The Long March. Sun Shuyun

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СКАЧАТЬ Year's Eve; he and 15,000 of his men were captured, and the spoils were enormous: 12,000 rifles, light and heavy machine guns, trench mortars, field telephones, a radio set with its operators, and sacks of rice, flour, ham and bacon, as well as the funds Zhang carried for the entire campaign. There was enough medicine for the Red Army hospital for months. The spoils were carried back to the Red Army bases by horses and seven camels, also taken from the Nationalists. Three weeks later Chiang called off the First Campaign.

      The Red Army continued to supply itself with the most up-to-date weapons from Chiang's defeats – 20,000 rifles in the Second Campaign; and more equipment of every kind in the Third and Fourth. In 1933 and 1934 alone, Chiang spent nearly 60 million silver dollars importing state-of-the-art rifles, artillery and planes from America and Europe, but most of these ended up in the hands of the Communists.

      All the stories of success in previous campaigns were beginning to trouble Huang, as they had been stuck in trenches for weeks, with bombs falling, shells whistling overhead and bodies piling up. He wondered whether the captain made them up to get rid of the gloom, or they were fighting a new enemy altogether. The Nationalists were just like turtles: they put their heads out of their blockhouses to see if they were safe; as soon as they sensed danger, they retreated. Even when they were under attack, they stayed put and waited for reinforcements.

      The captain said these were Chiang's new tactics. ‘He has learned his lesson. Instead of chasing us and falling into our traps, he is trapping us. Think of a spider's web. He is trying to catch us with this net of turtle-shells, but we'll smash them and break through.’ Huang did not think this could be done. ‘We were ordered to launch short, swift attacks on the blockhouses as soon as they were put up.’ He gesticulated with both arms as if he were pointing at his target. ‘They were near, only a few hundred metres. I could even hear the men talking. But every time we attacked, the artillery fire from the turtle-shells drove us back, leaving the fields strewn with bodies. Our covering fire was too feeble.’

      The blockhouse strategy was the key. ‘The only task for troops engaged in the elimination campaign is to build blockhouses,’ Chiang Kaishek told his officers. ‘We build our bases each step of the way, and protect ourselves with blockhouses everywhere. It looks defensive but is offensive,’ Chiang wrote in his diary. ‘When the enemy comes, we defend; when they retreat, we advance … We will exhaust them and then wipe them out.’⁵ He turned Mao's guerrilla warfare on its head, forcing the Red Army to confront his troops in conventional trench warfare. It was a protracted war which he knew they could not win – they simply did not have the resources and manpower to compete. ‘The Reds’ areas are only 250 square kilometres. If we can push on one kilometre every day, we can finish them off within a year,’ Chiang concluded confidently.⁶

      Chiang insisted that every battalion build at least one blockhouse a week. Initially it was one every five kilometres, but when the Red Army broke through, he demanded that the distance between the blockhouses should be no more than one kilometre. ‘Anyone who breaks the rule will be court-martialled without mercy,’ he warned. Half way through the Fifth Campaign, 5,873 blockhouses had been built; by the end of 1934, there were 14,000. To link them up, Chiang ordered an extensive network of roads to be built. From barely 500 kilometres of highway in a province of 110,000 square kilometres in 1928, Jiangxi became one of the best-served places in China, with 8,000 kilometres of roads and another 1,000 kilometres under construction, and three major airports.⁷ The trouble was that cars were a rare commodity in the provinces in the 1930s, and the vast network of roads did not link up with the Xian and Gan Rivers, the main transport arteries of Jiangxi. This did not bother Chiang: the important thing was that all roads led to Ruijin.

      One day, something came along the road which neither Huang nor his captain had ever seen – tanks. ‘These giant machines crawled towards us like scorpions, with guns firing.’ Huang remembered it vividly. ‘When we saw one coming, we were so shocked we did not know what to do. We took to our heels and fled, and those who didn't became mincemeat.’ All the same, orders arrived from headquarters every day, telling them to hold on unswervingly so that they could eliminate the enemy with disciplined fire and powerful counter-attacks. ‘It was senseless, like throwing an egg at a stone.’ Old Huang threw up his hands. ‘We were worth nothing, pushed forward again and again just to die in waves. Then they built more turtle-shells on our bodies, advancing as we fell back.’

      I had seen some remains of the blockhouses on the bus ride to Ruijin, perched on the hills. I was surprised that they had not been knocked down by peasants to build houses or pigsties. ‘There used to be quite a lot,’ said Huang. ‘They were really well built. You have to blow them up with dynamite – not something the Red Army had then or we have now. I don't know. Should we keep them? They are like graveyards. Every time I pass them, I feel as if a lizard is pissing on my spine.’

      Was he not frightened then? He was only 14.

      ‘Frightened? I was scared to death. I wet my pants every day,’ Huang said without hesitation. He regretted he had not run away during the training week or on the way to the front. An older man from his village slipped away when he asked permission to relieve himself in the woods. From then on, they all had to do it in public, but people continued to run away. Of the 800 who trained with him, barely a third made it to the front.

      Then it became harder to leave. There was one person in every platoon whose job it was to look out for ‘softies’, and it was old Liu in his. A strong man who was never short of a joke, Liu was almost like a father to him, always asking how he was. Once, when he was on night duty, Liu sat down with him and asked if he missed his parents, and Huang burst into tears. ‘Has anyone offered to take a message home for you?’ Liu asked casually while holding his hand. He blurted out that Uncle Huang, a distant relative in another company, mentioned it in passing a few days back. ‘Good boy.’ Liu patted him on the head and left. He never saw Uncle Huang again. He thought he was killed in the bombing until one day someone said to him, ‘Trouble comes from the mouth.’ Then he understood.

      Huang was dying to go home – only fear of being caught stopped him. He was certain they would catch him if he returned home, and after disgracing him and his family they would send him back again. He did not know where the others had gone and they were not telling him. ‘They flew away like birds, you could not stop them,’ Huang sighed. ‘Sometimes, a few were caught and shot in front of everyone, but they just kept disappearing in droves.’

      Party archives and documents from the period confirm Huang's story. In November and December 1933, out of at least 60,000 troops, there were 28,000 deserters in the Jiangxi Soviet – Ruijin alone had 4,300.⁸ The political commissar of the 5th Corps wrote in his diary that in September 1934 his 13th Division lost 1,800, or one-third of its men, due to desertion and illness.⁹ Even worse were the militias, who had been forced to help the soldiers dig trenches, move ammunition and carry the wounded to the rear. An urgent memo sent to all the county governments in August 1934 showed the scale of the problem:

      Three-quarters of the militia mobilized for the recent battles in the whole Soviet region ran away within the first few days, leaving barely a quarter. It wasn't just ordinary members, but cadres and party officials … This has clearly weakened the Army's capacity and disrupted its operations. It is tantamount to helping the enemy. It cannot be tolerated.¹⁰

      ‘You know I never wanted to be a soldier,’ Huang said several times when we took the stools inside – it was almost twelve o'clock and he was going to take his long lunchtime siesta. ‘Y o u have to do night duty. It is much better to be a peasant, rising with the sun and resting with the sunset. And it is even better to sleep СКАЧАТЬ