Free To Live by Yu Hua

louder and louder, we weren’t scared, just bored. The company commander still hadn’t ordered us to start firing the cannons. One veteran soldier thought that sitting idle while our brothers-in-arms were on the front lines shedding their blood and sacrificing their lives was no
kind of plan, so he asked the commander, “Shouldn’t we fire a few shots from the cannons?”
    At the time the commander was in a tunnel gambling. He furiously snapped back, “Fire the cannons? In which direction should we fire them?”
    The company commander had a point: What if our cannons hit our Nationalist brothers-in-arms? The Nationalist troops in front would instantly turn around and teach us a lesson. This wasn’t a game. The commander ordered us to stay in the tunnels. We could do whatever the hell we wanted, as long as we didn’t fire the cannons.
    After being surrounded for a while our supplies of food and ammunition were close to empty. Whenever a plane appeared overhead, the Nationalist troops below crowded together like a colony of ants. No one wanted the trunks of ammunition that were thrown out of the plane; everyone piled onto the bags of rice. As soon as the plane left, the soldiers who got their hands on some rice would carry it off to their tunnels. Two men would carry one bag while others beside them would fire shots into the air to protect the carriers. Only then would the crowds start to break up, and everyone would return to their tunnels.
    Before long, groups of Nationalist troops surged out of their tunnels toward the houses and leafless trees. Men were climbing on the roofs of thatched houses near and far, tearing down huts and cutting down trees. This was almost like going into battle, and the cacophony that followed almost drowned out the sounds of the gunshots in the forward position. In less than half a day, all the houses and trees were gone. All that was left on the desolate land were soldiers walking around with house beams and tree branches on their shoulders, while others carried planks and stools. After returning to their tunnels they began to cook rice. The smoke rose up, twisting and turning in the sky.
    At the time, what we had most of were bullets. No matter where you’d lie down they would press up against you until it hurt. After all of the houses and trees around us had been torn and cut down, soldiers flooded the land, cutting dead grass with their bayonets. The scene was just like the busy season when farmers harvest rice. There were even a few soldiers who, covered in sweat, dug at the roots of some trees. And then there were some who started to dig up graves, using the weathered coffin boards as fuel for fire. As they dug up the coffins they’d just throw the bones of the deceased to one side, not even bothering to rebury them. When you’re in the
kind of situation we were in, bones of the deceased are nothing to be afraid of. If you had to sleep pressed up against them you wouldn’t even have a nightmare. There was less and less firewood to cook the rice with, while there was more and more rice. No one fought over the rice anymore. In fact, Old Quan, Chunsheng and I carried a few bags of rice back to our tunnel to use as a bed to sleep on, so we could avoid the discomfort of bullets pressing against us.
    It had gotten to the point when all possible sources of cooking fuel were exhausted, yet the Generalissimo still hadn’t come to save us. It was a good thing that the planes stopped air-dropping rice and began sending down flatbread. As soon as the packages of flatbread hit the ground, our brothers dived recklessly on top like animals trying to get their share. The way they piled on top of one another, layer after layer, was exactly how my mom used to weave the soles of my shoes. The way they screamed was no different from a pack of wild wolves.
    “Let’s split up and snatch some,” suggested Old Quan.
    Splitting up was our only chance of getting our hands on some flatbread. We crawled