ALL NOVEL Chapter 58 Letter
"What the hell is this?" The box that was dug out from the basement wall was not particularly strong, so Liang En just used a crowbar to pry open the lid of the box.
Unexpectedly, the box contained neither a wooden training gun nor a real firearm, but a dozen hollow steel pipes with a bayonet stuffed into one end.
"It seems that neither of us guessed it right, but what is this, a spear?" Taking out a hollow steel pipe with a thin layer of rust on it, Liang En had a puzzled look on his face. "When did the Sun Never Set Empire equip this weapon?"
Obviously, this weapon made of steel pipes and bayonets should be a standard weapon, because the dozen spears in the box are almost identical, and the bayonets are also standard military bayonets.
"Wait, I know this thing." After seeing the spear in the box, Pierce was stunned for a few seconds and then suddenly said. "This is really a Home Guard weapon."
"As I just said, Britain lost a lot of small arms after the Dunkirk evacuation, so it is difficult to prepare enough weapons for these militia-type Home Guards while fully ensuring the regular army."
Pierce said as he also took out a spear, then raised the spear and looked at it. "So Prime Minister Churchill at the time said that we should try our best to equip members of the Home Guard with weapons, even a spear."
"Wait, this should be a rhetorical device." After hearing Pierce say this, Liang En opened his mouth in surprise, "Similar to us saying that arming your teeth definitely doesn't mean putting titanium alloy braces on your teeth and then biting them. people."
"You're right, but that's really what the British logistics department did at that time." Pierce shrugged. "They directly produced 250,000 spears made of steel pipes and bayonets, and then issued them to the Home Guard."
"Okay, this does seem like something the British can do." Thinking about the famous TV series "Yes, Minister", Liang En felt that the British bureaucratic habits could really do this kind of thing.
Fortunately, although 250,000 pieces of this thing were produced at the time, most of them were recycled after the war, so not many remain today. Now one piece can be sold for thirty or forty pounds, which is enough for two people to make this ten A few minutes wasted.
As for the second mezzanine on the first floor, digging was completely in vain, because after digging, they only saw a dense mass of wires inside. So if I guessed correctly, this place was most likely just a distribution box in the past.
"I guess they blocked this because it was right next to the door after being disassembled, so it looked a bit ugly." Liang En said with an unhappy face. After all, the scrap wires inside were really worthless.
"So let's go see the next place quickly." Pierce couldn't hold back the urge at this time and wanted to go up to the second floor to have a look, because compared to the previous two places, the mezzanine that Liang En discovered just now on the second floor is more obvious. Much more valuable.
The reason why they said this was because the two people saw some remaining wooden baseboards and beautiful-looking wallpaper in that room, which was obviously not for ordinary soldiers or even low-level officers.
"Think about it, a mezzanine hidden in the captain's room." Pierce said excitedly while hitting the load-bearing wall with a hammer. "There might be some private money from the group leader back then."
"But hiding private money shouldn't involve covering the wall with cement." Liang En retorted as he chipped away the cement blocks with a chisel. "How can he take out the money in this case?"
"Uh-" When Liang En asked, Pierce was stunned for a moment, but he quickly found a seemingly reasonable excuse.
"Perhaps the other party hid the things in it before being sent to the battlefield, and planned to wait until the war was over when the house was abandoned before retrieving it. As a result, he did not come back alive from the battlefield."
I have to say that Pierce's reason is quite reasonable. Because judging from the remaining wallpaper on the wall, this mezzanine should have been built during World War I.
In that cruel war, more than 900,000 British troops died in battle alone. Especially when the war began, almost no standing army remained. Therefore, those who hid things could not take away what they hid in the end. Things are not weird.
Different from the previous two mezzanines, in addition to the outermost layer of red bricks built for cover, the third mezzanine also has a layer of wooden boards covered with iron sheets.
This also shows from the side that compared to the two hastily sealed mezzanines below, this mezzanine has obviously been carefully disguised, and there is a high probability that some important items are hidden.
Obviously, a wooden board covered with a thin layer of iron cannot stop two treasure hunters with specialized tools. So the two people took out two LED headlight straps from the car regardless of the darkness, and then opened the last barrier.
A wooden box the size of a shoebox lay quietly in the small hole, looking dark. After taking out the box, Liang En discovered that the black layer on the box was a layer of dirty wax.
Check carefully to make sure there is nothing else in the wall hole. Liang En and the others returned to their car with this thing.
20 minutes later, they returned to the warehouse behind the Emerald Thrift Store, and then carefully removed the wax layer on the box in front of the workbench, and then opened the box.
"Is this a matryoshka doll?" Pierce subconsciously complained as he looked at the tin box inside the wooden box and a letter placed on the tin box.
"Let's take a look at this letter first." Liang En said, putting on his gloves, and then opened the letter with a tool. After unfolding the letter paper. The slightly messy text above brought the two of them back to that war-torn night a hundred years ago:
"March 17, 1917, Qing, our entire regiment will soon be sent to the European continent to fight the Germans in the trenches. According to our superiors, we will end the war and return home before Christmas this year. "
"But no one among the officers at the regiment believed this, because this sentence has been said from the beginning of the war to today, but Christmas after Christmas has passed, and the war is not over yet."
"What's worse is that the faces of the young men showed that they were about to be taken to the execution ground. The camp was as silent as a morgue."
"We also encountered a lot of problems when we went to collect supplies. Even though we were about to go to the front line, the canned beef allocated to the regiment was still replaced by corned beef, and the quantity was only half-"
"When the war started, almost all the veterans in the regiment were lying in the cemetery. Now there is only a group of recruits who have received at least one month of training. There are also many people who are not suitable for service and children who have not reached the age. Take them up. The battlefield is no different than taking them to death.”
"Okay, let's stop complaining here. I will lead a group of ragtag people into the meat grinder tomorrow. I hope I can come back alive."
"Also, the box contains the trophies obtained from quelling the riots not long ago. I hope I can still have the chance to come back alive to take them out, and then exchange them for money to give some comfort to the families who have lost their fathers, husbands, and sons."