Foreign News: Lawrences of Asia

In most of the 430,000 square miles of China thus far “conquered”‘ by the Japanese, hundreds of thousands of embattled Chinese peasants keep up today an endless sniping resistance to their conquerors. The daring and resourceful Chinese who are trying to thwart and exhaust the Japanese in this most extensive of modern history’s guerrilla campaigns have made some of the most exciting stories of the war. By the nature of the fighting, however, they make them in the dark.

The Associated Press sent a correspondent southward from Peiping on June 11 to plunge into guerrillaland and get the story. His dispatches are now reaching the U. S. by mail. For the present, AP dares not divulge his identity.

When it does come out his name will be listed in U. S. journalism’s evanescent hall of fame—alongside those of Archibald T. Steele of the Chicago Daily News, Authors Anna Louise Strong. Agnes Smedley, and Captain Evans F. Carlson, retired U. S. Marine observer—as one who went through danger and discomfort to find the big story of Chinese operations deep in the interior behind Japanese front lines.

Training Wreckers. The Chinese guerrillas, largely operating in Shansi, Hopeh and Shantung Provinces, are loosely organized into a “People’s Self-Defense Army.” Crude village arsenals make their grenades, bullets and broadswords, but much of their ammunition is unwillingly furnished by the Japanese. Clad in green cotton uniforms enabling them to melt into the countryside after a daylight raid, the guerrillas are taught to wreck Japanese troop and supply trains, ambush food convoys and attack isolated Japanese garrisons.

Their military headquarters, located in dozens of central villages, keep in touch with each other by telephone and wireless equipment, much of it filched from the Japanese. At their general headquarters, where a “general staff” of young officers, lent by the 8th Route (former Communist) Army, veteran Manchurian fighters and college students plan widespread attacks, the Associated Pressman discovered their well-thumbed textbook on guerrilla warfare: a translation of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by the late famed Lieut.-Colonel T. E. Lawrence of Arabia.

Wrecking Trains. Pride of the guerrillas are two train wreckers, both dignified Chinese scholars, who in pre-war days occupied professorial chairs in the chemistry and physics departments of Peiping universities. They explained their technique to the correspondent. “It’s like a game of chess. Our opponent is the Japanese army engineer. He tries to checkmate every move we make in wrecking his trains, but thus far we have kept one jump ahead.” The erstwhile professors admitted they had copied Lawrence’s method of train wrecking—setting off an explosive charge under the rails as a train passed over—until they ran out of explosives. Then they used a cheaper method—pulling out the inner rail spikes, especially at spots where the tracks curved. This usually caused the tracks to spread when heavily loaded Japanese trains ran over them.

“Under optimum conditions it requires from one to four days for the Japanese to clear away the wreckage,” said the smiling onetime physics professor.

Train wrecking is only one of their stratagems. For the most part they organize “thieving parties” to carry off rails and telephone poles. Some 200 farmers near Paoting, 90 miles south of Peiping, devote two nights a week to demolition work. In one night they can tear up and hide ten rails, chop down 28 poles.

To repair their one night’s damage the Japanese engineers send out 3,100 Ibs. of steel rails, 240 spikes and 28 poles. Total cost: 4,780 yen. Thus, if the Paoting farmers keep up their twice-a-week raids, they will cost the Japanese half a million yen a year. If 1,000 villages do the same, Japan will have to increase her army budget half a billion yen a year, reason the guerrillas. Therefore, 2,000 organizers have recently been sent out to carry on concerted rail-raiding parties.

Wooden Spikes, Rubber Soldiers.

When the Japanese discovered that the guerrillas were pulling out the inner rail spikes, they temporarily stopped derailments by having a light train run over the line in the morning to spot missing spikes.

Led by the two professorial train wreckers, the Chinese soon had the upper hand.

They carved wooden spikes, painted them iron-color, inserted them in place of the removed ones. The light Japanese trains crossed the rails without causing them to spread, but when the heavy munition cars came along the wooden spikes broke, spilled the cars on the trackside. This ruse has derailed over 30 trains south of Peiping in the last three months.

The Japanese have tried various unsuccessful methods to stamp out destruction of their rail lines. Chinese farmers were forced to inspect the tracks and report loose or missing rails—which they did, but often only after helping the guerrillas tear up and hide the rails. A $5 reward was offered by the Japanese for returned rails—those Chinese who took advantage of the deal were executed when they returned home. Japanese troops tried burning the nearest Chinese village when the rails were cut. Chinese destruction only increased.

Most successful trick employed by the Japanese is to slip Japanese uniforms on rubber dummies, stand them up in open trucks and thus deceive the guerrillas into thinking that the truck convoys are too heavily guarded for attack. Both sides frequently use dummies. Other correspondents have reported that Japanese bombers rain tons of expensive explosives on Chinese ”airplanes” and “tanks” which, upon capture, turn out to be reed matting or wooden imitations placed in the open to draw fire. Last week pictures arrived in the U. S. which show heads and shoulders of Chinese “soldiers” cut out of tin, nailed on stakes and jabbed into trenches—to make the Japanese think that Chinese trench lines were strongly manned.

Chinese Into “Japanese.” Both sides have tried masquerading in uniforms of the other side to pull off surprise attacks, but the Chinese claim it is too easy to spot a Japanese in Chinese uniform because the Japanese have a characteristic swaggering shuffle acquired in childhood as a result of wearing wooden sandals. Every guerrilla headquarters has at least 100 Japanese uniforms, complete with helmets and leather boots.

Favorite guerrilla tale is that of 24 Chinese who, caught in Pingchüan when the Japanese entered the city, donned the blood-stained uniforms of dead Japanese, walked out of the city unmolested. This trick sometimes boomerangs. Recently 8th Route Army General Lin Piao, regarded as the ablest Chinese strategist now in the field, returned from a raid with 600 of his men who were dressed as Japanese, mounted on Japanese horses. Their own guerrillas ambushed them, wounded a number, including General Lin, before their identity was established.

The guerrillas also have a transvestite stunt that has taken toll on the Japanese. Chinese youths dress as girls, lure Japanese into the countryside, where waiting guerrillas fall upon them.

Three weeks ago Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, impressed by the guerrilla successes, announced a policy of nationwide hit-&-run attacks for the armed forces under his control. This week the Chinese Government at Chungking, headed by President Lin Sen, whose relationship to the Generalissimo corresponds to that of Soviet Russia’s President Kalinin to Dictator Stalin, gave to Chinese guerrilla leaders (many of whom are civilians and thus, theoretically, not under army orders) enlarged powers to carry on their attacks behind the Japanese lines. That this order was hardly necessary was apparent from an admission by the official spokesman at Japanese military headquarters in Shanghai. He estimated that in the area bounded by Hangkow, Shanghai and Nanking 200,000 guerrillas were busily at work.