Around August 15 1945 in one Korean family (4)

After organizing a unit, they gathered young soldiers like us and taught us the shooting posture, how to use the rifle, etc, thoroughly. Having been led by the heavy tank, Soviet force subdued the Chongjin city and next, they camped to make a formation for a general attack on the Lanan city where the division headquarters located. Even a recruit like me could easily understand that there was no chance to win if our force could not destroy the heavy tank of enemy troops.

The leader of the 3rd platoon was a warrant officer aged around forty, though I had forgotten his name, he was a very humane person.
When the night attack was ordered, the troops who belonged to the 3rd section, were all named Hikou Bakurai Tokkoutai, which means to attack a tank by bombs attached to oneself. The bomb was set in the wooden white box to be carried on shoulders and a string was attached to the side of it. By pulling off the string, the bomb would explode.

The order was Destroy the caterpillar of the tank and kill yourselves.
Our bodies were camouflaged with grasses, and marched to the place where Soviet heavy tanks were placed in the midnight, and we were on the verge of death before the all-out attack .

I said to myself, Oh, so this is the time just before the death on orders. If it was a kamikaze-command , it might have been thrilling, but we were just teenage boys advancing to heavy tanks on the grass. Oh, old commander, youre really cruel to order us to destroy the enemy tanks and then kill ourselves.

When we arrived at 25 meter away from the point, suddenly the flare bomb explored upon us and our whole bodies were bared. The loud voice of commander reverberated, All troops! Throw away the bomb and retreat from the enemy! This is an order!

The commanders order immediately spread out and we dashed at breakneck speed in all directions and retreated.
Just over our heads, machine guns bullets from enemy whizzed overhead. After retreated hundreds of meters, we checked our soldiers, and found that there was no one dead or wounded.　
This was the help from God. This must have been the first help from the late prime minister Kei Hara.

We surrounded the Commander as if he was a God and respected him like a God. After 10th of August, 1945, the government gave the order of retreat to all 202 forces and we went ahead on the operation of retreat and there was no one dead in the war in our platoon.

When the first retreat team arrived at Kilju in Hamgyongbukto, they joined the Japanese railway workers quarter and rested there. It seemed that the railway workers were the first to escape. Our Abe platoon had a long rest in the quarters through the night.