China Seas

by John Harris

  The following morning, the trickle of wounded through the village had become a flood, men struggling desperately towards the rear on their own two feet because there was no transport, limping, dragging themselves along by clutching trees, leaning on sticks. Their eyes were empty, they were surrounded by a smell of decay, and there was hardly a stretcher between the lot of them.

  Towards midday news came in that the Japanese were across the route to the rear and the limping men began to swing westwards in the hope of bypassing them. There seemed no alternative but to follow and, packing the rear of the car with wounded, they set off, devoid of everything but what they wore. They soon realised they were in trouble because they began to see dead Chinese soldiers spreadeagled on the ground. There were shell holes alongside the road and houses were scorched by fire. A few soldiers carrying the coffin of an officer on yellow ropes moved near the river, where more bodies were floating, caught in the barbed wire which had been erected in the shallows.

  They stopped to eat what little food they possessed in the courtyard of a shattered house. Soldiers were preparing to defend the place and were setting up an old Hotchkiss machine gun and making loopholes for their rifles. A dead officer lay in one corner.

  Unable to move further west, they turned north, but during the afternoon they ran out of petrol and as it was impossible to buy more, they left the car and began to walk.

  ‘I think we’re in rather a mess,’ Willie observed.

  McAleavy’s long face lit up for the first time since Willie had met him. ‘We’ll cope,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I think I’ve never been more satisfied with myself. Not that it’s very pleasant, of course,’ he explained lamely, ‘but I’ve never done much except sit in an office and this at least enables me to prove that there’s more to me than that.’

  Willie said nothing, hoping he wouldn’t have to change his mind.

  The Chinese army was already disintegrating. Rice dumps were being looted and soldiers were staggering off with leaking sacks across their shoulders, less concerned with the battle than with filling their empty bellies. They managed to find another inn for the night, but it was already crowded and food was short. The next morning the countryside was white with frost.

  In the distance across a hillside they could see black snakes winding down into the valley and it dawned on them it was the Japanese. The were trying to encircle the Chinese with two great arms of a pincer movement.

  ‘It’s time we got out of here,’ Willie said.

  He had managed to buy a couple of shaggy ponies and, as they set off, the sun was like a fiery ball in the winter sky. At the next town, soldiers had been raiding the shops and started setting fire to stores. As they trotted in, a tremendous explosion shook the earth. Roofs twisted back in the blast, and gold, white and scarlet flames leapt into the sky topped by black oily smoke. A shed full of ammunition caught fire and tracer bullets started popping and whizzing upwards in red and white arcs.

  People caught by the explosion lay against wrecked walls, stripped of their clothes, their flesh pitted with gravel and sand. A few were still alive, their faces smeared with blood, their mouths gaping, their fingers opening and shutting, but the refugees continued to plod by without a look in their direction. Crowds gathering at the railway station had lit fires to warm themselves as they waited. Most of them were hungry and a horse that had fallen was being fought over, its carcass stripped into red slivers of meat.

  The hopelessness of the situation was as wearing as the cold that penetrated clothing and even buildings. The Japanese were slicing through the Chinese as if they didn’t exist. Hungry, sick, untrained, badly equipped, their transport non-existent, as the Chinese boys tried to seize peasant ox-carts they were attacked by furious villagers armed with forks who disarmed them, first in ones and twos, then in groups and whole companies, until there was nothing left to face the advancing Japanese.

  The Japanese were sweeping through South China like a wind by the time Willie and McAleavy came to a halt. Their long pilgrimage had ended back at the town of Jangjao, where they had left Dr Sim, and they promptly headed for the hospital to persuade her to move on with them. There was little hope in Willie’s mind that they would succeed.

  She looked tired but determined and very angry. The supplies she had brought were virtually exhausted and others which she had arranged for had disappeared.

  ‘I expect,’ she snapped, ‘that they never got any further than Chungking, where they were used to cure Chiang’s women of headaches.’

  ‘The Japanese are coming,’ Willie said. ‘Oughtn’t you to be thinking of getting out of here?’

  She stared at him as though he had suggested something obscene. ‘The people who come here,’ she said, ‘are dying on their feet of malaria, dysentery and hunger. Half of them have scabies and the other half the itch. There’s no washing because there’s no soap, there’s beri-beri, leg ulcers, tuberculosis, typhus, influenza and worms. The only thing missing is venereal disease and that’s because they can’t afford to go with a prostitute. And there are no cures, because all the medicines, all the kaolin, quinine tablets and penicillin we handed over have been sold. And you talk of bolting.’

  They were still arguing when the Japanese bombers arrived. They came without warning, swooping over the hill so they couldn’t be heard until the last second. As they dived for shelter the world turned into a roaring, falling, confused chaos. Shouts turned to screams as chunks of flying masonry ricocheted among the fleeing people and houses slid sideways in a torrent of timber, tiles and dust. Almost the last bomb that dropped hit the corner of the hospital, bringing down the whole of one side in a pile of splintered debris.

  When Willie came round, he was lying on his face with a weight across his back, but already he could hear voices nearby and the debris was quickly removed. He was bruised and shocked, but he dusted himself down and looked round for McAleavy. Dead, dying, wounded and bomb-shocked lay everywhere and the street was littered with masonry and half-buried bodies. People still trapped were screaming for help and groups of shocked survivors were limping away. There was no sign of McAleavy and Willie was just about to start dragging at stones and timber when he saw him lying across the road, so covered with dust he had merged into the grey background. His spectacles were still on his nose but one lens was broken and his leg lay at a strange angle. Willie saw at once that he was dead.

  Turning away, brushing the dust and splinters from his clothes, he became aware of Chinese soldiers running past. Then an officer on a horse galloped up and shouted at him. The soldiers scattered and in a daze it dawned on Willie that the Japanese were almost on top of them.

  The work of rescue stopped immediately. As people started to run, patients began to emerge from the wreckage of the hospital, limping, shuffling, crawling, trailing bloody bandages, determined to get away before the Japanese put in an appearance. Coming to life with a start, Willie began to push between them, barging his way through the crowd into the hospital where he had last seen Dr Sim.

  He found her half-buried by rubble, her clothes, her hair, her face grey with dust. She was unconscious and he dragged the rubble aside and pulled her clear. There was a cut on her head, and her hair at the back was clotted with blood in which the dust had congealed in a grey drying scab. He managed to get her on to her feet, still only half-conscious, and dragged her outside. Weakly she tried to insist on returning to her patients.

  ‘No,’ Willie snapped. ‘No!’

  The two ponies Willie and McAleavy had ridden seemed to have disappeared. Then he saw one of them standing nearby, its neck and chest streaming blood. It was badly wounded but he found a heavy stick, pushed Dr Sim into the saddle and, climbing up behind her, kicked the pony into life. It seemed to weave from side to side, but he lashed cruelly at it until it broke into a trot and then into a gallop.

  Dr Sim was still struggling to free herself, but he clung on to her, beating the failing animal mercilessly. After only a few hundred yards,
however, it faltered and came to a stop. Even as he climbed down to drag it forward, it crashed to the ground, snatching the reins from his hand and sending Sue-Lynn flying.

  She seemed to be unhurt. There was a clump of trees about half a mile away and, ignoring her protests, he dragged her towards them. As they reached them, he turned. A few people were still moving away from the hospital, shadowed by a column of black smoke that coiled slowly into the sky. Then he saw the Japanese soldiers, advancing in a steady line on each side of the road.

  ‘I must go back.’ Dr Sim came to life with a jerk and pulled herself free.

  As she started to walk unsteadily down the hill past the carcass of the dead pony, he ran after her and, as he grabbed her, they fell to the ground together. She sat up abruptly.

  ‘Let me go!’

  Without arguing he slapped her face so hard that a long dark wing of hair was flung across her cheek as she jerked sideways. She stared at him, shocked, then, as her eyes filled with tears, he clutched her to him and allowed her to sob against his chest.

  Seven

  From the shelter of the trees they saw the Japanese reach the village and listened to the sound of murder. Shots were fired and shouts came from the burning hospital. Then they saw one of the Chinese nurses run out, her black hair flying. She was half-naked and a Japanese soldier ran after her and grabbed her wrist to drag her away. As she struggled he turned and punched her hard in the face before dragging her out of sight. A moment later a shuddering scream came to them and, clutching Sue-Lynn Sim to him, Willie covered her ears with his hands.

  The murder and rape went on all afternoon, nerve-shattering sounds reaching them on the hill, so that the only thing in Willie’s mind was the memory of a similar butchery near Shantu forty-four years before when he was also clutching a woman to him and trying to hide the horrors from her. This, he thought, is like the re-run of an old film, a return full circle to where it had all begun.

  As it grew dark, he pulled Dr Sim to her feet. ‘We’ve got to get away from here,’ he said. ‘Before they find us.’

  She didn’t argue. She had nothing but what she stood up in and, no longer of much use to anyone as a doctor, she nodded silently and followed him through the trees.

  They were well away from the Japanese column by daylight and by evening had reached the little town of Shi-Lo. Because of the cold, there were fires, built from the timbers of ruined houses, burning in the streets and a few Chinese soldiers trying to keep warm. There were no lights and no civilians about because of the curfew, but Willie was able to bribe someone to give them shelter.

  The following day they moved on, forced north again by the presence of Japanese troops moving across the south, and continued for the next four days until they considered there was enough distance between them and the Japanese to be safe, before calling a halt at a town called Yusiao. Food was scarce because starving units of the retreating Chinese army had passed through, but a few market stalls had been erected and a few tough-looking vegetables, sweets and rice cakes were available, all watched over by sharp-eyed men and women.

  They managed to find a stone-built restaurant with a sign of peeling red and gold characters outside a carved entrance marked by bullets and shell splinters. It was a grimy place thick with cobwebs, the bare crooked wooden tables littered with greasy bowls and chopsticks among the scattered grains of rice and chicken bones. The place smelled of joss sticks and the paraffin in the hissing lamps, and outside beggars and dogs crouched waiting for a dropped morsel of food, but they managed to buy tea and a hot meal of beans drowned in flavourless stock. The wind was whacking a cane roofing mat against a wall outside with a dreary monotonous slap-slapping. After they had eaten, they learned of a small house where the owner had once been a civil servant but who now, because there was no longer any order and no job to bring in any money, was willing to let them a room. He laid two blankets and cushions on the bare floor and, ill at ease, Willie ushered Sue-Lynn Sim inside.

  She stared at him with black expressionless eyes. Since leaving Jangjao she had been silent and troubled, not speaking much. The change in her worried Willie.

  ‘We may have to be here a long time,’ he warned. ‘The winter’s just starting. We’ll move on as soon as possible.’

  She seemed indifferent. ‘I expect we shall manage,’ she said.

  The next day the snow came and there was no hope of moving. When a few scattered wounded appeared, victims of the war or Japanese bombing, Sue-Lynn found she couldn’t resist the need to help them. They had no medical supplies, but she found cotton wool, and bandages were made from torn-up linen. Then Willie unearthed a bottle of potassium permanganate in one of the shops which they could use as an antiseptic. His knowledge of medicine was restricted to the first aid he had learned as a stretcher bearer at Peking forty-four years before, but, with Sue-Lynn’s directions, he was able to be of help. Establishing a small hospital in a schoolroom, very soon she had people coming every morning to the little surgery she held there.

  They slept on the floor in the same room, separated only by a makeshift screen made from a worn shawl, an old flattened carton and a cut-down reed basket, all strung together with cord. It was possible to hear each other moving, dressing and undressing, sleeping and waking, Willie sometimes roused in the darkness by Sue-Lynn’s whimpering nightmares. But neither went into the other’s half of the room, both always remaining rigidly correct, always careful to keep a distance between them in a curiously unnatural sort of ‘marriage’ that seemed to work. Sue-Lynn tried her hand at cooking, at which she was not very good, so Willie took it over to allow her to give all her attention to her patients. He noticed she was eyeing him strangely but she said little, though he noticed the sharpness had gone out of her voice.

  The hospital and the long winter kept them in Yusiao. Always there seemed to be a heavy wet snow on the ground and a weak white snow-light in the dark alleys of the town. Dressed in blue Chinese clothes and an old fur coat he had managed to obtain, on his head Willie wore a padded cap which looked no better for the boiling he had given it to kill the lice. Pulled down over his eyes, it enabled him to pass for a Chinese. Sue-Lynn wore a quilted coat and a fur hat they had managed to buy.

  Many people in the area were starving because of the disruption caused by the war. Bombed and shelled, the hundreds of people who came in from the surrounding countryside found little comfort. The buildings of Yusiao were largely empty shells devoid of roofs and the people who occupied them looked like ghosts. The whole town stank of urine and human excrement as the grey-faced people shivered in the bitter wind from the north. Occasionally they found a body by the roadside, starved or dead from exposure.

  As the town became a tomb peopled by ghosts, finding it impossible to do anything to relieve the misery, they could only shut their minds to it. There were dozens of hungry children, their tear-stained faces smudgy and lost, small shrunken shapes with slits for eyes, their hair falling out with hunger, their skin chapped and raw, their voices only an unhappy whining. The villages around were just as bad, with terrifying silences and deserted streets. Fields had been stripped and the peasants were searching the heaps of refuse for rejected scraps of food. Occasionally bodies, buried in shallow graves, were exposed by hungry dogs, and Willie heard of parents killing their children rather than see them starve.

  Mallinson’s little reconnaissance had not come off. There had been no messages to him but now it didn’t seem to matter, because it didn’t take a very clever man to see what was happening. Perhaps all the tomfoolery of elevating Chiang’s China to the rank of a Great Power would now be dropped. The Japanese had supplied the answers.

  It was obvious that the war had bogged down to a stalemate. The Chinese had burned whole villages and towns and destroyed every road, bridge, railway line and ferry. The blockade had been useless for a long time because the Chinese had been obtaining cloth, rubber, tyres, medicines and petrol from corrupt Japanese commanders, in the same way that the J
apanese had long since been obtaining tungsten, tin and other things, even rice, from the Chinese. The campaigns of both sides had become nothing but foraging expeditions and the unexpected Japanese attack had upset all calculations.

  But that had run out of steam now and the country had lapsed back into its inertia and indifference. Occasionally they saw aeroplanes passing overhead, too high to be interested in their immediate area, and they were able to identify them as American.

  ‘The Japanese must be retreating,’ Willie said. ‘We’ve never seen those boys before, and they’re beginning to come more often.’

  Sometimes they heard scraps of news and at night they talked of what everybody seemed to know – that the Communist-controlled areas in North China were being expanded at the expense of Chiang’s Nationalists.

  ‘There are upwards of a hundred million people under their control now,’ Sue-Lynn pointed out. ‘I saw a pamphlet. Even in the south they have twenty-seven thousand men under arms against the Japanese.’

  As the winter ended, they saw the American aeroplanes more often, always heading for some distant target, and began to learn a little about the outside world. The Allies had landed on the continent of Europe and were advancing eastwards, while the Russians were heading westwards to meet them over the mauled remains of the German armies. Japan’s great leap forward had been halted and they, too, were now in retreat. Their navy, according to the rumours that filtered northwards from the coast or the titbits shouted by disillusioned Japanese along the fighting line, was shattered and the Americans were advancing towards Tokyo island by island.