Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  Although it wasn’t her subject – she had rather thought Madame Chiang had seconded her to this committee to speak about health issues, specifically soldiers’ health – it didn’t mean Hu did not have ideas about housing. Housing was one of the main subjects she and Agnes and Li Dequan discussed when Li visited the apartment.

  While working with Agnes on the Bund, treating the wounded soldiers and refugees, Hu had noticed all the sampans moored to the quay. They had grown exponentially over the last few months. Now at least half a mile of the Bund had these tiny craft tied up to it. And to each moored sampan a whole string of more sampans were roped so they trailed out far into the river. Each boat was protected from the elements by a low-arched covering of bamboo mats under which thrived entire families – grandparents, parents, multitudinous children. The boats were linked by planks, so that these narrow highways – constantly in use – stretched far out into the waters. From nothing a miniature floating city had created itself, an anthill of human activity, replete with those eternal human constants – birth, marriage and death. The craft were hired for pennies by refugee families from the north and east, whose men now worked as coolies and porters and labourers on the docks. They carried endless goods in panniers slung from poles, they pushed wheelbarrows, shifted heavy stone or iron, with heavy ropes slung over shoulders they tugged at vast human-drawn carts while many more shoved and strained from behind. Homely smoke rose from chimneys on each craft as the food for every family was prepared.

  But over the last few weeks, sharp-eyed Hu had noticed a change in this activity. Instead of the number of boats continuously expanding – there was plenty of spare dockside they could moor to – the constant growth of this city had mysteriously come to an end. But why? These homes were precisely what the refugees needed. Families who before had had to survive only on handouts and charity became independent, could fend for themselves, became a burden on no one.

  Hu asked among the boatmen why this increase had ended. The answer was that this demand had caused such a shortage of boats in the Wuhan area that their price had shot up. But, Hu thought, further up the Yangtze, further up the Han and Xiang rivers, there were thousands of such craft, dead cheap. Why wasn’t the government buying or hiring them, sailing them downstream, and then either giving them away or hiring them out and bringing down the prices?

  What is more, reasoned the quick-witted Hu, with all these families now joined together by their wooden highways into a larger community, why not tow these living communities upstream with government-hired tugs to Chungking or Changsha, whose ports and industries were desperate for new labour? All that was required was some organization.

  Hu sat there for a long time waiting to be called. Because health was her main area of expertise, she asked various people if they knew if there was a corresponding health committee she could contribute to, but no one seemed to know. A long lunch was held, for at least three hours, while Hu sat all alone in this cavernous room. Luckily she had brought a couple of dumplings which Spider Girl had given her. There was a bowl of water already on the table. The young orderly again passed – on his way back from lunch – and again reassured her that she would be heard soon. Daytime passed into evening, which turned into night. Soon there was only the chairman and his clerk and Hu left. Now at last I must be heard, thought Hu, but the chairman got up and walked out. After a while the clerk finished writing and looked up.

  ‘You may speak now if you wish,’ he said.

  ‘But no one is here,’ responded Hu.

  ‘You may make your comments and I will write them down,’ stated the clerk. ‘So that anyone who is interested might read your contribution.’

  Well, someone might see them, thought Hu. She also realized that, if Madame Chiang read the notes, she would assume that Hu had taken a full and meaningful part in the meeting. So Hu, all alone in the vast room, started to speak.

  This was not how Hu had envisaged a committee working.

  10

  On what would be the battlefield of Taierzhuang the Sichuan troops of the 22nd Army Group – the Deplorables – and their commanding officer Wang Mingzhang, were given a banquet by General Li Zongren, commanding officer of the Fifth War Zone, the man given the responsibility of defending Wuhan and Central China from the Japanese. All around the diners were thousands of coolies and pioneer troops and engineers and officers frantically digging trenches and tunnels, building fortalices and machine gun nests and mortar and artillery emplacements and first aid posts, reinforcing command posts, stringing out telephone lines, piling up supplies and food and ammunition in cellars and fortified buildings, preparing the defences of Taierzhuang.

  So that all this building and work could be completed and Li Zongren’s finest troops arrive and be deployed within the city, it was the task of the 22nd to march fifty miles north to the town of Tengxian and there hold up the advance of Rensuke Isogai’s crack 10th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army for as long as was possible. To the last man. The Deplorables knew that they were all going to die.

  It was a simple banquet. Plain food and cheap wine laid out on tables.

  Before it started, Wang Mingzhang, their commanding officer, addressed Li Zongren.

  ‘Both the First and Second War Zones reject us, in the whole wide world there is no place for us, then you, Commander Li, accept us in the Fifth War Zone. We are indebted to your grace. Whatever you command we shall certainly do. Being soldiers it is our duty to sacrifice ourselves to protect the nation. Now we can only resolve to sacrifice everything to complete our mission, even if not a single one of us survives.’

  This was met with a resounding cheer by the troops. The banquet started. Quite a lot of wine was necked.

  Fat Rat was boasting that as they were from Chengdu, the capital town of Sichuan and once the capital city of the great warrior Liu Bei, hero of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, this meant they were invincible.

  Boss Eyes the corporal, a man with a broader knowledge of China than Fat Rat, pointed out that they were even more invincible than that because Linyi – a town only a few miles east of Tengxian (the town they were being sent to die in) – was the birthplace of Zhuge Liang, Liu Bei’s political and military advisor and the greatest soldier China has ever known.

  For some reason this caused a fight. Fat Rat hit Boss Eyes. Creaky Door with the croaky voice hit Fat Rat. Dirty Rat hit Creaky Door but then hit his brother Fat Rat because Fat Rat had stood on his foot. The fight quickly became general. The Deplorables specialized in this sort of thing.

  Meanwhile Greedy the dog, oblivious to mere human animosities, gorged himself almost to death on all the food and wine that was spilling from the tables.

  As evening arrived the Deplorables managed a muster, collected their kit, and, despite their bruises and hangovers, lined up ready for the march. At the command, straw hats on, teapots and opium pipes jangling from their belts, straw sandals swashing in the mud, they marched off north towards Tengxian.

  Greedy the Dog was the most drunk of all, but, having four legs rather than two, managed to stay more upright than several members of his platoon.

  *

  Tengxian was an unpretentious market town surrounded by stone walls which were being frantically repaired. From the north came already the ominous growl of heavy artillery. Japanese reconnaissance planes overflew them constantly. To the west the Jinpu Railway, from Jinan to Nanking, ran north–south. Hundreds of pioneer troops and farmers were busy tearing up the track and blowing up the bridges to slow the Japanese advance. Similar work was being done every night to the north, in Japanese-held territory, by thousands upon thousands of brave peasants.

  The Deplorables swung proudly through the southern gate and into the town. Tengxian was largely built of stone and had narrow streets filled with homes and light industry and shops. The railway lines which the railway workers and local peasantry had been tearing up had been transported into the town and local blacksmiths were cutting them up and a spontaneous
cooperative of some sixty blacksmiths and railway workers were melting them down and beating out crude broadswords, tempering and sharpening their blades and passing them out to those pioneer troops not armed with swords and to any local peasants who looked ready for a fight.3

  Wang Mingzhang decided to make his headquarters in a light bulb factory by the west gate, and his forward command post in a salt merchant’s shop. The troops were put to immediate work reinforcing the outside walls, constructing fortified strongholds on the walls, and digging trenches and tunnels within the town. Members of the local Red Spear Society helped them wherever they could, handing out free food from the local shops and laying telephone wires between all the command posts.

  All around everyday life continued in the town. A market was open and thriving – Greedy, having walked off his hangover, was in dog heaven – priests and monks chanted prayers within the temples and mosques, farmers and corn merchants haggled with each other in the streets, a little girl gaily flew a kite. Wei gazed at her for quite a while. She reminded him so much of Cherry Blossom. Then with redoubled zeal he set to filling the sandbags. He knew now what he was going to defend.

  Wei’s platoon had been sent to reinforce some trenches that had been dug outside the north wall. Wei was sandbagging a machine gun emplacement in one of them while beyond him Creaky Door and Fat and Dirty Rat were driving stakes into the ground and winding coils of barbed wire around them and nailing them to the stakes. Wei was enjoying himself. For the first time in months he was using his body as it was meant to be used – for work. The swing of his arms, the crunch of his stomach muscles as the shovel drove into the sand and then the clench of his shoulders and twirl of his arms again as he swung the sand into the sack. The familiar, soothing rhythm of it all. Several of the soldiers congratulated him on the speed and deftness of his work.

  Then came this sound. The drone of an approaching aircraft, the scream as it started to dive. Wei looked all around him, then directly up into the sky. There it was! Directly above him, falling precisely where he stood, its engine screaming with hunger and hatred. Wei remembered what one bomb had done to his family. Panic seized him. He ran. Ran anywhere, everywhere, in ever decreasing circles. Then came the whistle of a bomb falling, followed by a thump and crack as it fell onto empty ground some two hundred yards from Wei. Wei stood still. The other troops started jeering him from the trench where Wei had been working and where they had all immediately taken shelter.

  Wei returned shamefaced to the trench. He was here to fight, not run. He was here to avenge his family, atone his ancestors, gain redress for all his crops lying wasted and dead in his fields. Boss Eyes took him to one side.

  ‘When bullets start to fly, when shells start to land, when bombers start to bomb, always remember, there is only one safe place – the earth, a trench. You can’t outrun a bomb.’

  Wei apologized, said he felt disgrace. Boss Eyes continued kindly.

  ‘Don’t apologize. Don’t feel ashamed. I ran three times when I was first bombed. Remember, Posh Northerner, a trench in the ground, deep in the soil, is always your best friend. Tudeh will protect you there, his earth will shelter you from all the bombs and bullets.’

  Wei looked at Boss Eyes.

  ‘You pray to the earth god Tudeh? You were a farmer once?’

  ‘Many years ago,’ said Boss Eyes sadly. ‘Before all these unending wars started.’

  After that both men felt close to each other.

  *

  On 15 March 1938, Wang Mingzhang ordered the four gates of Tengxian, north, south, east and west, to be sealed. No one was to leave. Civilians from the surrounding villages could still be allowed in to seek shelter. The trenches immediately surrounding the walls were still to be manned and the troops in them could gain access to the town by ladders set against the walls. At the last moment, at the railway station at the west gate, a train delivered a very large consignment of hand grenades. They were swiftly distributed to the troops throughout the town. Every soldier now had access to fifty grenades.

  Three thousand Chinese troops, poorly armed, poorly trained, waited inside Tengxian Town. Ten thousand crack Japanese troops, the vanguard of the Imperial Japanese Army’s 10th Division, approached and largely surrounded it.

  At dawn on 16 March, twenty Japanese troops, disguised as civilians, approached the east gate and asked to be admitted as refugees from local villages. They were recognized and shot dead. Japanese artillery then fiercely bombarded the east gate for several hours while their troops approached under cover of the bombardment. Tengxian was bombed repeatedly from the air. It had no anti-aircraft defences.

  A small breach was made in the eastern wall close to the gate. The Japanese prepared to assault it. Wei’s platoon was withdrawn from their northern trench, climbed up their ladders, and ordered to reinforce the troops close to the breach in the eastern wall. They hurried through the town. Buildings were burning, they saw several dead and injured civilians. They saw the body of the young girl they’d earlier seen so merrily flying her kite. This stiffened their resolution. As they arrived at the breach sixty or so Japanese jumped into the dried-up moat beneath the breach in an attempt to storm it. Each member of Wei’s platoon threw several grenades into the moat and all the Japanese died.

  Wei and his platoon were ordered up onto the walls to join the other troops already there while pioneer troops and local volunteers worked to seal the breach. The breach was heavily bombarded by the Japanese artillery. As fast as the Chinese rebuilt the wall the artillery and aerial bombs demolished it. Many Chinese died but the breach was not widened. Some two hundred Japanese tried to storm it. Rifle fire and a shower of grenades from the soldiers on the walls killed almost all of them and the remnant were driven back. But more and more were coming up and taking cover behind a ridge on the other side of the moat.

  To free themselves of the devastating fire from the Chinese troops on the wall the Japanese bombarded it with heavy artillery. They killed many of their own troops hiding in the moat, but also killed almost two hundred Chinese and blew another breach in the wall.

  Before the Japanese troops in the moat could recover from their own bombardment, carts arrived from within the town laden with large sacks of corn and salt, taken from the warehouses and cellars of the town’s merchants, and local people rushed to fill the breaches with them.

  Wei was surprised to find himself quite calm. He admired the efficiency and practicality of his fellow soldiers. They cheered when the enemy was killed, gave out bloodcurdling screams as they drove them back. All the time they looked about them to see what was happening, what was about to happen. When a comrade was in difficulty. They stepped in to aid him. When a friend was killed, they cursed briefly but wasted no time in mourning. They thought as a group, they acted as a group. Wei started to see that fighting was as skilled a trade as farming.

  With the Japanese concentrating their fire increasingly on the eastern gate and with more and more Chinese being killed, ever more Chinese reserves (of which there were few) were fed into the zone. Crude barricades had been thrown up back from the breach – made partly of the sacks of corn and salt and partly of the carts that brought them – so that the Chinese had a second line of defence if the troops holding the breach were driven back. A mass Japanese attack was expected imminently.

  Covered by machine gun fire and a hail of grenades, hundreds of screaming Japanese stormed the breach. The Chinese holding the breach fought bravely but, bayoneted and shot, they were overcome and the Japanese, shrieking, charged through the smoke and flames at the barricade. In a second all was chaos and pandemonium – bayonet thrusts and parries and counter-thrusts, pistol shots, kicks, punches, fingers in eyes, fists through teeth, skulls against rifle butts – swaying back and forth, grappling for advantage, toppling, screaming – but in the end it was the broadswords of the surviving Chinese with their quick sweeps and counter-sweeps and thrusts which turned the tide and drove the few surviving Japanese back through the
breach.

  Dirty Rat would not hit Creaky Door again. Both were dead. Their bodies lay on the ground. Fat Rat mourned his dead brother. Several other members of their platoon were also dead or wounded. Orderlies carried their bodies away. The remaining members of the platoon drank water (or wine if they’d stolen some), ate their rations, and talked soberly among themselves about the recent engagement, discussing details, arguing technicalities. They consoled Fat Rat on his loss. Several come up to Wei and congratulated him on his calmness and fortitude in his first engagement. The member of the platoon who seemed to have enjoyed it most was Greedy the Dog. All the explosions and fires and collapsing masonry had loosed thousands of terrified rats into the town. Greedy, laying about himself left right and centre, was treating the whole place as a sumptuous rat buffet. Snapping a large rat’s neck with a jerk of his teeth, Greedy sent it flying over his left shoulder and it landed smack in Boss Eyes’ face. Everyone laughed. Boss Eyes wiped his face and mouth and delivered Greedy a sound kick.

  Wei’s platoon, quite badly depleted, was withdrawn from the breach and sent up to the relative safety of the walls. Another platoon from their company took their place.

  It was now the late afternoon of 16 March. After a brief period of respite in which the platoon tried to rest an ominous rumbling was heard beyond the battlements, a clanking and squealing of iron machinery and the brutish roar of diesel engines. They peered over the wall. Tanks, squat on the ground, emitting clouds of diesel, advanced towards them.

  For a second Wei froze, then below him, by the breach, he noticed something strange. Several soldiers he knew from the 22nd, all opium addicts, were having wreathes of explosives and grenades wound around them; an officer was attaching a plunger and detonator to each garland of high explosive. The men to which they were being attached looked calm, serene even.

  Wei asked Boss Eyes what was happening.