World War: Battleship Arms Dealers

The cold fog clung to the mounds along the Somme like a shroud.

At five in the morning, the sky was still a leaden gray, and frost clung to the barbed wire along the front of the trenches. Kim Soon-sik lay prone in the mud, his fingers frozen purple, yet he gripped the Type 38 rifle tightly. The chrysanthemum crest on the stock gleamed with a cold, metallic sheen in the dim light—the symbol of Japan, now held in the hands of a man from Cao County.

"Arise! All of you, arise!"

The broken Japanese echoed through the trenches. Lieutenant Sato—a Japanese officer in his thirties with a mustache—was kicking a soldier huddled in a corner with his leather boots. He was one of the supervisors of this group of "laborers."

"Attack in half an hour! Check your weapons! Charge forward if you don't want to die!"

Kim Soon-sik numbly got up and brushed the mud off his military uniform. This gray "work uniform" was as rough as a burlap sack, and the cuffs were already worn through. Around him were hundreds of young people with the same faces, mostly between seventeen or eighteen and twenty-five or twenty-six years old, with vacant eyes and chapped lips. No one spoke, only their heavy breathing condensed into white mist in the cold air.

They had been lying in this reserve trench for two days and two nights. They disembarked at Marseille, took a train north, and were then hauled like livestock by trucks to this plain in northern France. British officers gave orders in English, which were translated into Japanese by Japanese officers—or rather, translated with profanities. Training? Only three days. They were taught how to cock their rifles, how to lie prone, and how to run alongside the men in front of them.

"Remember," Lieutenant Sato said, standing at the front of the ranks, in a contemptuous tone that everyone in Cao County could understand, "that you are here is a gift from the Imperial Army. Those who survive the battlefield will have money for their families. Those who died... at least your families will receive compensation."

A blessing. Kim Soon-sik chewed on the word, his stomach churning. He remembered the ropes at Incheon Port, the suffocating stench in the cargo hold, and his mother's heart-wrenching cries as he was dragged away. His younger brother, Soon-tae, was only fifteen; now, only the woman remained in the house.

"Jin, what are you daydreaming about?"

Park Youngho, a fellow townsman, nudged his arm. Youngho was two years older than him and had a fresh whip mark on his face—he'd been whipped by Sato with his sword sheath yesterday for being a beat too slow during training.

"No." Kim Soon-sik shook his head, pulling the amulet from his pocket. The embroidered charm on the tattered cloth was stained and worn, his mother's stitches still faintly visible in the dim light. He pressed it to his forehead and whispered in Korean, "Mom, I will come back alive."

"Dream on," a gaunt young man beside him sneered. His name was Li Chengcan; he had a few years of schooling, and his words were always barbed. "We're just cannon fodder. The British pay two hundred pounds for our lives, the Japanese take half, and of the remaining half, they deduct transportation costs, food costs, equipment costs... What our families actually receive, is enough to buy a few bags of rice?"

No one responded. Everyone knew he was telling the truth, but no one was willing to admit it.

The roar of engines could be heard through the morning mist.

Twenty colossal vehicles slowly approached from behind—steel bodies, diamond-shaped outlines, their tracks creaking heavily as they rolled over the muddy ground. Those were Mark I tanks, the British secret weapon. Their hulls were painted in camouflage, and long gun barrels extended from either side like the tentacles of a prehistoric beast.

"Look! That's a tank!" a soldier from Cao County exclaimed.

"It can stop bullets and cross trenches," Lieutenant Sato explained, a rare occurrence, his tone tinged with pride. "If you follow it, your chances of survival will be much higher."

Kim Soon-sik stared at the nearest tank. It was parked a hundred yards away, engine idling, black smoke billowing from the exhaust pipe. Inside the driver's compartment, a British tank crewman poked his head out, wiping the periscope with a cotton swab. The soldier was young, wearing a leather cap, his face smeared with grease. He glanced in their direction, his eyes devoid of emotion, as if he were looking at a pile of tools ready for use.

Tools. Kim Soon-sik thought, we are all tools. The people of Cao County are consumables, tanks are steel tools, and the British use tools to consume consumables in exchange for the Germans' consumables.

Such simple arithmetic.

"Attention all!"

The British commander's voice came through a loudspeaker, and after being translated by a Japanese officer, it became fragmented instructions:

"...First wave...follow the tanks...maintain skirmish line...contain the position after capturing the first trench...no retreat..."

The translator, Sato, added impatiently, "Did you hear me? Wherever the tanks go, you charge in! Anyone who falls behind will be dealt with by the supervisory team!"

"Supervisory team." Kim Soon-sik glanced back. Fifty yards behind the trench, a dozen or so Japanese soldiers were setting up machine guns, not pointing them towards the Germans, but rather at their backs.

Six o'clock sharp.

The sky turned a sickly, fish-belly white. The shelling began.

First came a piercing shriek—a teeth-grinding sound that tore through the air—sweeping overhead. Then, in the distance, bursts of fire erupted from the direction of the German positions. The earth trembled, dirt was hurled into the air, and splinters of wood, metal, and limbs—all mingled in the orange-red explosions. The British artillery was making its final preparations for fire.

Kim Soon-sik covered his ears. Each explosion felt like a hammer blow to his chest, making his internal organs churn. Some people started vomiting, some curled up in a ball, and some murmured prayers. Park Young-ho gripped his arm, his nails digging into his flesh.

"Don't be afraid," Kim Soon-sik said in Korean, whether to comfort Young-ho or himself, "We'll only be able to take over when the shelling stops."

The shelling lasted for twenty minutes.

As the last shell landed, the battlefield fell into an eerie silence—only the crackling of flames and the faint wails in the distance could be heard.

Then, the whistle blew.

"Forward! Forward, all!"

The tank engines roared, and the tracks began to turn. Twenty steel behemoths, lined up in loose rows, slowly crawled out of the position, crushing shell craters and the remaining barbed wire. Behind them, the first batch of five thousand Caoxian soldiers were driven out of the trenches, flooding the muddy open ground like a tide.

Kim Soon-sik was in the third row. He was hunched over, his rifle slung across his front, running alongside the person in front of him, his steps uneven and uneven. The ground was soft, muddy, and every step felt like struggling in a swamp. The cold wind rushed into his collar, making him shiver.

"Scatter! Scatter!" the Japanese officer roared from the flank.

But no one actually dispersed. The crowd instinctively huddled together, as if the dense formation brought a sense of security. Kim Soon-sik saw a young man step on something a dozen yards to his left—perhaps an unexploded shell, perhaps a landmine—in a flash, the man's lower body vanished instantly, his upper body was thrown into the air by the blast wave, spun twice, and crashed heavily into the mud.

The screams were drowned out by the sound of the explosion.