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WAR IN CHINA: Eagles in Shansi

9 minute read
TIME

One of the most important and least noticed dispatches of the whole war in China last week hit the back pages of U. S. newspapers. It was merely a pair of sentences to the effect that Chinese troops had lured a Japanese army into perilous passes of the Chungtiao Mountains, at the foot of Shansi Province, rolled down on them from advantageous positions, and in four days slaughtered 2,000 men. Even allowing for exaggeration, this was a major Chinese victory.

Similar dispatches had previously trickled into similar oblivion: month ago, for instance, one described a guerrilla action near Great Wutai Shan, the sacred Buddhist mountain in Shansi—when Chinese caught an unsuspecting Japanese brigade and killed a full third of the force.

Rugged Shansi Province has for over two years been the key to the entire war in North China. Against it the Japanese have successively hurled three major campaigns and many little ones—all of which have blown up like light bulbs thrown against a wall. Because the province is as remote and vague to most U. S. readers as darkest Uganda, its news has either been undiscovered or shoved out of sight. But last week there reached the U. S. the report of a young visitor to this major theatre of China’s struggle—first white man to visit parts of the province in 15 years. What he wrote was enough to make any parlor warrior drop his teacup.

Theodore H. White is a 24-year-old Harvard graduate with short legs, freckled face, cocky eyes, indomitable spirit, a compassion for suffering people, and a curiosity which would cost a cat all nine of its lives in no time. At Harvard he sold newspapers to keep himself in shirts, tooted a trumpet to keep himself in spirits, and did just enough studying to keep himself in the top 20 of his class of 1,000.

When he graduated he was awarded the Sheldon Prize Fellowship—$1,500 for a year’s travel outside the U. S. He had looked forward to China: he had studied Chinese at Harvard, and he wanted to see what war is like. What he saw made him chuck traveling and go straight to work for the Chinese Government as a translator and writer in the Ministry of Information. Recently he realized the importance of Shansi Province in North China warfare, became impatient with meagre reports which were drifting out, and so decided to go and see for himself.

Riches. Some day Shansi may be China’s Pennsylvania (see map). The province is watered by tributaries of the Yellow River, which divides Shansi from Shensi. Shansi’s rough mountains are heavy with anthracite and iron, and because lack of communications has so far meant limited exploitation, the coal-poor, iron-hungry Japanese want it more than any other inland province. The Chinese, who realize that losing it means surrendering their last talon-hold in North China, have hung on like eagles. Some of China’s best fighting men are there, reports Reporter White: the hard-riding cavalry of General Ma Chan-shan, “Giant Horse,”hero of Manchuria; the famous Communist 8th Route guerrillas; the cream of China’s Government troops; and provincial troops, who are fighting for the soil on which they grew up. Early in the war, the Japanese chased the Chinese from the great alluvial plain around Peking into Shansi’s mountains. Fighting has ranged, and still ranges, all over the province. Most coveted area is the Chin River Valley at the centre of the province—a tiny, complete world shut away by cupping mountains; a valley once bright with wheat, cotton, corn, yellow rice, persimmons, pears; surrounding hills dotted with grazing sheep and goats; and folded into the hills untold treasures of coal and iron. When the Japanese began a drive into that valley late last summer, White decided that was the part of Shansi he wanted most to see.

To get there, he flew from Chungking to Sian (400 miles) in five hours. Thence it took him five days by train to get to the Yellow River (70 miles)—his train jumped the track once, a bridge washed out under it once. He was given a horse, and for three solid weeks (rising at five, riding ten hours a day, sleeping wherever night caught him) he followed precarious mountain passes until he came to the Chin Valley.

At times he traveled over roads that were cut through beds of coal, with great chunks of shining anthracite used for fence rocks. Sometimes his path was a rushing muddy stream, over whose slippery rocks he had to pick his way. This precarious route, he found, was the lifeline of Chinese Armies. He passed numberless coolies, struggling and crawling with animal patience through the mountain gaps, overloaded with blankets, clothes, grenades, machine guns, rifles, cartridges, medical supplies, telephone wire; braying mules, struggling under dismantled bits of artillery; sick soldiers straggling from the front; stretchers jogged over the painful ways; beggars keening by the pathside; and over all heat, rain, flies, cursing.

When he reached the Valley of Chin, he found it no longer a land of rice and persimmons. It was a battleground, a mud-soaked, blood-soaked Hell. The severest rains in years and a Japanese Army crazed with hunger and lust had simultaneously descended on it. By the time he arrived the Japanese had been pushed back, but he was told and could see what had happened.

The Rape of Chin Valley. “The physical impact [was] tremendous. Village after village completely destroyed. Houses shattered and burned, wells fouled, bridges destroyed, roads torn up. Houses were burned by the soldiery both out of boredom and deviltry, and because they were cold and needed fire and warmth.

“The Japanese looted indiscriminately and efficiently. Everything of value was stripped and taken away. Telephones, wires, clocks, soaps, bedding, objects of art were collected by the Japanese for transfer to their own supply department. On their own, the soldiers went in for simpler forms of looting. Clothes and food were what they wanted, and they were not very discriminate in their tastes: women’s silk garments, peasant cotton trousers, shoes, underwear, were all stripped off the backs of their possessors whenever Chinese were unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of Japanese detachments.

“The Japanese soldiers were caked in mud, chest high; their beards were bristling with two weeks’ growth; and they were ravenously hungry. The peasants, in fleeing before the approach of the Japanese, had taken their pigs, cows, grain and other food with them into the hills where the Japanese could not follow. All through the valley, tiny Japanese garrisons were mired in mud, unable to communicate with one another, and slowly starving. When off duty, simple soldiers would sneak out of their garrison posts in twos and threes and rove the countryside looking for abandoned chickens and eggs—many were caught and killed by the Chinese.

“The names of the villages (Liushe, Wangchiachuang, etc.) are meaningless 100 miles away, but in some, every single woman, without exception, was raped by the soldiers in occupation. In villages whose occupants had not fled quickly enough, the first action of the Japanese was to rout out the women and have at them; women who fled to grainfields for hiding were forced out by cavalry who rode their horses through the grain fields to trample them and frighten them into appearance.

“Male villagers were stripped naked, lashed to carts, and driven forward by the Imperial Army as beasts of burden. Japanese horses and mules were beaten to death in the mud; and on any road and all the hills of the valley, one can see the carcasses of their animals rotting and the bones of their horses whitening in the sun. The Chinese peasants who were impressed to take their places were driven forward with the same pitiless fury until they collapsed, died, or were driven mad.”

The Chinese counterattacked and fought so furiously that Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek gave them a bonus of $20,000, a lot of money in North China.

Sick Men. Behavior of their maddened troops is a source of great shame to responsible men in the Japanese Army and Government. Along his way, White learned some good reasons for that behavior. He was told that most of the Japanese soldiers in Shansi have been there over two years. They have had no furlough, no home leave, not even a Peking weekend.

“The fighting,” White wrote, “is nerve-tearing. A Japanese soldier sits in a muddy garrison post exposed to guerrilla sniping; he camps in a muddy town hated by its people; he goes out guerrilla chasing and is probably wounded, perhaps killed. Frequently supplies fail to come through and the unit goes on short mess—or starves.

“The men are sick of a war which is never won, eaten with worry for home and family. If they try to desert, Chinese fall on them and kill them. Missionaries in Shansi report that Japanese often steal inside mission compounds to cry, or come to the gates to whimper and beg for little comforts. Superstitions are epidemic. Nearly every dead Japanese soldier has on him a charm, worn in life to ward off death. Often a man draws about himself a magic circle (the round of his life is full; no escape) and puts a bullet in his head. Instead of cremating bodies to be returned home for proper Shinto burial, Army officers cut off heads, cremate them for home burial, and bury the bodies in China, or drop them in rivers or wells. All these things prey on the Japanese will to fight.”

Progress. “The Chinese,” White concluded, “have advanced during the war from a fourth rate Army to a second rate Army. This is progress. Before the war the Chinese Armies were notorious for the fact that they could run faster and retreat in worse disorder than any known national group of armed men. This was understandable because of the world in which they lived, and the causes for which they were asked to die. Cowardice was common—’kai pa’ (‘I’m afraid’) was heard on every hand. But the present Chinese Army has spirit. It glows. The men are willing to die. They mix and tangle with the Japanese with a burning hate that is good.”

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