The Long March. Sun Shuyun

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СКАЧАТЬ would take care of the Communists once and for all. He felt free to tour the north and to spread his ideas for running China, unaware that Mao and his men were escaping under his nose and at that very moment. Still less did he know how easily the 86,000 men and women had broken through his lines of defence.

      The biggest culprit was Chen Jitang, the warlord of Guangdong, the first province the Red Army had to pass through from Jiangxi. He had defied Chiang's economic blockade of the Red area by trading tungsten with the Communists. He did not like the Communists – he killed over 10,000 of them in Canton between 1931 and 1935 because they dared to challenge his rule – but he hated Chiang just as much, knowing his ultimate goal was to finish off all the warlords. He held anti-Chiang oath sessions with his officers, when they drank wine mixed with chicken blood, shouted ‘Down with the biggest dictator’, and then thrashed straw men or wooden sticks representing him. On 6 October 1934, immediately before the commencement of the Long March, he signed a secret treaty which agreed a ceasefire, exchange of intelligence, free trade, and right of way for the Red Army – his troops would retreat 20 kilometres from the route of the March. He presented a parting gift of 1,200 boxes of bullets, which had been airdropped by Chiang for him to fight the Communists. Even his nephew could not understand, saying, ‘Good grief, you let the Communists escape before your own eyes. I thought you hated them.’¹

      His neighbours, the warlords of Guangxi, Li and Bai, were even more hostile to Chiang. They made their first bid to oust him in 1929, but were sold out by their allies, who were bribed by Chiang with a few million silver dollars. As the Chinese say, if you have money, you can make ghosts work for you – let alone unscrupulous warlords. Li and Bai openly claimed, ‘Chiang hates us more than he does Mao and Zhu. If Mao and Zhu exist, we exist; if they are gone, we will be gone too. Why should we create this opportunity for him? We let Mao and Zhu live, and we will live too.’² Chiang appointed Li as Commander of the Southern Route to chase the Red Army, with an up-front payment of three quarters of a million yuan, and then half million a month for his army, plus 100 heavy machines guns, 40 cannons and 1,000 boxes of bullets. He sent back a cable to confirm his acceptance and took his payment; but he did not lift a finger to organize the chase.

      Chiang was exasperated, but he came up with what he thought was a perfect plan. He had just the excuse to enter the warlords’ territories and take control of them. He even became excited by the opportunity – the other half of China, from Guangdong in the south, Guizhou and Yunnan in the south-west, and Sichuan the biggest trophy of all, might be his at the end of the day. He spelled out his plan: ‘We do not have to wage war to conquer Guizhou … Henceforward if we do the right thing … we can unify the country.³ Chiang and the warlords were, as we say, sharing the same bed but with different dreams. Chiang could not wait to get into the warlords’ turf and attack the Red Army at the same time; the warlords wanted to speed the Red Army on its way to deny Chiang just such an excuse.

      The Red Army could not move fast. Liu Bocheng, the Chief of Staff sacked by Braun, compared the March to an emperor's sedan chair. Carrying it at the front were the 1st and 3rd Corps; behind were the 8th and 9th, with the 5th Corps guarding the rear. In the middle were the Military Commission and the Central Column. The Military Commission had over 4,000 staff from the communications, logistics, engineers, artillery, hospital and cadet units, and the Red Army political department. The Central Column consisted of the Jiangxi Red government, reduced in size but with all its key functions intact, and 7,000 reserves and porters carrying files and cupboards, the entire content of the Ruijin Library, the Red Army's reserves of silver and gold in 200 battered kerosene cans, sewing machines, printing equipment, repair plant, and the cumbersome X-ray machine packed carefully in a coffin-size box which alone needed two dozen men to carry it. As Edgar Snow said, it was a nation on the move, 86,000 men and women with everything they might need in their new base. The autumn rains which fell at this time of year for days on end did not help either. The columns only managed three kilometres on the first day.

      The rain and the march, even at a snail's pace, did not dampen Soldier Huang's spirits. He was excited by his first foray into the big world. They slept by day and marched at night to avoid the Nationalist planes, although there were none to be seen. At first he found it hard and kept dozing off and falling. One night his bamboo torch scorched his hair, but he soon got the hang of it. He found the march a pleasant change from battles, cannon fire, bombing raids and the dreaded turtle-shells. ‘The enemy seemed to have evaporated,’ he said. ‘I wondered why the leaders hadn't got us out and marching earlier. It would have saved a lot of lives.’

      After a few days, the accents of the people in the towns and villages they passed through began to change and Huang became concerned. Where were they going? How long were they going away for? Were they coming back? Nobody knew. His commissar told them, ‘We belong to the Party. Wherever the Party points, we will go.’ But when the local dialect became completely incomprehensible, he was really worried. He did not know they had already left Jiangxi and were in Guangdong Province. He kept stopping and looking back, maybe trying to remember the route or just missing his home – he was not sure. He had to be pushed back into the marching column. And then after five weeks, they were in a strange land of green cone-shaped hills wreathed in mist, rearing up above gleaming rivers. To the Chinese, this was, and still is, a paradise on earth – Guilin in Guangxi Province, south-west China. But to Huang and his comrades, it meant they were too far from home, and they wanted to go back.

      Right from the beginning, desertion was a serious problem. Woman Wang remembered the warning from their political commissar in the Central Column before they set off: ‘Comrades, we are entering the White area … You should be extra careful. Do not fall behind. Don't be tempted by the enemy's propaganda. And be vigilant about deserters.’⁴ But the caution had little effect on the reserves and the porters, who were the first to desert. Party documents, cupboards, costumes and sets for plays, and pots and pans were dumped. Heavy equipment such as the printing machines was carried first by eight, then six, then four men; finally it had to be abandoned or buried. There were not enough porters to carry the X-ray machine, the prize possession of the Red Army hospital. In the end, Mao persuaded them to bury it: ‘When the whole country is ours, you will have as many X-ray machines as you like. Chiang will have prepared them for you. Don't worry about it now.’

      Wang could not relinquish her wounded, not a single one. She had twelve porters to carry her six officers. She chatted with them like a sister, offering them her own ration of rice, and boiled water for them to soak their feet at the end of the day. Just three days into the march, one of them begged to be released – he was missing his wife and children. Wang told him of the importance of his work for the Revolution, but he would not listen.

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