Getting bombed repeatedly on his very first day at the front—his luck was really something else.
The second round of shelling was clearly concentrating its fire on Gao Fei’s side. It did not last long, still less than a minute or so, but this time, crouching in the shellproof dugout, Gao Fei felt he could barely keep steady.
Why crouch? Because if he sat directly on the ground, he might well be shaken to death by a shell exploding at close range.
Just like now—Gao Fei had been crouching properly when he suddenly felt the ground tremble beneath his feet. Then a great chunk of earth above his head came pouring down, while outside the dugout, dust and fragments howled past.
The shock wave caught him, and Gao Fei felt as if a Force Twelve gale had blown straight into his face. Then the entire world plunged into dimness.
Gao Fei, hands clamped over his ears and mouth open, got a mouthful of dirt.
There was a sense of suffocation. He coughed dryly, desperately spitting the dust out of his mouth. In that instant, Gao Fei was terrified. But when the sudden shelling stopped just as abruptly, he knew he had survived the second round.
Covering his ears with both hands and opening his mouth was to prevent the shock wave from rupturing his eardrums, and Gao Fei’s movements were very standard. After he realized the shelling had stopped and let go with both hands, the first thing he heard was Samir shouting.
Another chunk of earth poured down from above. Gao Fei grabbed his rifle and shifted out of the dugout, and the instant he left it, the whole dugout collapsed with a crash.
His legs were only a little weak, but they were not shaking. Gao Fei was improving quite quickly.
Samir was still shouting. Sholokhov and Graski were shouting too.
Gao Fei ran to the front of Samir’s dugout. Samir had his eyes shut, his head in his arms, and was doing nothing but shouting. He had been scared out of his wits.
The second shelling was different from the first, because the second shelling had truly landed in Gao Fei and the others’ trench.
When Gao Fei saw the huge crater that had appeared in the trench, his legs began trembling again.
He did not feel afraid, but his legs were shaking all the same.
“It’s all right, it’s all right!”
Gao Fei pressed a hand on Samir’s shoulder and roared, “Enough! It’s all right!”
Samir opened his eyes. Then his mouth stretched open, revealing an expression that looked as if he wanted to cry yet also seemed like he was smiling. In a trembling voice, he said, “I want to go home!”
“My machine gun is gone!”
Graski was shouting. He left the dugout, searching for his machine gun with a blank look on his face.
Less than twenty meters from Gao Fei and the others, the corner of the trench had been blown in. A shell had just landed directly inside the trench. Fortunately, the trench had been dug strictly in a zigzag pattern, so the shock wave could not sweep straight along the trench and kill everyone inside.
The remaining force of the shell’s shock wave had blown over the machine gun Graski had left outside, and the loose earth that fell afterward had buried it. That was why Graski could not find his machine gun after leaving the dugout.
Sholokhov climbed up the trench. Exposing himself outside and taking a great risk, he glanced around, then jumped back into the trench and shouted, “What luck!”
At least ten shells had landed around Gao Fei and the others’ position, and one of them had fallen directly into the neighboring section of trench. From a higher vantage point, one would be able to see that there was a large shell crater every dozen meters or so all around them. And yet, under these circumstances, no one had died.
Graski dug his machine gun out of the pile of earth. He opened the receiver cover, removed the ammo belt, turned the gun over and knocked it a few times, then began shaking the belt to keep the dirt on it from getting into the receiver.
“Don’t just stand there. Find another hole to stay in. Watch out for drones.”
Sholokhov shouted at Gao Fei, then found an intact dugout and hid inside again.
So this was what the battlefield was like: under enemy bombing and shelling, shrinking into a hole like a rat, then doing nothing—or rather, being able to do nothing at all.
Gao Fei returned to his own dugout. His backpack was still inside, and it had not collapsed.
Samir had stopped shouting. After the outside quieted down, he suddenly said, “Ricks, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
Then there was no more sound. When guarding against shelling like this, no one had the mood to chat idly.
The calm on Gao Fei’s side did not mean the entire front was calm.
The Russians now had Bakhmut half-encircled on three sides, and the entire line stretched for dozens of kilometers. This side was not the main direction of attack, but the sounds of gunfire and artillery had never stopped.
Sholokhov’s radio kept crackling with static. Sometimes voices could be heard over it, but they were speaking Russian, and Gao Fei could not understand what was being said. At other times, there was simply nothing but noise, and nothing could be heard at all.
Finally, after hearing an indistinct sentence in Russian, Sholokhov suddenly said, “Danger is over. The enemy has been beaten back.”
This had been a major Ukrainian counterattack, and Gao Fei had seen one tiny cross-section of it, personally taking part in an insignificant portion of this large-scale battle.
Now that the fighting was over, they could breathe a sigh of relief, because Sholokhov and Graski had both left their dugouts and come into the trench.
Gao Fei hesitated. He did not know whether he should go out.
“Everyone come out. Hurry and repair the trench. The Ukrainians have used up a lot of drones. They won’t waste drones on a position like ours.”
Sholokhov even gave an explanation.
Gao Fei left the dugout. He stood up and instinctively looked all around. He could see thick smoke rising everywhere, front and back, left and right.
Graski said to Sholokhov, “Do you know what the situation is now?”
“The forward positions were broken through across the whole line. We’ve now become the very front line. A Company’s position was lost, but they took it back again. A Company suffered extremely heavy losses. I judge they’ve basically lost their combat effectiveness, so the defensive line on our right is very thin. We need to be careful.”
Sholokhov was merely repeating the information he had heard over the radio. After saying this, he looked at Samir, whose face was full of bewilderment, and Gao Fei, who was still relatively calm, and said loudly, “You understand what the situation is now, right?”
Gao Fei swallowed and said in a trembling voice, “We’re the very front line now? And we’re only four hundred meters from the forward positions, right?”
“Yes. We are already the foremost position, but the enemy will only deploy a small number of troops in the forward positions. Their main position should be one kilometer in front of us, so it’s not that dangerous.”
The second line had become the first line. Did that not mean that next time, it would be Gao Fei and the others’ turn to bear the shellfire directly?
Gao Fei was somewhat worried, and Sholokhov saw his concern. After giving a confident smile, Sholokhov said, “Don’t be afraid. Tomorrow, we’ll take back the positions we lost. Under normal circumstances, we won’t be assigned to fill the trenches.”
Graski said from the side, “The other side doesn’t have enough troops to keep advancing. All they can do is push the line a little farther out. But from now on, we need to be more vigilant. Before the lost positions are recovered, we’re facing the enemy directly.”
Sholokhov picked up a long-handled shovel from the trench and threw it directly in front of Samir, almost hitting Samir’s foot.
“Hey, you. Go dig out the collapsed trench.”
The collapsed trench had to be dug open again, and that was no small task. Though the earth blown down was very loose, the amount of soil was far greater than it looked. If four people could finish it in a day, that would already be good.
It was not that Sholokhov looked down on Samir especially, but handing this sort of labor to the newcomers seemed to be the same all over the world.
Samir lowered his head and picked up the shovel. He said nothing, taking the shovel and about to go dig.
Gao Fei could not say anything. All he could do was help Samir dig.
There was no entrenching tool among the issued individual equipment. Gao Fei looked around but did not see any other long-handled shovels, so he said to Sholokhov, “Sir, are there any more shovels? I’ll go dig the trench.”
“Not you.”
Sholokhov beckoned to Gao Fei. After Gao Fei walked over, he reached out and placed a hand on Gao Fei’s shoulder, then pointed in one direction with his left hand and said, “Right now, the drones won’t attack. The other side has also only just entered their positions, so their movement will be very frequent.”
After speaking, Sholokhov took his hand off Gao Fei’s shoulder and thumped him on the shoulder. His eyes gleaming, he said, “How about you try taking a crack at them with the machine gun?”