Chapter 22 Ideal
"Damn rats!" At this time, there was a noise outside the trench. Lu Mingfei and the others stuck their heads out and looked outside, and found a large group of black rats running towards the outside of the trench.
There was no food in the trenches. Even the rats were so hungry that they began to look for food elsewhere. The shells landed among the rats, turning them into pools of meat paste.
Lu Mingfei and the others watched this scene in silence. A new recruit began to walk out of the shelter silently.
Lu Mingfei noticed him and shouted, "Hey, what are you doing? The artillery fire outside hasn't stopped yet!"
"I'll be back in a minute." The new recruit pushed Lu Mingfei who was blocking his way and started walking out, madness in his eyes.
"Stop him!" Kaczynski's face changed immediately when he saw it, and he hurried forward to grab the recruit.
Lu Mingfei and Kaczynski together pinned the new recruit to the ground. The new recruit struggled hard, slapping and kicking his surroundings with his hands and feet, and began to talk nonsense.
"Let me go! I want to go out! Mom! Mom! I want to go home!" He started to cry as he yelled, but he still did not give up struggling. Lu Mingfei and Kaczynski had no choice but to beat him up severely to make him wake up and avoid running outside to die.
Lu Mingfei and Kaczynski were very ruthless, and the faces of the other people around them turned pale. Lu Mingfei and the others hoped that this would scare the others and prevent them from going crazy like the new recruit. After a beating, the new recruit finally calmed down.
Lu Mingfei and Kaczynski sat down panting.
"This is a claustrophobia attack. He feels that he is going to suffocate here and wants to get out at all costs. If we let him go out, he will run around without covering himself. I have seen more than one person like this."
Kaczynski sat on the ground and lit the last cigarette on his body, explaining that he had always been reluctant to smoke this cigarette. Every time he wanted to smoke it, he would just take it out and smell it, but now he can't stand it anymore.
Lu Mingfei could even feel that Kaczynski's hair was beginning to turn gray, and he seemed to have aged ten years in an instant.
A shell hit their trench. The trench shook and mud kept falling from the top, but fortunately the trench held up. Lu Mingfei and his men were lucky as the trench they were in was very sturdy and it was one of the few trenches that were still intact.
But this shell made the other two recruits as crazy as the previous recruit, and they ran towards the entrance like crazy.
Kaczynski pinned a recruit to the ground, and Lu Mingfei went to grab another recruit, but the recruit was too fast and ran to the entrance in the blink of an eye. However, as soon as he reached the entrance, a shell fell from the sky.
A gust of air carrying warm liquid hit Lu Mingfei as he was trying to grab the soldier, knocking him over.
When Lu Mingfei got up again, he found that his whole body was covered in blood and broken flesh. The new recruit at the entrance had disappeared, leaving only broken flesh and fragments of military uniforms on the ground and walls.
Lu Mingfei and his men used eating spoons to dig the recruit's body out of the tunnel wall bit by bit, and then dug a random hole to bury him.
Kaczynski tied up the other two crazy recruits, but not too tightly so that they could be untied if necessary.
The new recruit who went crazy at the beginning might have really gone crazy. He leaned against the wall and started banging his head against it, leaving blood marks on the wall.
"We have to find a way to send them to the rear at night, otherwise they will really kill themselves." Kaczynski took a deep puff of cigarette, exhausted by what had just happened. In fact, he knew that his proposal was unlikely, no one could take two people out under such artillery fire, but he still couldn't bear to see two young people die like this.
"Kaczynski, stop thinking too much and let's play cards." Lu Mingfei took out cards from his bag and handed them to Kaczynski. They couldn't think too much in such an environment. They had to find something to do to divert their attention, otherwise they would become like those two recruits.
Kaczynski took the cards and played with Lu Mingfei, but neither of them focused on the game. They were either distracted or played the wrong cards.
"Hans, do you still remember what the Pythagorean theorem is?" At this time, Kropp asked a question to the absent-minded Lu Mingfei.
"Pythagorean theorem?" Lu Mingfei was stunned. He seemed to remember that the teacher had talked about it in class.
"The Pythagorean theorem is an important theorem in geometry that describes the relationship between the three sides of a right triangle. It states that in a right triangle, the square of the side opposite the right angle (. the hypotenuse) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. It can be expressed as: [a^2 + b^2 = c^2]."
He racked his brains to dig it out from the garbage pile in his head. Fortunately, he had not yet returned everything he had learned in three years of high school to his teacher.
"Is that so?" Lu Mingfei asked uncertainly.
"Yes, that's it!" Klopp looked at Lu Mingfei with surprise.
"I just asked Paul and Kemmerich, and they couldn't answer." Klopp pointed at Kemmerich and Paul next to him.
"What's the use of remembering this? The other side won't explain the Pythagorean theorem to you. They will just ask you to get shot." Paul said disdainfully.
"Krop, you know... I'm not good at math." Kemmerich said a little embarrassedly, with an awkward smile on his face.
"What? Kropp, do you really still want to go to college?" Paul looked at Kropp with suspicion.
"Of course! The war will end one day, and we can't stay in the army forever. We have to consider the future, right?" Krop responded firmly.
"By the way, have you thought about what to do after the war? I plan to go to college and become a writer in the future. When the time comes, I will write the stories we have experienced together into a book. I believe it will be a big seller." Kropp looked at the other people around him with curiosity.
"What to do in the future?" Paul touched his chin and thought. Suddenly, he thought of a good idea and his eyes lit up.
"You think that after the war, Himmelstoss will also leave the army and become a postman again? I will be the director of the post office then. Just wait and see how I torture him. I will torture him just like I tortured us, hehehe!" Paul couldn't help laughing at the exciting thought.
"I plan to be a forest ranger. My mother planted an orange grove. Every time the oranges are ripe, someone comes to steal them and throws them everywhere. My mother gets sad every time she sees so many oranges being wasted, so I want to protect my mother's orange grove." Kemmerich smiled shyly, his eyes full of longing for the future.
"Every year when the oranges are ripe, you can come to my house and eat them. My mother will treat you warmly."
(End of this chapter)
