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I was hunched over by the gunwale of the landing craft, my palms pressed against the damp metal plating. The hull gave a violent lurch, the bow ramp dropped, and murky seawater mixed with the smell of gunpowder surged in. Our squad stormed onto the beachhead—but underfoot was not sand, but shattered concrete chunks and slimy mud. Bullets whizzed past, kicking up puffs of white dust from the broken walls.
My camouflage jacket had been lost somewhere long ago; my bare shoulders were slick with sweat and mud, stinging from scrapes. My combat boots squelched noisily as they sank into the muddy water. One by one, our men fell. The cries of battle, explosions, and a jumble of Japanese and Chinese curses all merged into one deafening roar.
Soon, I was the only one left in my squad. A Japanese Self-Defense Force soldier—also shirtless—darted out from behind a pile of rubble, heading straight for me. He was a little shorter than me, but with thick shoulders and a bull neck, his camouflage trousers and boots caked in sludge. He held a rifle with a fixed bayonet—the blade looked long and glinted coldly. His face was expressionless, but his eyes were locked on me.
I raised my rifle and met him head-on. No words—only kill or be killed. He lunged in a thrust; I parried violently with my rifle. Clang!—the impact numbed my forearms. He was fast—retracting his rifle, he immediately followed with a diagonal upward slash. I scrambled back a step, the bayonet tip grazing past my ribs, leaving a hot, stinging streak of blood on my skin.
I could feel my heart hammering in my chest, my breathing rapid and heavy, my lungs burning as if on fire. Sweat ran into my eyes, stinging viciously—I dared not blink. He was the same—veins bulging on his forehead, a guttural grunt escaping his throat with every burst of effort.
He lunged again. I seized the moment and slammed my rifle stock hard against his to throw him off, trying to close in. But as my body surged forward and my center of gravity wavered for just an instant, he suddenly drove his right leg up—his combat boot slammed squarely into my crotch.
"Ugh!" An indescribable, searing agony exploded from my groin, draining every ounce of strength in an instant. My vision went black; I dropped to my knees as if my bones had been pulled out. The rifle slipped from my hands into the mud. Both hands clutched involuntarily at the injured spot; my body curled in on itself, my stomach churning, my breath caught for half a beat—leaving only that killing, all-consuming ache and suffocating sensation.
I stayed on my knees, clutching my groin. That heart‑tearing agony nearly choked me—my vision blurred, my strength completely spent. As I curled up, trying to withstand the wave of weakness, the Japanese soldier stepped forward without pause. He lifted his right combat boot and delivered a heavy front kick—the sole slammed straight into my face.
A dull thud—I heard the crunch of my own nasal bone breaking. My head snapped backward, and I toppled uncontrollably into the mud, landing flat on my back. The pain exploded simultaneously from my face and groin; my skull buzzed, and all I could see was the grey sky above and his looming figure.
He gripped his rifle with both hands, staring down at me from above, and let out a short, fierce roar from his throat—as if to spur himself on or announce my death. Then, with a sudden heave of both arms, he drove the coldly gleaming bayonet downward with his full body weight, straight into my abdomen.
The instant the blade pierced my belly was a sharp, piercing sensation, followed by a scorching pain of internal organs being forcibly torn and skewered. I could clearly feel the cold metal penetrate through my body, even touching the ground beneath. And he wasn't done—he twisted his wrist savagely, wrenching the rifle butt left and right several times, the blade churning inside my abdominal cavity. The indescribable rupture and agony nearly knocked me unconscious. Blood gushed from the wound and the pierced organs, rapidly staining the mud beneath me.
He planted one boot on my chest, the tread pattern pressing hard against my sternum, pinning me motionless—robbing me of even the last shred of strength to struggle. Then, leveraging his waist, abdomen, and arms, he wrenched the bayonet out of my body. The wound—stabbed through and then twisted several times—was no longer just painful; it was a gaping, searing hollow. I could distinctly feel warm blood not merely flowing but almost gushing out of that hole, instantly soaking my entire abdomen and the muddy ground below in a sticky, saturated mess.
Instinctively, I tried to reach for my abdominal wound. But my arms had no strength left; my fingers only twitched and scratched feebly at the wound's edges.
The chain reaction of agony made my curled legs instantly stiffen and straighten as if jolted by electricity—toes clenching hard inside my combat boots, heels kicking and scrabbling wildly in the mud, as if trying to escape this body that was being destroyed from within. Those few kicks exhausted the last energy in my legs; then they fell limp like two rigid planks, sprawled out, unable to move an inch.
Just before I lost consciousness completely, I saw him spit downward—a gob of saliva mixed with dust and sweat landed on my face. My body began to twitch faintly, uncontrollably. The sky in my vision grew darker; his blurred face and everything around me rapidly faded. The last sound I could hear was the intermittent, bloody wheezing from my own throat—like a leaky bellows. The final sensation was an overwhelming cold, and that boundless darkness swallowing me whole.
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