202: Chapter 112 Prisoner of War Camp

January 18, 1908, the third day after the end of the anti-landing operation in Sansha Bay.

The coalition soldiers who survived on the blood-stained beach were escorted through passages enclosed by barbed wire into a camp temporarily built with canvas tents and wooden fences.

The queue was long, stretching from the camp entrance all the way to the innermost medical area, moving slowly and dully like a grayish-black river.

Some walked with a limp, using temporarily whittled wooden sticks as crutches; others wrapped the wounds on their heads with torn sleeves, the blood having dried into dark brown hard chunks, the fabric of the sleeves soaked with blood and then frozen stiff, their edges as sharp as blades.

A young soldier tightly clutched his right arm, fresh blood oozing from between his fingers, dripping down his wrist onto the sandy ground, like a string of tiny red beads trailing behind a series of grey footprints of varying depths, some of which had slightly melted the surrounding snow due to body heat.

The scale of the prisoner-of-war camp had expanded threefold compared to expected, with the barbed wire changing from one circle to three circles, spaced three meters apart between each net, and equipped with double-layer guard towers.

The guard towers were built with logs, about six meters high, with searchlights and Heavy Machine Gun mounted on top of the towers.

Guard shifts changed every half hour, and during the shift changes, soldiers went up and down the wooden ladders, their boots stepping on the crossbeams to make rhythmic creaking sounds, which traveled far in the silence of the early morning.

Inside the camp, it was divided into several sections according to the nationality and military rank of the prisoners: the Meijian Country Marine Corps was assigned to the East District, the British Marine Corps in the Central District, the French colonial Army in the West District, and the Japan observers were isolated in a separate fence at the south corner — that fence was smaller than the other sections, and the grid of the barbed wire was denser.

From the outside, all that could be seen were a few canvas tents and a drooping sun flag, its surface faded due to days of dampness.

The canvas of the tents was slightly damp from days of overcast rain, with water droplets hanging at the corners, rustling in the wind, as if someone was continuously tapping the canvas with fingers outside the tent.

At the entrance of the camp stood a wooden board nailed together, with a line of words written in English, French, and Chinese respectively.

The Chinese line was written with a writing brush, with neat strokes: "Prisoner of war camp. Those who obey discipline can receive basic humanitarian treatment. Those who attempt to escape will be shot."

On the afternoon when Li Ling inspected the prisoner-of-war camp, the weather was terribly gloomy, with clouds pressing very low, as if it was going to snow at any moment.

When he got down from the jeep, his boots stepped into the muddy ground at the camp entrance, the muddy water submerging the edge of the soles and leaving a damp, dark trace on the uppers.

He wore a dark grey military casual suit without wearing any medals, and the star badges on his shoulder straps appeared very dim in the light of the cloudy day, like two dust-covered buttons.

He only brought a company of guards and a few accompanying staff officers.

The guards spread out and stood outside the barbed wire, one every twenty meters, turning their backs to the camp and looking outwards without looking inwards.

Because of the bumps, the hood of the jeep had melted most of the accumulated snow, condensing a pool of water on the surface of the iron sheet, which was flowing down along the front fender, dripping a row of equidistant pits on the muddy ground.

When his boots stepped into the muddy ground at the camp entrance, the atmosphere on the other side of the barbed wire changed obviously.

Those prisoners squatting at the tent doors and hugging their knees in a daze raised their heads, their gazes passing through the gaps of the barbed wire and landing on that young man.

Some wiped the mud off their faces with their sleeves, lowering their hands after wiping a few times, leaving a grayish-brown damp mark on the cuffs; some moved their gaze away and back again, repeating twice, as if confirming that they had not seen wrongly; others had their hands shaking slightly, not knowing whether it was because of the cold or something else, their fingers curling into the palms and then loosening, loosening and curling back.

Most of them had heard the name of "Li Ling" — knowing that he was the person who defeated the United Fleet, the person who beat them into this appearance on the Sansha Bay beach, and the outline in the blurred photo on the newspaper.

A Meijian Country soldier leaning against the tent pillar and smoking extinguished his cigarette butt on the soles of his shoes with slow and vigilant movements, the sparks of the cigarette butt making a subtle hissing sound on the damp soles, and his gaze followed Li Ling all the way, from the entrance to the corner of the main road, from the corner of the main road to the entrance of the clinic, as if to remember every step of his, or just silently counting the steps in his heart.

Li Ling walked a circle along the main road of the camp, his pace neither fast nor slow, as if walking on the dirt road of some ordinary village.

He stopped in front of the porridge pot at the food supply point, reached out to pick up the pot lid and took a look.

The porridge was thick rice porridge, with pickles and a small amount of minced meat added, and a few burnt rice grains stuck to the bottom of the pot, turning up a thin layer of rice oil when stirred with a long spoon.

When he put down the pot lid, a French soldier serving food nearby subconsciously took half a step back, the enamel bowl in his hand almost unstable, and a few drops of scalding porridge spilled on the back of his hand.

He only quickly withdrew his hand without even humming a sound, the skin on the back of his hand quickly reddened, but he just steadied the bowl a bit more, lowered his head and continued to queue, without looking more in the direction of Li Ling.

The several prisoners lined up further back also remained silent, with no one speaking, only the slight metallic sound of the porridge spoon touching the pot wall echoing in the empty muddy ground between the tents.

Dozens of wounded prisoners lay in the clinic, with broken arms and legs, and the accompanying military doctors were treating their wounds.

The electric light on the simple operating table swayed in the breeze, making the sweat beads on the military doctor's forehead flash and flash.

The sweat beads slid down from the temples, dripping onto the waterproof cloth of the operating table, soaking into a small dark damp mark.

The medicines were piled in the wooden boxes nearby, and a few Penicillin injection solutions were wrapped in ice bags, quietly lying on the upper layer of the iron cabinet in the corner.

The edges of the ice bags had already begun to drip water, condensing into a small puddle of water on the surface of the iron sheet.

Those wounded coalition soldiers lay on crude wooden beds; some groaned in pain, their voices lowered very low, as if they didn't want others to hear; some closed their eyes and pretended to be asleep, but their eyeballs under their eyelids were still slightly moving; others stared blankly at the canvas on the top of the tent, where there was a dark water stain left by rainwater soaking through, shaped like an open palm.

A one-legged British soldier lay in the innermost position, his left leg wrapped with thick bandages below the knee, and the oozing blood had turned dark brown, looking like a slowly soaking ink stain on the white gauze.

His beard hadn't been shaved for a few days, his eye sockets were sunken, and his lips were chapped, but his eyes still carried a residual sharpness, like the last small piece of reflective blade on a blunted razor.

Li Ling stopped in front of him.

The British soldier raised his head, and their eyes met.

He was stunned at first, and then a complex emotion mixed with anger and unwillingness welled up in his eyes.

His lips moved, and a vague sound rolled out of his throat, as if he wanted to say something and swallowed it back.

In the end, he only squeezed out a sentence of English with a heavy Yorkshire accent, his voice as hoarse as sandpaper scraping iron sheet: "Are you here to execute us?"

Li Ling replied in English, his pronunciation clear and calm: "No. I am here to check on your injuries. Once you have recovered and this war is over, you will be repatriated. Your families are still waiting for you to return. Before that, you will receive basic humanitarian treatment, with food to eat, medicine to treat you, and tents to sleep in."

When he said this, his gaze did not leave the other person's eyes, and his speech rate was neither fast nor slow, leaving just the right pause between each word, like reading a speech draft prepared for a long time, or just thinking of these words temporarily and saying them out.

That British soldier froze.

His gaze lingered on Li Ling's face for a few seconds, as if confirming whether those words were true or false, searching for some tangible flaw within those phrases.

Then his shoulders sagged slightly, as if pressed down by something heavy; he buried his face in the pillow, his shoulders twitching once, but he did not cry out.

By the bedside lay a postcard with one corner stained by blood, bearing a faint line of pencil writing that was no longer very clear, though a date and the place name "Newcastle" could still be discerned; the last letter of the place name was somewhat blurred by water stains, as if slowly dissolving on the paper's surface.

The edges of the postcard had grown fuzzy from being repeatedly rubbed, as if flipped through many times, with a shallow crease at the corner where the paper had turned white.

Li Ling did not touch the postcard, but instead took an unopened cigarette from his pocket—that was what Empress Su Wanqing had stuffed into his coat pocket before he went out, wrapped in a piece of oiled paper, the folds of which still held the warmth left by her fingers—and gently placed it beside the pillow, then turned and continued walking forward.

When he walked to the quarantine zone deep within the camp, he stopped.

Imprisoned there were senior officers of the coalition forces: two colonels, four majors, seven or eight junior officers, and several observers sent by Japan, wearing civilian clothes with identification armbands pinned to their cuffs, the edges of the armbands worn and frayed.

Their quarters were nailed together from planks, sturdier than ordinary prisoners' tents, and each person had a simple wooden cot and a set of bedding that had been washed but still retained the smell of sweat, with a few unwashed mud spots on the corners of the bedding that had dried into hard lumps.

A Meijian Country Army colonel stood behind the fence, and seeing Li Ling approach, he took the initiative to speak: "General, according to international conventions, we have the right to transmit messages to the outside world and inform our national government of our captured status."

His voice carried a deliberately maintained composure, but his knuckles gripping the fence turned white from exertion, and the edges of his fingernails were embedded in the wood grain, as if trying to dig something out of the wood.

The other officers behind him also stood up; some crossed their arms over their chests, some stood with hands hanging by their sides, and some cast their gazes to the ground before lifting them again, as if waiting for some kind of verdict.

Li Ling stopped his footsteps and looked at that colonel.

The opponent was around forty years old, tall in stature; although his uniform was stained with dust and blood, it still maintained basic tidiness, the buttons at his shirt collar meticulously fastened, and even the stubble on his chin neatly trimmed—clearly a person accustomed to keeping everything under control within order, maintaining a certain self-discipline even within the prisoner-of-war camp.

Li Ling did not reply immediately, remaining silent for two or three seconds.

During those two or three seconds, the air seemed to congeal; outside the barbed wire, a sparrow landed on a wooden post and flew away again, the sound of its flapping wings clearly audible from a distance of two or three meters.

The colonel's throat moved once, as if swallowing something uncomfortable, his fingers loosening slightly from the wood grain by half an inch before clenching back down.

Then Li Ling spoke: "Colonel, you brought soldiers across thousands of kilometers of ocean, came onto someone else's land, covered someone else's villages with artillery fire, pried open someone else's doors with bayonets, and then, after being captured, you come to talk to me about international conventions."

He paused. "You are a soldier, and you carry out orders."

But behind the issuance of any order, there is someone giving commands.

Has the person giving those commands ever considered that the soldiers whose chests are pierced are also soldiers, that the houses burned down are also property, and that passports trampled into the mud can also prove a person's nationality?

You said just now 'we have the right'—have you ever considered that your 'we have the right' is built on the foundation of others having 'we have no choice'?"

The colonel's complexion changed several times, from initial paleness to flushing and then fading back to paleness, like a lamp being repeatedly adjusted.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, then closed it again, his cheeks tightening for a moment before relaxing.

The younger junior officer behind him leaned against the tent pole, pale-faced, lips tightly pursed, eyes staring at the ground as if searching for some non-existent answer in the sand and soil, his fingers slowly clenching and loosening on both sides of his trouser seams.

A dry, cold wind blew from the distance, causing the Red Cross flag at the camp entrance to snap loudly before slowly lowering, like a slowing breath; the Red Cross on the flag distorted and deformed in the wind before returning to its original state, resembling some constant, unstoppable signal.

Li Ling did not continue saying anything, and turned and walked away.

The footprints left by his boots on the muddy ground varied in depth, some steps heavy, some light, as if someone leaving inadvertently leaked their own weight.

After a few steps, he stopped without looking back: "Your injuries will be treated, and your rations will not be docked."

But before you write letters, think about whether the people in the houses you burned down had the opportunity to write letters.

When you have thought it through clearly, then decide what to write."

Then he continued walking forward, not stopping again.

The quarantine zone behind him remained silent for a long time—long enough for the wind to blow across the canvas over the camp once more, long enough for someone to turn over and cause the wooden cot to creak.

Then that Meijian Country colonel whispered a sentence to his colleague beside him, his voice very small, yet faintly drifting over with the wind, stretched and flattened by the gaps between the barbed wire: "He is not speaking."

"He is reading a verdict."

That colleague did not reply, merely rubbing his empty cuff with his thumb, where rank insignia had originally been pinned, now leaving only two pinhole-sized holes.

Li Ling heard it, but did not look back.

After the inspection ended, Li Ling sat in the temporary command post at the entrance of the prisoner-of-war camp, a registration book spread out on the table before him, filled in pen with the names, ranks, and affiliated units of the captives, the handwriting neat and dense.

His fingers slowly slid across the paper surface, stopped beside one of the names, and then moved away, like a reader skipping a certain passage while flipping through a familiar book.

Outside the window, those prisoners of war were allowed to move freely within a designated area: someone squatted against the barbed wire, hands tucked into their sleeves to keep warm; someone scraped some pattern in the mud with a broken wooden chip, drawing a few strokes before wiping it away and starting over; several medics were changing dressings for lightly wounded soldiers, their movements brisk and gentle, while the wounded bit their own sleeves as they were bandaged, cold sweat seeping from their foreheads.

Sunlight leaked a slender band of light from the edge of the clouds, falling onto the muddy ground in the middle of the camp, casting the dust into a pale golden hue before being quickly blocked by the re-closing clouds.

From the distance came a cough originating from an unknown corner, muffled, as if something was blocked in the throat, quickly swept away by the wind.

"System," he said in his heart, "do you think they will remember today after they go back?"

"Some will."

"Some will use a lifetime to remember today."

But more people will choose to forget, just as they chose to forget that they once burned, killed, and looted on someone else's land.

Forgetting is easier than remembering.

Because remembering requires admitting one did wrong.

And admitting one did wrong is sometimes harder than taking a bullet."

Li Ling was silent for a moment, then closed the registration book and pushed it to the corner of the table.

The wick of the oil lamp on the desktop had burned down to just a short piece of charred blackness, long since dim in the faint daylight, and the lampshade was covered with a layer of dust; he wiped it with his finger, staining the pad of his finger with a thin layer of carbon black.

"Prepare the car," he stood up, tugging at the hem of his uniform jacket, "tonight we return to Jinling, and early tomorrow morning we go to the Northeast."

The war there has not yet been fought to an end.

The snow there is much thicker than here."

The adjutant stood at attention and saluted: "Yes, Your Majesty."

The iron gate of the prisoner-of-war camp slowly closed as the jeep drove out, the heavy chains clashing together with a clatter, like a story closing its pages.

A prisoner crouching by the door raised his head, looking through the gap in the iron gate at the departing jeep until it became a blurred dot in the gray sky, before lowering his head and burying his face in his knees.

The lingering echo of the chains persisted in the wind for a moment before dissipating, resembling some elongated coda.

And what those locked inside did not know was that in a distant place invisible to them, another even greater storm was brewing, thunder already rolling across the horizon, about to sweep across the entire Northeast Plain.

Mixed within that thunder were the crisp snapping sounds of rails frozen cracking, the low hum of caterpillar tracks crushing frozen soil, and an approaching something colder than the wind and snow of Sanshawan.

Further north, soot was pressed very low from the locomotive chimneys by the wind, spreading against the snow into a thin gray fog belt, like a curtain being slowly pulled open.