of them dead."
"Understood!"
Once the hundred-odd bandits had hidden themselves behind Black Dragon Village's stone walls, Zhang Il pulled out his binoculars and studied the distant figures approaching.
Behind the wagons that had encircled the village in a rough diamond formation, I raised my own binoculars.
"...Well, well? Look at that. Bandit scum with binoculars, giving us the once-over."
"Staff Officer, shall we take a shot at him?"
I shook my head.
"Keep advancing until we're in effective range."
"Yes, sir!"
After yesterday's little demonstration, the soldiers' movements had sharpened noticeably.
I couldn't say whether their feelings toward me ran hot or cold, but at the very least, they now understood their commander wasn't just running his mouth—that he moved with them. For that alone, yesterday had been worth it.
That said, there were still a few grumblers, and every last one of them had been scooped up by Zhang Baocheon and taken along as his reserve and detachment force.
Word was he'd watch things from a distance, and if the enemy fled or I got into real danger, they'd come running. I hoped it would end easy enough that they'd never need to join us.
Crack—!
Twenty wagons—closer to rams' carts than proper wagons in shape—rolled forward together, and sure enough, the other side started getting antsy. Sand kicked up in front of me.
From their perspective, it must have felt like a moving fortress creeping closer, inch by inch.
"They're far fewer than us, and they're trapped inside that village! Apply slow pressure and it's an easy victory!"
Unless you had fertile ground like Fengtian, with the Liao River running through it, there simply wasn't anywhere in Manchuria fit to garrison a thousand men.
I swept the bandit-held village with my binoculars once more.
Counting the flashes of muzzle fire, roughly a hundred or so—just as predicted. A few loudmouths were bellowing here and there.
If they'd split their forces, then leaders of some rank had to exist among them, and going by appearances, those windbags were the officers.
At best, vice chiefs who'd once shared a table under Jeon Ok-bon; at worst, mid-level cadres leading the rank and file.
I set down the binoculars and picked up the rifle beside me.
Range, about three hundred?
A little past the two-hundred-fifty-meter targets I'd walked rounds onto at the range.
I braced the rifle on the cover to keep it steady and set my finger on the trigger.
Hold the breath. One, two.
Fire.
Crack—!
Far away, one of the bellowing men snapped backward, sprayed something into the air like a fountain, and collapsed.
Crack-crack-crack!
The volley came hard on its heels.
I ducked my head and shouted to the soldiers.
"Fire! Kill them all!"
"Uwaaaaah!!"
"Kill them all!!"
Our side split into those pushing the wagons ever forward and those working their triggers without pause, while flashes bloomed along the village walls as bullets poured out in ragged, irregular bursts.
The wagons did their job as cover, and the enemy's weapons were pitiful enough that no one got hit—but huddled against those wagons, I kept hearing that ugly sound of bullets chewing into wood and wrenching their way through, ringing around my ears.
Now I understood exactly why men who spent years on a battlefield came down with something like PTSD.
"First Company, advance! Advance! Push the wagons forward slowly—shooting teams, keep firing!"
"Moving up, just like the officer said!"
"The formation matters! Keep the line with the wagons and advance!"
I counted the rounds being fed up and shouted into the ears of the soldiers pushing wagons, making sure the line held.
"Too fast! Take a breather!"
"That's it! Keep coming!"
"Too slow! You stop, the man next to you dies! Move it, you piece of shit!!"
Slapping cheeks, kicking shins, screaming curses, we closed to within a hundred meters of the village—close enough now that they could see our faces, and we theirs.
Crack-crack-crack!!
"Staff Officer! Their fire's getting heavy!"
"I can see that!"
I hurried over to the soldiers who'd been hauling the field gun all this way and yelled.
"See that wall?!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Direct fire! Bring the whole thing down!"
"Yes, sir!"
BOOM!
"AAAAGH!!"
"GUAAAAAGH!!"
With the thunder of the cannon, the wall crumbled in chunks, and the bandits behind it—flying limbs sent skyward along with the shell—clutched themselves and screamed.
Bandit trash like them had never once eaten a field gun at point-blank range.
Seeing a comrade lose an arm and a leg rattled even the unscathed ones so badly they stumbled back from the wall.
Now it was pure close-quarters work.
My thighs tightened on their own as they brushed through the dry brush.
I stowed the single-shot rifle and drew the revolver from my belt.
"They've got nowhere left to hide! Quick advance, forward!"
"““Quick advance, forward!””"
At my command, the soldiers sprang from behind the wagons and pressed up against the abandoned wall.
"Fire at will! If you've got a clean shot, take it!"
When I too pressed up from the wagon to the village wall, I caught sight of a few bandits coughing—dusted head to toe by the cannon fire—fumbling for their weapons.
Before my brain could issue the order, my hand was already up, punching round after round through their heads.
I emptied the cylinder and loaded fresh, and by then the bandits had broken, terror seizing them as they bolted in every direction.
"Fix bayonets! Sweep them all!"
"Staff Officer! Some of them are getting away!"
"What?"
Where a soldier was shouting and pointing, a scraggly-bearded man and a handful of bandits were scrambling onto their horses.
Damn it all. If they linked up with the main force, things were bound to get ugly.
The one who'd ridden farthest turned his head, looked back at me, and grinned a crooked grin.
Then.
His head went flying into the sky.
The horseman with the remarkably clean face who'd taken the man's life in an instant dismounted, picked up the fallen bandit's head, and strolled slowly toward me.
"What are you staring at?"
The man's timing for stealing the kill was truly an art form.
Zhang Baocheon paused in thought, looked at the head dangling from his hand, and then—like Archimedes discovering his principle—declared:
"My apologies. Did you want it?"
"...No."
"Don't be shy."
"No."
"Come now, think nothing of it."
No. No. It's disgusting—please put it away.
Ah—stop shoving it at me!
"Really? Strange. Isn't a trophy proof of a job well done?"
He shrugged, slung the head over his shoulder, and with his other hand gave his cavalry saber a few airy flourishes.
"Staff Officer. Why the long face?"
"I've been dancing back and forth across the line between life and death until just this second. I'm tired."
"Still, cheer up. Look there."
He sheathed his sword and pointed at the civilian house in front of us.
Something wriggled in the gap of a second-story window, then the shutters slowly creaked open as civilians in threadbare clothes poked their faces out.
"It's the government army!"
"The government army beat the bandits!!"
"Huraaah!!!"
I sank to the ground where I stood.
Whew.
Yeah.
No matter how grotesque the state of the world, no matter how it tested my common sense day after day—
in every era, a soldier makes his living off of this.