After more than an hour, the officers and soldiers who had gone to bury the bodies dragged their tired bodies back into the ranks of prisoners. Some people sit directly on the ground to rest, while others do not sit down to rest after returning to the team, but look for people to chat everywhere.

The second lieutenant I knew, I don't know when he hooked up with the captain again, the captain was one of the members of the burial team just now, he directly found the second lieutenant, pulled him aside, and the two squatted together and muttered for a long time. Then the second lieutenant returned to me, lowered his voice and said, "Comrade Major, let's run away at night!" ”

"It's dark?" I was a little puzzled and said, "It's not all white nights lately, how can I run in broad daylight." Do you want to end up like the three officers who were killed by the guns and the guns just now? ”

"Comrade Major, don't you know what to do?" The second lieutenant whispered, "The White Night ended yesterday, and from today, from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. the next day, there will be five hours of darkness every day. We can sneak into the forest at night. ”

Hearing the second lieutenant say this, I couldn't help but feel a stir in my heart, of course, it would be best to escape, otherwise when I was sent to a prisoner of war camp or a concentration camp, what awaited me would be the tragic fate of nine deaths. So I quietly asked the second lieutenant, "Did the captain come up with this plan just now, did he choose a good escape route?" ”

The second lieutenant nodded vigorously and said, "Just now the captain was sent by the Germans to bury the body, and when he was digging a pit at the edge of the forest, he carefully observed the terrain, and there were no Germans in the forest. He also said that as long as we fled into the vast forest, the Germans would take us out of the way, and we would have hope of escaping from the encirclement. ”

In all fairness, if he hadn't mentioned the word encirclement, I might have been impulsive to join them in their nightly escape. But when he spoke of the encirclement, I realized that there was no point in escaping like this, even if I fled into the forest. We don't know where we are now. I don't know where to run safely, and besides, everyone wanders around the endless forest with bare hands, and the final outcome is just like I told them just now, either recaptured or starved to death. Therefore, when the second lieutenant pressed me if I would take part in their operation, I politely rejected him.

As night fell, there were no stars or moon in the sky, and in order to prevent the possible escape of the prisoners of war, a German armored car drove next to the prisoner of war team, and the Germans in the car fired a flare into the air every ten minutes to observe whether there was any movement in the prisoner of war procession.

The captain and a dozen commanders and fighters who were willing to try to escape with him, including the second lieutenant, crawled like the edge of the forest, as he said during the day, under the cover of night. When the old flare was extinguished and the new flare had not yet risen, the captain got up from where he was lying on his stomach and fled into the forest first.

The gunshots I imagined did not ring out, and it seems that their escape was not detected by the Germans. At that moment, I faintly regretted in my heart, I knew that Lu Dao would escape so easily, and I should have fled with them.

My regret lasted only a few hours before I turned into joy.

As soon as five o'clock arrived, a group of Germans rushed into the ranks of the prisoners of war, punching and kicking all the prisoners who were resting on the grass. Then we took out dozens of able-bodied men from the crowd, and one of them stuffed a tool into his hand and asked them to dig a hole fifty meters away from us.

In half an hour, dozens of people dug a big pit more than 20 meters long and more than 10 meters wide and more than one person deep. Seeing such a big pit, I began to be afraid in my heart, according to the bridge in the film and television drama, digging the pit is to prepare for the next massacre, is that pit my burial place?

When the diggers returned to the ranks, yesterday's German lieutenant reappeared. He stood on the armored car with an angry face, held a horn in his hand, and shouted loudly: "Russian soldiers, here yesterday afternoon, we killed a few ignorant guys, and in order to punish you for not reporting it, we also canceled your dinner. Unexpectedly, in the evening, fifteen more daring officers and soldiers fled. They thought they were safe when they ran into the forest, but they were trapped in the swamp. With that, he turned and shouted in the direction of the forest, which I did not understand, and then a group of heavily armed German soldiers came out of the forest, and in the middle of them were seven or eight ragged Soviet prisoners of war. I looked good, and I could tell from a distance that the second one was the second lieutenant I knew. The captain was not seen, though, and may have been killed.

Seeing that several prisoners of war were brought to us, the German lieutenant continued to say loudly: "These prisoners of war who have escaped without permission will be severely punished." He bowed his head and said to the second lieutenant and the others, "Before you are executed, I will give you two choices: one is that each of you will go to the ranks and pick a companion and die with you; The second is to stand still and wait for the time to come, and when the time comes, ten people from each escapee will accompany you to the funeral. The time is one minute, and now the timer begins. The German lieutenant raised his hand to look at his watch and read the seconds aloud in his mouth: "60, 59, 58, 57......"

Hearing the conditions proposed by this German lieutenant, I gasped in shock, it turned out that he wanted to make an example of a hundred people, and to implement such a strict system of joint sitting among prisoners of war, even if anyone wanted to escape in the future, they would have to think twice. At this time, it occurred to me that my relationship with the second lieutenant was not bad, and he would not pull me to pad my back, would he? When I thought about this, my legs trembled, and I could barely stand on my feet.

However, the second lieutenant did not seem to mean to pull me on my back, and when he entered the group, he whispered a few words to one of the soldiers, and then the two of them walked out of the house side by side. With him setting an example, the others quickly chose a companion to go to the execution ground with them.

"Aha, it looks like there are a few good Samaritans among you damned Russians." Seeing that his countdown is not over yet, the number of people who go to the execution ground has been gathered. The German lieutenant looked at the group of officers and soldiers with a somewhat mocking gaze and said loudly: "I wonder if you are not afraid of death, or because you are afraid that I will get angry and make more corpses among these prisoners of war?" ”

Seeing that no one paid attention to him, he felt a little bored, waved his hand at his soldiers, and said another word of German. The soldiers drove the prisoners to the pit they had just dug and pulled the trigger on them. After the prisoners of war were shot, some fell directly into the pit, and some fell on the edge of the pit. After the German soldiers finished shooting, they stepped forward and pushed all the corpses on the edge of the pit into the pit.

Seeing his soldiers come back and stroke, the German lieutenant began to make his speech again: "Russian soldiers, now begin to form formations, the soldiers stand to my left, and the officers to my right. It's a minute, and when I'm done counting the seconds, if anyone is still standing still, they're shot on the spot. ”

As he began to count the seconds, the entire team of prisoners of war was in an uproar, and everyone rushed to the sides of the armored vehicle to take their own positions. I was also coerced into the ranks of the officers and squeezed into the designated position.