My Beloved from the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, Waiting for Me to Come Home

In the winter of 1951, the ice on the Yalu River split into blade-like cracks. With half a sack of fried flour my mother had stuffed into my hands, I enlisted, thinking of just two things: killing the enemy and seeing A-Wan.

A-Wan was a barefoot doctor from the neighboring village. She could use herbs to treat knife wounds, and when the village bully tried to steal my rations, she stood in front of me with a sickle in hand. “Yan Zhu, once you’ve earned a medal, I’ll sew you a pouch for it.”

But when I reached the front, I learned she had secretly become a battlefield nurse and was charging into the heaviest fire with the stretcher team. People gossiped: “A country bumpkin like him isn’t good enough for a delicate young lady from an official’s family. She came to the front just to polish her résumé!”

I clenched my fists and slammed them into the trench, frozen earth splattering across my face. I had to earn a medal, shut everyone up, and, more than anything, bring her home alive.

In the tunnels of Shangganling, shrapnel tore away half my scalp. Gritting my teeth, I hooked up the field telephone, with A-Wan’s voice ringing in my ears. She braved a hail of bullets to deliver medicine. When she saw my bandaged head, tears fell onto the back of my hand. “Yan Zhu, don’t die. I haven’t sewn your medal pouch yet.”

I pressed a bloodstained bullet casing into her hand. “Wait for me. When this war is over, we’ll go to Beiping and have our picture taken.”

But the enemy’s artillery was too fierce. As she rescued the wounded, she fell on the hillside a hundred meters from me, still clutching the unfinished red pouch.

The soldiers who had mocked me were stunned. Holding her cold body, I glared at them through reddened eyes. “A-Wan was right. I’m a country bumpkin, but I’m willing to risk my life to defend my home. Are you?”

Later, I led my comrades in blowing up an enemy ammunition depot and earned a second-class medal. I wore it on my chest, but I never again saw the girl who had promised to sew my pouch.

After the ceasefire, I returned to the village, hung the pouch in the main room, and planted wintersweet all around her grave...