Differential Treatment

Getting shelled repeatedly on his very first day at the front line—talk about rotten luck. This second barrage clearly concentrated fire in Gao Fei and his squad's direction. It didn't last long, still less than a minute or so, but this time, Gao Fei could barely keep his balance even crouching in the dugout. Why crouch? Because sitting directly on the ground meant the shock waves from a close-range shell burst could easily shake you to death. Just as it was now: Gao Fei was crouching steadily when suddenly the ground beneath him shuddered. A huge chunk of dirt crashed down from above his head, while outside the dugout, dust and debris roared past. A shock wave whipped across, hitting Gao Fei like a head-on blast from hurricane-force winds, and then the entire world plunged into darkness. Clamping his ears with his hands and keeping his mouth open, Gao Fei got a mouth full of dirt. He felt suffocated, dry-coughing, desperately spitting out the grit. For that instant, Gao Fei panicked, but when the sudden barrage abruptly ceased, he knew he had survived the second round. Covering his ears and keeping his mouth open was to keep the shock waves from rupturing his eardrums. Gao Fei's form had been textbook. When he realized the bombardment had stopped and lowered his hands, the first thing he heard was Samir screaming. Another clump of dirt came tumbling down from overhead. Gao Fei grabbed his rifle and scrambled out of the dugout—and the moment he cleared it, dirt came crashing down in a heap. His legs were a little weak, but they weren't shaking. Gao Fei was improving fast. Samir was still yelling, and Sokholov and Glaski were shouting too. Gao Fei ran over to the front of Samir's dugout. Samir had his eyes squeezed shut, clutching his head and doing nothing but screaming. He was terrified out of his mind. The second barrage wasn't like the first, because this one had actually landed right in their trench. When Gao Fei saw the huge crater that had opened in the trench, his legs began to tremble again. He didn't consciously feel afraid, yet his legs shook all the same. "It's over, it's over!" Gao Fei pressed a hand onto Samir's shoulder and shouted, "All right! It's over!" Samir opened his eyes, his mouth pulling into an expression that looked like crying yet seemed like a grin, and said in a trembling voice, "I want to go home!" "My machine gun's gone!" Glaski was yelling. He had crawled out of his dugout and was searching for his machine gun with a dazed expression. Less than twenty meters from Gao Fei and the others, a corner of the trench had collapsed. A shell had just landed directly inside the trench. Fortunately, the trench had been dug strictly in a zigzag pattern, preventing the blast wave from sweeping all the way down and wiping everyone out. The residual force of the blast had blown over the machine gun Glaski had left outside, and the falling loose earth had buried it, which was why Glaski couldn't find his weapon after leaving the dugout. Sokholov climbed up out of the trench, exposing himself at great risk to take a look around, then hopped back into the trench and bellowed, "Talk about pure luck!" At least ten shells had landed around their position, one of which had struck right in an adjacent trench section. Looking out from higher ground, one could see massive craters every dozen meters or so, yet miraculously, no one had died. Glaski dug his machine gun out of the dirt mound, opened the top cover, removed the ammo belt, turned the weapon upside down, and tapped it clean before shaking out the belt to keep dirt from getting into the receiver. "Don't just stand there! Move to another dugout, watch out for drones!" Sokholov shouted at Gao Fei, then found an intact dugout and ducked back inside. So this was what a battlefield was really like: cowering in a hole like a rat through enemy bombardment and shelling, doing nothing at all—or rather, completely unable to do anything. Gao Fei returned to his dugout. His backpack was still inside, and it hadn't collapsed. Samir had stopped shouting. Once it was quiet outside, he suddenly called out, "Rex, are you all right?" "I'm fine." Then silence fell again. Sheltering from artillery fire, neither of them was in the mood for idle chatter. Things being quiet on Gao Fei's end didn't mean the entire front line was calm. Right now, the Russians had Bakhmut encircled on three and a half sides. The front stretched for dozens of kilometers. While this wasn't the main axis of attack, the sound of guns and artillery had never stopped. Sokholov's walkie-talkie crackled and hissed constantly. Occasionally voices could be heard over the radio, but they spoke in Russian, which Gao Fei couldn't understand anyway. Other times there was only static, and nothing could be heard at all. Finally, after a muffled burst of Russian, Sokholov suddenly announced, "All clear. The enemy's been pushed back." This had been a major Ukrainian counterattack, and Gao Fei had witnessed a tiny cross-section of it, personally taking part in an insignificant sliver of this massive battle. Now that the fight was over, they could breathe a sigh of relief, as both Sokholov and Glaski stepped out of their dugouts and into the trench. Gao Fei hesitated, unsure whether he should go out. "Everyone out! Hurry and patch up the trench! The Ukrainians burnt through a lot of drones—they won't waste them on a position like ours." Sokholov even offered an explanation. Gao Fei left the dugout and stood up, instinctively looking around. Plumes of thick smoke rose in every direction—front, back, left, and right. Glaski asked Sokholov, "Do you know what the situation is now?" "The forward positions were breached across the line. We're the front line now. Company A lost their position, but they took it back. Their casualties are extremely heavy, and my guess is they're essentially combat ineffective. That leaves our right flank very weak, so stay sharp." Sokholov relayed what he had gathered from the radio. When he finished, he looked at a thoroughly bewildered Samir and the relatively calm Gao Fei, barking, "You understand what the situation is now, right?" Gao Fei swallowed hard and said in a shaky voice, "We're the frontline now? And we're only four hundred meters from the forward positions, right?" "That's right, we're the forward-most position now. But the enemy will only deploy light forces in their forward positions. Their main position should be about a kilometer ahead of us, so it's not that dangerous." The second line had become the first line. Didn't that mean Gao Fei and his squad would be the ones taking the brunt of the next artillery barrage? Gao Fei was worried, but Sokholov noticed his concern. With a confident smile, Sokholov said, "Don't sweat it. Tomorrow we'll take back the lost ground. Normally, they wouldn't use us to plug trenches." Glaski chimed in from the side, "The other side doesn't have enough troops to keep pushing forward. All they could do was push the front line out a bit. But from now on, stay on high alert. Until we reclaim the lost positions, we're facing the enemy directly." Sokholov picked up a long-handled shovel from the trench and tossed it straight in front of Samir, nearly hitting his feet. "Hey, you. Go dig out the collapsed section of the trench." Digging out the collapsed trench was no small task. Although the blasted dirt was loose, the volume of earth was far greater than it looked; all four of them would be lucky to finish it in a day. It wasn't that Sokholov looked down on Samir all that much, but dumping heavy manual labor onto rookies seemed to be the universal rule across the world. Samir looked down, picked up the shovel, said nothing, and moved to start digging. Gao Fei couldn't say anything, but what he could do was help Samir dig. The issued individual gear didn't include an entrenching tool. Gao Fei looked around and saw no other long-handled shovels, so he asked Sokholov, "Sir, got another shovel? I'll go dig the trench." "Not you." Sokholov waved Gao Fei over. Once Gao Fei walked up beside him, Sokholov rested a hand on his shoulder, pointing with his left hand in a certain direction. "Drones won't be attacking right now, and the guys across just moved into their positions, so they'll be moving around a lot." With that, Sokholov took his hand off Gao Fei's shoulder, gave him a playful punch on the shoulder, and said with eyes gleaming, "How about you take the machine gun and give 'em a taste?"