There's Gunfire All over the Place, I Just Want to Go Home

In the third year of the war, Shen Zhaoning learned to judge the caliber and model from the shape of shrapnel. She strung together every piece of shrapnel that had hit her and hung it in the corner of the bunker. Eight pieces of shrapnel, eight battles, eight proofs that she was still alive. Tomorrow she will turn twenty-six years old. On this battlefield, this is an "old age" age. Highland No. 3 Must be taken. Company commander Zhao Dezhu said that if we charge forward, the casualty rate will be 60%. Of the one hundred and twenty people, less than fifty came back. He asked Shen Zhaoning to stay behind and take the new observers with him. He said, you are the only female soldier in the company. If you die too, I will... The whistle sounded. The charge begins. Zhao Dezhu fell on the two-hundred-meter-wide open ground, with the red flag still stuck in the soil beside him. Shen Zhaoning was lying at the observation point 400 meters away, watching all this through the telescope, watching a person's death become a shooting parameter that needed to be corrected. She wants to live. These were the last words her mother left for her, and also every word she said to herself. But in this land that has been turned over by shells countless times, living itself is a question that is increasingly difficult to answer. "Under Fire, I Just Want to Go Home" is a novel about ordinary people in war. There are no heroes, no miracles, just shrapnel in a female soldier's pocket, scars on a squad leader's face, and the uncontrollable cry of a nineteen-year-old recruit. It is not about how war changes people, but how people desperately, stubbornly, and in vain remain a human being during war.