Armored Corps Second Lieutenant

This is a full-length military novel about the armored forces of the Chinese Expeditionary Force. The protagonist, Teng Zhoujian, is a young man from a farming family in Hunan. To avenge his brother, he gives up his post in the military police and enrolls in an armored training program. He flies over the Hump to Ramgarh, India, for training, and under the grueling instruction of American trainers, grows from an ordinary private into a second lieutenant and commander of the Sherman tank C-11 crew. Together with repairman Jiang Maocai, philosophy student Zhou Fuli, taciturn gunner Wang Jinsheng, farm boy He Mancang, and others, he forms a crew bound by life and death. They fight from the Hukawng Valley all the way to Yangon. Through harrowing battles involving anti-tank trenches, human-wave attacks, urban street fighting, and highway ambushes, their unique perspective as armored soldiers bears witness to both the brutality of the northern Burma battlefield and the resilience of the human spirit. When the war ends, the six men scatter like stars across the sky, while the tank numbered Homebound, riddled with bullet marks and laden with memories, remains forever in the depths of history.