The Price of a Ragtag Unit

The pervasive sight of blood became her daily reality after she became an apprentice medic.

The only silver lining was that none of it flowed from her own wounds.

She possessed the “luck” the lieutenant had spoken of.

She had been fortunate enough to crawl back from the no-man’s-land between the trenches completely intact, fortunate to be far from the trenches, far from the relentless artillery and gunfire.

Others, however, were not blessed with such fortune.

The uncle who had lost his right foot succumbed to infection; perhaps due to excessive blood loss, he was consumed by a high fever the very next day and died of sepsis.

Most of the other severely wounded soldiers, barely rescued, would not last more than a few days.

Only a handful saw their injuries gradually improve, and these few would occasionally joke with Nangong, sometimes even attempting to tease Lin Yu.

After Lin Yu began assisting in the tent, the efficiency of treating lightly wounded soldiers did see some improvement.

However, it remained a considerable distance from the targets Nangong had previously outlined, clearly requiring even greater effort.

“I’ll leave the rest to you now.

Try stitching this.”

“Mm…”

It wasn’t about stitching blood vessels, but the incision itself.

In both her current life and the one before, Lin Yu’s sole connection to a “suturing needle” had been the embroidery her mother had painstakingly forced her to learn when their family’s circumstances were still relatively comfortable.

However, deemed a waste of precious silk thread and time, she was made to abandon it before she could achieve mastery, turning instead to household chores and carrying heavy loads.

She would assist her busy mother at home and deliver water and food to her father toiling in the fields.

Stitching flesh was far from the simplicity of embroidery.

On one hand, she had to conquer her inherent fear of open wounds; on the other, she needed to ignore the agonizing wails of the injured soldier.

Indeed, the surgery Nangong had just completed had been performed without anesthesia.

Not only this one, but every incision and amputation before it had been performed without any anesthetic.

Otherwise, their screams would not have been so utterly agonizing.

With a face drained of color, Lin Yu began to stitch, carefully guiding the needle through the soldier’s skin, using the thread to pull the gaping, crimson wound tightly shut.

“Well done.

Here, you can pull the thread a little slower; that way, he won’t scream quite so loudly.”

Lin Yu snipped the blood-stained thread, dropping it onto the metal tray, and asked softly, “Can’t we apply for more anesthetic?

This is too cruel…”

The injured soldier, lying on the operating table on the verge of unconsciousness, was perhaps suffering from excessive blood loss or had fallen into traumatic shock; in any case, his complexion was far more ghastly than Lin Yu’s.

Nangong’s reply, though stark, was undeniably logical.

“He wouldn’t have survived otherwise.

Now, after the surgery, he has a chance to live.

Isn’t a moment or two of pain worth that?”

Rendered speechless, she could only silently wash her hands by the basin, scrubbing away the bloodstains that clung to her fingertips.

****

Over the past few days, Lin Yu had learned from the wounded that this ragtag army wasn’t solely comprised of conscripts.

Initially, it had been an elite, battle-hardened force under King Qi.

However, in the early days of the war, their relentless, continuous charges against the Lanfos position had led to the near-total annihilation of their ranks.

Later, with a constant influx of low-quality recruits, coupled with their repeated failures to breach enemy lines, this unit was gradually marginalized.

It became a de facto ragtag force, teeming with conscripts and ‘ghost soldiers’ (TL Note: Soldiers who exist only on paper, drawing pay without being present for duty) drawing phantom salaries, tasked with holding less crucial defensive lines at the fringes of the front.

Such was the price of being a ragtag unit: a scarcity of medicine, a dearth of mages, and a paltry allocation of only six medics, four of whom had even been embezzled and reassigned elsewhere.

Of course, there was one small, albeit meager, consolation: the fighting here was never as fierce as that endured by the main forces.

The only exception had been that one time when she first arrived, when the Lanfos, for some inexplicable reason, had suddenly launched an assault.

The enemy’s shelling had grown increasingly sparse, likely because a major battle was unfolding several kilometers away, diverting most of their supplies.

On their own side, few heavy cannons remained; nearly all had been transferred, taking with them the majority of the seasoned veterans from the trenches.

It seemed that this sector of the trenches would soon enter a de facto ceasefire.

“Nangong, I have a plan.

I wonder if you’d be willing to hear it.”

“…Speak.”

“I want to take some medical supplies into the trenches and explain emergency procedures: how to stop bleeding and how to apply simple bandages.”

The former farmers, forcibly conscripted, had never received military training as Lin Yu had in her previous life.

Their understanding of battlefield first aid would barely surpass that of ‘village girl Lin Yu.’

Thus, it was imperative to impart the knowledge of ‘mercenary Lin Yu’ to them.

“Currently, many soldiers return to us, seeking bandages for mere scrapes.

If this knowledge were widespread, they could administer basic treatment themselves.

Not only would casualties on the front lines, caused by delayed hemostasis, decrease, but our own workload would also be significantly eased.”

Lin Yu’s gaze followed Nangong, but unfortunately, Nangong seemed rather indifferent to the plan.

“The front lines are dangerous.

Even if no shells are falling now, who can guarantee that the next moment won’t bring an explosion?”

Nangong gently rebuffed Lin Yu’s suggestion.

“It’s good for us when lightly wounded soldiers come here for treatment; we don’t need to go through elaborate surgeries to accumulate a ‘healing and recovery’ quota.”

The most crucial reason, she saved for last: “Don’t forget, our quota for this month isn’t met yet.”

It appeared that Nangong was more focused on meeting the healing quotas set by her superiors than on saving lives.

Although rejected, Lin Yu understood her reasoning: why risk one’s life for a monthly salary of three thousand wen?

It was far better to remain safely in the rear, treating the sick and saving lives, rather than courting disaster on the front lines.

‘I’ll just have to find an opportunity to slip over there and teach them myself…’

‘Someone has to do this, otherwise, more people will needlessly die due to a lack of emergency first aid knowledge.’

Nangong pressed bandages and dressings onto the soldier’s stitched wound, then changed his bag of saline solution.

“Once this bag is finished, help him remove the needle.

I’m going to report your plan to the lieutenant colonel.”

Catching Lin Yu’s bewildered gaze, Nangong gently flicked her forehead.

“Ow!”

“Why would *we* go to the front lines to teach?

Surely, the soldiers on the front lines should send representatives here to learn!

I’ll go discuss the specific plan with the lieutenant colonel.

In the meantime, this place is all yours.”

Nangong waved her hand and vanished outside the tent, leaving Lin Yu alone to face a dozen or so injured soldiers sprawled haphazardly about.

‘Well… even if it’s not exactly according to my plan, at least the goal of reducing casualties will be achieved.’

‘A healer’s heart yearns for fewer people to die in the trenches; nothing could be better.’

After ensuring that none of the wounded showed any immediate abnormalities, she quietly stepped out of the tent and turned towards the large pit she frequented.

Since things needed to be moved between two locations often, the excavation site was not far from the medical tent…

No, she would just say it plainly: the ‘things’ being moved were the soldiers who could not be saved or had died before receiving treatment.

Most were privates, the former farmers temporarily ‘conscripted’ into service.

The large pit served as a mass grave for these former farmers and veterans.

The pit before her today had been dug two days prior.

‘If I, too, were to be struck by a bullet and die someday, would I be wrapped in a sack and tossed in here?’

The surfaces of those sacks were still scattered with lime for disinfection, sprinkled to prevent the spread of disease, and to conserve manpower, they would only be buried once the pit was full.

An unpleasant odor was already beginning to eman emanate from it.

“You know, the first people buried in there even had crude coffins.”

A scent of alcohol wafted from behind her, and Lin Yu turned to see the quartermaster, the same man responsible for distributing rifles and helmets.

However, he didn’t seem to recognize her, or perhaps he was unaware that she had been among the conscripts kicked into the trenches.

He was merely striking up a conversation with “the medic next door,” shaking a metal canteen with one hand; there was no doubt it contained liquor.

“Did a friend of yours get buried in there?”

Lin Yu shifted her gaze to the uneven ground on the left side of the pit, the site of the previous burial filled two days ago.

“Not exactly a friend, just a wounded soldier I couldn’t save.”

Suddenly, a saying came to mind: ‘Loyal bones lie everywhere in the green mountains; why must a warrior’s corpse be wrapped in horsehide and returned home?’

She wondered if His Majesty, the Emperor of Diakra, was truly worthy of the ‘loyalty’ of these two hundred million Diakrans.

She stood before the dead, bowing her head, and lightly touched her forehead, chest, right shoulder, and left shoulder, making the sign of the cross for them.

This was a prayer method taught to her by that young Russian in her previous life.

She wondered if the gods of this异 (TL Note: Another world or different world) would acknowledge it.

After three seconds of silent prayer, Lin Yu turned to leave, only to find the quartermaster staring at her with an unnerving intensity.

“What are you doing?”

“Praying.

Why?”

Hearing Lin Yu’s bewildered counter-question, his expression softened instantly.

He shook his head, took a swig of liquor, and walked away.

“…Strange man.

No, a strange idiot.”

Lin Yu also shook her head, returning to the tent entrance to stretch.

She still harbored resentment for the time he had kicked her into the trenches and wouldn’t give him a pleasant look.

She then noticed Nangong in the distance, her white attire standing out conspicuously against the black uniforms of the supervisory squad.

Lin Yu quickly turned to pray that they wouldn’t trouble Nangong, the quartermaster’s strange behavior immediately forgotten from her mind.