Chapter 2233 - Words Spoken in Anger

At this, Old Zhang sighed again. "Even so, having a mule or horse was more reassuring than walking back on your own. Plenty of brothers were wounded in the mountains—never saw a cart or a horse. They used rifles and spears as crutches and helped each other walk back. The unlucky ones ran into small bandit parties on the road and lost their lives. I walked part of the way myself. After a few days on that ox cart, I couldn't take it anymore. Luckily, though I was hurt, my hands and feet were all there, so I got off and walked. There was nowhere to rest on the road; we just slept in our clothes, lying in the yards of villagers' houses on beds of straw."

"Brother Zhang, you mean you walked all the way to Wuzhou?" Bi Cheng was skeptical. Though the ox cart was slow, it was faster than a wounded man on foot. Falling behind in a semi-pacified zone was extremely dangerous. Never mind bandits—the local Yao and other minorities were plenty hostile. A lone wounded man had almost no chance of making it back to camp alive.

But Old Zhang nodded calmly. "Counting on my fingers, I spent two days on the cart, managed to get within sight of the city walls, and happened upon a column of wounded marching in pain. So I got off and joined them. If we didn't have walking sticks, we couldn't take two steps. Fortunately, every man in the escort had a spear—they gave me one for a crutch, and we went slowly. Just a short distance, yet it took another day. The locals here have never heard of 'two pipes and five reforms.' Wherever our troops go, medics are always doing 'disinfection and extermination.' You can't say they aren't conscientious. But the wounded move slowly—half a day to cover a few li—so we couldn't reach the designated camps on time. We had to beg lodging along the way. Sometimes there was no village in sight—a broken-down temple for shelter was lucky. Even though we had a few medics, they were too exhausted to stand, let alone disinfect and de-bug. So every night, mosquitoes and fleas swarmed; nobody could sleep. By the time I got here, at least I was still breathing. I asked about the brothers who had gotten on the cart with me—of those still alive when they were loaded, only two were left. In those four or five days, except for me walking and one man who switched to a cargo boat midway, the other four never got off the cart once. By the end, that Peace Cart stank beyond belief—the straw bedding was soaked through with shit, piss, and pus. As for the brother who took the boat, he wasn't spared either. The boat was faster but just as rough—and who knew there were rats in the hold? Soon after he arrived, he spiked a fever and died quietly..."

Bi Cheng sighed too. "The brothers were wounded far from here, with no nearby medical station..."

"That's why we need to wipe out all these bandits fast—that's what matters!" Old Zhang took a sip of hot water. "Once the Council's blessings spread everywhere, with good roads and hospitals on every corner, we won't have to suffer like this. A pity for the brothers already lying in their urns..."

For sanitary reasons, the logistics system—unable to return the bodies of fallen soldiers intact—had adopted the medical department's recommendation. Most who died in battle were buried on the spot; those who died at the hospital were cremated and their ashes sent to Cuigang.

"Being alive beats everything." Old Zhang said with feeling. "A few more days, and we can go home."

Bi Cheng wasn't particularly interested in going home. He was a bachelor; parents and kin were all gone. What could barely be called "home" was a bunk in the factory dormitory—and since he had enlisted, that bunk had probably long since been assigned to someone else. When he thought about it, he was truly homeless.

"Care packages!" someone cheered, and the tent came alive. As long as they weren't comatose, the wounded received small gifts each week. Sometimes a cigar or a five-pack of cigarettes, sometimes dry biscuits, sometimes little items made by students and women workers in the rear: underwear, socks, handkerchiefs...

The nurse came through with a small basket, distributing along the rows of beds. Everyone who could still move crowded around, eager to see what new goodies had arrived.

Bi Cheng reflexively moved to reach out—then suddenly remembered he couldn't just sit up. Then another thought struck him: even if he could sit up, it wouldn't help. His hand was no longer a normal hand.

It seemed only now that he truly understood what had happened to him. He was a disabled person. Not only could he no longer go to war; from now on, everything in his life would be different.

The mood in the observation tent didn't disturb Song Junxing, who was sleeping like the dead. The night shift had been brutal; he didn't even eat breakfast before collapsing in the dormitory. He slept until dinner; if Fu Liangqi, who had come from the same support contingent to oversee disinfection, hadn't fetched him, he might have skipped that too.

Strictly speaking, Elders in the medical sector weren't military officers and didn't have to observe "officer-enlisted equality." But since Elder officers at the front at least maintained the tradition of eating from the same pot, the medical support teams couldn't ask for much. Besides, everyone was busy; in practice, they ate the same meals delivered by logistics as the naturalized physicians. And frankly, on the front lines, even the special Elder mess wasn't much better—little appeal for Song Junxing.

Still, going a whole day without eating did seem unreasonable, so Song Junxing tidied up and followed Fu Liangqi out.

"Old Fu, I feel like things are heading the wrong way." Sitting in the special mess for a while, a few drinks in, Song Junxing was getting tipsy. He picked up a braised pork rib and said.

"Wrong way? I think the situation is excellent—not moderately good, not slightly good, but excellent!" Fu Liangqi said, half-joking, half-serious. "Medical kits, tested in combat, proving their worth; the three-tier evacuation system is basically in place; the Wuzhou medical station has been made a model; combat-death rates have dropped significantly. Everyone who came to the front has contributed. What's heading the wrong way?"

"Yes, the overall situation is excellent—I'm not denying that. But let me raise a small issue. Let me ask: what's the purpose of field medicine?"

"Front-line emergency treatment, combat-wound nursing, with the goal of saving as many lives as possible, restoring combat effectiveness quickly, and maintaining morale." Fu Liangqi replied.

"It's that morale issue I want to talk about." Song Junxing gnawed on his rib.

"How so?" Fu Liangqi asked. "In this era, no one can be more humane than us. To the grunts, we're practically bodhisattvas. What more could they want?"

"Hold on—let me think how to put this. Okay, take the Chinese Volunteers. High morale, right? Could we compare? 'Fear no hardship, fear no death'—even in the old timeline, that was legendary. The Fubo Army can't match it. But even in Korea, there was a saying: the 'three fears.' What were they? One, fear of no food; two, fear of no ammo; three, fear of not being carried off after being wounded." Song Junxing waved his bone. "In our army, food may not be unlimited, but at least the soldiers haven't gone hungry. Ammo may not be unlimited, but we haven't run dry. But the third one? Are all our wounded being brought back?"

"How can you compare to the Volunteers? Three hundred years difference." Fu Liangqi said. "At least the Volunteers had trucks, railroads, Shanghai pharmaceutical factories, nearly fifty years of modern medicine from late Qing to Republic—a system, however imperfect. Do we have that?"

"But the Ming don't have B-29s either. In terms of casualty rates, ours are actually quite low—never mind that for now. The Volunteers' transport and logistics conditions were also poor by twentieth-century standards—there are parallels with us." Song Junxing explained. "Failing to evacuate wounded properly is a huge blow to morale. Some fools in the Propaganda Department keep crowing that Council medicine is all-powerful. Bullshit! Our soldiers have seen what real near-modern medicine looks like. Their expectations are sky-high compared to Ming soldiers. If they know they're going to suffer that much on the road, maybe lose a life that could have been saved because of delays—how do you think they'll feel?"

"What can they think? They can't blame us, can they?" Fu Liangqi was starting to see where Song Junxing was going but didn't say so, waiting for him to continue.

"Of course they won't blame us—but they'll be scared." Song Junxing recalled what he had seen at the medical station. "Some officers even told me evacuation of the wounded is a mistake—especially the critically wounded. The hardships of that journey, and maybe you couldn't save them anyway, all that suffering—worse than dying twice! Why bother? Better to just lie down and die at the front line in peace!"

"That's just talk spoken in anger..."

"It's not." Song Junxing was firm. "You've dealt with the troops. If you said they were afraid to die, that'd be putting a horse-dung cap on the army. But ask them which they'd rather avoid—dying or being wounded—and you know what answer you'd get."

"This isn't something you or I can change." Fu Liangqi took a sip of kvass and set down his cup. "And you know, even if it's not just anger, you have to treat it that way. Otherwise what? Are you really going to leave the wounded at the front to fend for themselves? Or go back to the old rules—'finishing off' the immobile wounded after a battle? I'll tell you, that's happening at the front right now. Some reports have come in, and I pretend I didn't see them. I've ordered all related reports destroyed—because you can't manage it, and it's not good to manage! It's like the trend now toward overusing amputation. Everyone knows the field hospital has no real choice, but we still issue a stack of 'protocols' that can only be used to wipe your ass at the front. Why? It's the same thing!"

(End of Chapter)