.What is it written on it?”

Although he knew that no one in his company knew Japanese, Lieutenant Hank, commander of the 1st Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Regiment of the 2nd Marine Division, asked a question.

Several soldiers around him shook their heads or stared at the crooked Japanese characters on the wooden board without any indication. Judging from the shape and layout of the large soil bundle, it is very likely to be a newly built large tomb. Who is buried in the tomb? Why is the tomb so large? The words on the wooden board should be the answer to the question.

"Maybe everyone in the town is here, no wonder we can't see a living person!" A second-level soldier with a thin face muttered. Since the town had already left, everyone took off the gas mask, the stuffy burden.

No one refuted this, nor did anyone laugh out loud. More people just hoped to leave here early and leave this unmanned town shrouded in a strange atmosphere.

Hank also didn't want to stay here for a while, but for his duties, he decided to ask his superiors for instructions first.

"Berlin, Berlin, here is Ningbo District 1, 3rd Street... Yes, we found a large grave here... big, surprisingly large, and looks enough to bury hundreds of people with tombstones in front, but no one here can understand Japanese... Yes, either blow it up and find out, or I don't care about it, I don't have a third way to choose... Well, I get it!"

After the call, Hank looked at the German soldiers around him. Since they discovered that the tomb had been around, most of the failures to enter the town were surrounded.

"Guys!" Hank shouted in his usual tone, but as soon as he spoke, he felt that his voice was really loud, as if he would wake up the undead underground. Therefore, his next voice obviously weakened by a level:

"The superiors really want to know what is buried here, and the top priority of our company is still to move north! So, we need to leave some people to use explosives and shovels to figure out what is buried inside, and carry out alert tasks around the town until the follow-up troops arrive! Now I want to know if anyone volunteers to stay?"

Soldiers look at me, I look at you. There is no choice when entering the town, so everyone basically didn't hesitate, but they volunteered to stay and dig the grave...

No one spoke for a while.

"Has the courage of the 1st Company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment of the 2nd Marine Division, been stolen by someone?" Hank deliberately motivated everyone in this tone.

Soon, three younger soldiers stood up.

"It's great, but we need 20 people and 20 brave volunteers! In fact, I also know that digging other people's graves is not very honorable, but our superiors need this information! God will forgive us!" Hank knew what everyone was hesitating about. In people's traditional concept, digging other people's graves is a low-key and lowly tomb robbers, and these people will be cursed!

More people stood up, but more people were still weighing the severity of the honorary Marines and the despicable tomb robbers in their heads.

"I also need an experienced non-commissioned officer to direct this important operation, second-level corporal Gentridge. Are you willing to take on this important task?" Hank found a familiar face not far away.

Hearing the commander clicked his name, put the mp24 submachine gun belt on his left shoulder and holding a Deutsche cigarette in his mouth, he quickly took off the cigarette butt and threw it on the ground, "Sir, this is very difficult, but I will do it hard!"

"Very good!" Hank counted the soldiers who had already stood up in his mind, "There are still 6 left, is there anyone willing to join?"

"Boss, this is a chore!" The tall second-level soldier standing behind Gentridge threw the cigarette butt and took a big step forward with his long legs.

"Yes, head. We have to invite us to drink next time!" The young first-class soldier, holding a semi-automatic rifle, also took a step forward, his face full of freckles and a mouthful of white teeth.

After a while, 20 "volunteers" including Gentridge gathered together. Two armored vehicles also drove from the other side of the road to unload two boxes of explosives and a box of grenades. After that, Company Commander Hank and the rest continued to move north along the road when they came, while Gentridge led the unlucky guys to start work.

"Otto, you take two people to be responsible for the east guard, Erwin, you take two people to the north, Walter, you take two people to the west, Wolf, you take two people to the south, and I will have someone take you in two hours! The rest, put down all the extra things on their bodies, leaving only the helmets, engineer shovels and gas masks!"

The soldier in charge of the alert left with his weapons with relief. The others unloaded the weapons they carried with him, the backpack and the kettle, while he himself walked around the tramp alone.

"Perimeter - 272 steps, about 120 meters! High - about 3 meters!" Gentrich quickly recorded it in his small notebook with a pencil. Seeing that the soldiers were all ready, he pointed to the top of the mountain and said, "Garcober, you take three people to dig from the top!"

Although the tall man kept muttering about something he could hear, he still took the lead in climbing up the turtle bun.

"Boss, the soil here is very loose, and it's at least half an inch after one foot!" The tall man crawled up and shouted down.

"Is the mud dry or wet?" Gentridge asked with his head raised.

The tall man twisted the soil under the surface of the mountain, "semi-dry!"

"Topsodium - soft, semi-dry."

Gentridge wrote down it in his small notebook with a pencil. According to special weather records, it has not rained on Okinawa for a week. If the soil is filled before it rains, it will definitely be more compact because of the rain. If the tomb builder spends more effort to tamp the soil, it can achieve the same effect.

"Boss, is it just excavation from here?" The tall man who climbed onto the top of the soil bun pointed at his feet, and the other three soldiers quickly climbed onto it.

"You dig a vertical pit every meter, as deep as possible!" Gentridge turned his head and said to the remaining four people. "Got William, bring a box of explosives up first! Alfred, Joach, prepare the wires and detonators!"

Seeing everyone busy, Gentridge was a little idle. He was not sure whether these explosives were enough to solve all the problems. If they didn't work, they would have to dig by hand. Thinking of this, Gentridge felt that he might have sent too many people to carry out the alert mission.

Half an hour later, the first box of explosives showed its power, and the soil layer about 1 meter above the top of the mountain bun was lifted off, but it was still far from Gentrich's psychological expectations.

Forty-five minutes later, the power of the second box of explosives and a whole box of grenades left less than half a meter higher than the ground, and the explosion point directly exposed things outside the soil.

After digging out the top of the soil, corpses covered with straw mats appeared in front of people. Such "coffin lids" were inevitably a bit shabby, but when people lifted the straw mats, they saw a scene that was even more unwilling to witness: although the corpses were well preserved, their limbs showed various twisted postures. The death of each corpse was also extremely hideous. It can be seen that every dead person here suffered great pain when he died.

Although they were used to life and death scenes, in the face of such a scene, the officers and soldiers of the German Marine Corps still couldn't bear to turn their heads away, and some of them even ran aside to retreat.

"The Tomb of the Tomb - estimated that all the dead were killed in chemical bombing - the number..." Gentrich was mixed with emotion, but he still wrote these materials as calmly as possible. Since the tomb can be basically qualitative, the next task is to figure out the number of these corpses. However, judging from the current situation, it is both difficult and painful to ask whoever counts.

At this moment, the soldier responsible for guarding the east side of the town was escorted an old Japanese man wearing a dirty cotton coat. According to the soldiers' reports, these Japanese civilians were found in a cotton field about 3 kilometers away from the town. At that time, they were crowding in a small hole covered with dry branches and leaves, with two kitchen knives, a knife and a few small sweet potatoes around them. They had tried to resist, but the strong German Marines easily subdued these old guys.

After seeing the landbag being destroyed from afar, several Japanese old men seemed extremely excited. At first they tried to break free from the constraints of the German soldiers. After failing, they turned to sit on the ground and cried. Even the German soldiers beside them pulled the bolts loudly, it was useless. It was not until Gentrich opened a few cans of meat and put them in front of them that they could barely calm down. After exchanging eyes with each other, the youngest one began to eat. After half a minute, they saw that the eater was safe and sound, the other three used their hands instead of chopsticks to deliver food to their mouths, and the faster they ate, and finally they were simply eating voraciously. In the end, they licked the remaining oil and water in the jar with their tongues.

After the four old Japanese men finished eating, Gentrich began to look for answers to the questions from them, but was unable to communicate in language. Gentrich gave up the question of the chicken and duck talk, but used his fingers and branches to tell them that he wanted to know how many people were buried in the grave. After spending a long time to understand what the German officer in front of him wanted to know, several old Japanese men whispered and said that more cans were needed to cooperate. After this condition was met, one of the old men drew a bunch of symbols on the ground with branches: a circle represents 1, a triangle equals 10 circles, and a square equals 10 triangles, and the number of people in this grave was 7 squares, 7 triangles and 3 circles!
Chapter completed!