On the front lines, the roar of battle was incessant. The Japanese soldiers' ferocious artillery fire left the warriors of the 160th Division, hunkered down in their positions, in a state of unimaginable misery.
Because the enemy’s assaults were so swift, the soldiers constantly had to shift their positions to establish new firing points to hold them back. Yet, it was never long before they were subjected to saturation strikes from Japanese mortars and other light and heavy artillery. If they failed to displace in time, an entire fire team risked being buried beneath the enemy's relentless barrage.
The fighting had begun at dawn and continued until the sun slowly climbed to the middle of the sky. The cold, frozen earth and the frost that had settled the night before were all obliterated by the intensity of the bombardment. Within the trenches, countless soldiers had laid down their precious lives, one after another, to stem the tide of the Japanese advance.
Chapter 227