by Dennis Bock
The following afternoon, after meeting Jean for breakfast—at which we spoke politely, though she still seemed somewhat distant—I went out for a better look at the town, believing she only needed a bit more time to herself. I walked at a brisk pace but was often stopped in my tracks by the faces I encountered. Though temporarily trapped on this small island, already I felt the lure of a giant continent looming in the mist only forty miles to the west. Energy, excitement and mystery dripped from the air like the juices of a mango. Here were banks and streetcars, pharmacies, jewellers, groceries and fishmongers, pubs, currency exchangers, beggars and churches—all things I’d always known, but here angled differently, tinged in new and exciting colours that filled me with uncontained wonder. Everything that made a city modern. Yet I was also confronted by its historic self, shadows and myths shining in the eyes of a people, beautiful, diminutive and deferential. All around me I saw the undeniable hues of the ancient in the bony chests and wiry arms of the rickshaw coolies who plied these streets with the bountiful spirit of children, men who I now know might work a lifetime without ever owning the rickshaw they wheel about.
I awoke refreshed the next morning and breakfasted at the cafeteria on the ground floor. Jean joined me not long after I ordered, seemingly recovered from her mood. I told her I was glad this debacle was at last behind us. We spoke, finally, of the business at hand and decided we couldn’t afford to wait on the caprice of an anonymous contact. Our man had failed us, so we resolved to take advantage of a contact of Jean’s. She had, you’ll remember, lived and worked in Shantung in the early 1930s. She had a number of connections, all foreign nationals, including the American journalist Agnes Smedley, whose book China’s Red Army Marches I’d attempted to read on the train from New York to Seattle and finished on board the Empress. It offered a riveting account of Mao’s famous Long March in 1935. Of course, I knew about this epic event before picking up the book. It was, without doubt, the most significant turning point to date in the Chinese civil war, as it had guaranteed the survival of the Communist Army. Mao Tse-tung had led tens of thousands of men from certain death at the hands of the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army, by breaking through their lines in southern China, at Kiangsi Province, and delivering them over a three-year, five-thousand-mile ordeal into the hard, desolate hills of Shensi Province, where they were able to reorganize and swell their fighting force by perhaps a hundredfold. Smedley grasped the enormity of this achievement perhaps better than any other journalist I was aware of. It would do well to make her acquaintance. Clearly she wasn’t hampered by journalistic neutrality.
Jean got a cable off to Miss Smedley within the hour, and before noon we had received her reply, urging us to join her in Hankou, some seven hundred miles north, on the mainland.
*
Our arrangements with the China National Aviation Corporation were made that very day, and the following morning, close to nine o’clock, we climbed aboard our plane and bade farewell to Hong Kong. The DC-2 bounced around somewhat as she lifted into the air, and the noise of her twin engines rang through her thin silver plating with a vibrating scream that continued through the anxious length of the flight. The first hours over the mainland were spent seeking cloud cover, as all Chinese aviation, including civilian traffic, was considered legal prey by the Japanese fighters that regularly patrolled the skies west of the colony. One expected at any minute to see a pair of Ki-27s come racing out of the clouds, machine guns blazing, to send us to our deaths. I’ll admit here feeling quite helpless, like a sitting duck, but Jean seemed perfectly calm. We touched down a few hours later on a grassy strip near Wuchow. Here our aircraft was refuelled as a dozen men, forming a human conveyor belt, passed hand to hand fifty or sixty five-gallon canisters of fuel, beginning at a small wood shed on the bank of the river and ending up in the fuselage of the plane, a process that took a good half hour. During this time all passengers—travellers of various nationalities and ethnicities—were invited to disembark and stretch their legs. This was also a safety precaution, as enemy fighters would find a fat, refuelling DC-2 an irresistible target for strafing or bombing.
I left Jean standing with the other passengers fifty yards upwind of the stench of gasoline, huddling together against the chill air, and wandered over to the river. My ears still ringing loudly from the noise of the engines, I passed over a dozen patches in the airstrip where bomb craters had been filled with sand and gravel—repairs so recent as to be soft under the heel. I bent down to leave my mark, put my handprint into the Chinese earth, and then continued on to the river. Finally, the flight attendant ushered us back aboard and the aircraft lifted off again. We inched northwest over the vast expanse of China toward Hankou, where Chiang Kai-shek had moved his government after the fall of Nanking.
As we flew farther west the threat of Japanese fighters diminished. They had by then taken only the coastal cities of Peking, Shanghai and, farther inland, Nanking, and had not come as far as this middle territory between the south and north. The Hupeh plains opened below us, a snowy vastness as mesmerizing as the Canadian prairies at mid-winter.
Finally, nearing five o’clock that afternoon, we began our final descent at Hankou, situated at the confluence of the great snow-fattened Han and Yangtze rivers. The city, a sprawling smudge of grey and black, rose from the banks, and half a mile north of the airfield a racetrack became visible—two specks on the face of that vast stretching landscape—as well as a number of small roadways, outbuildings and vehicles. Jean leaned into me to watch the scene open up below us, and the scent she wore brought to mind the first days of our crossing.
“A bit bumpy,” I said.
“At least we didn’t see the enemy.”
“Soon enough.”
The landing strip was slick with melted snow and, unlike the strip at Wuchow, paved. As we taxied in I noticed more recently filled in bomb craters, as if we’d flown out of reach of one arm of the enemy and directly into the other. We parked alongside four DC-2s belonging to the same airline and a lone biplane. Once we stopped on the tarmac, a ground attendant led us toward two rather antiquated buildings on the north end of the runway. A stiff wind was blowing. On the roofs of these two buildings three chimneys sticking up from among the red-and-white radio antennas billowed smoke. The attendant ushered us into the first building.
Here, as we waited for our luggage to appear, a western woman about my age entered through the main doors wearing a black velvet cloche hat, heavy cloth coat, thick dress and winter boots. She studied the newly arrived passengers and started in our direction. She was a remarkable-looking woman, beautiful in the extreme, I thought, with lustrous dark eyes and skin that brought to mind the Gypsies of southern Europe.
This, of course, was Agnes Smedley.
A life-long Socialist, by all accounts she was uniquely devoted to the advancement of women’s and workers’ rights. I knew she’d been charged in 1917 under something called the Espionage Act for speaking out against America’s entry into the Great War. She had also spent time in prison for distributing educational literature on birth control.
When she saw Jean and me, in a Midwest accent she said, “I see you’ve brought a man this time!”
They embraced affectionately. I stood back for a moment, then introduced myself.
“Well, Doctor Bethune,” she said, “you’ll have to tell me all about Spain one day. I’ve heard about the work you were doing over there. Simply brilliant. I’d like to know more. But let’s get something to eat now, shall we? I’ve arranged a little something for you.”
Her face glowed with delight at the prospect of acting as our guide in this dreary, bleak waste. Then a high-pitched wailing erupted. My ears were still ringing from the noisy flight, and for a moment I didn’t know what was happening, but the ground crew and guards and welcoming parties all seemed to recognize this as the wail of air-raid sirens. All at once the war was upon us—not
inappropriately, I thought, as thus far we’d enjoyed too easy a time of it. Now the enemy was reminding us where we were.
“Blasted bloody Japs,” Agnes Smedley said, “every time I’m here. Off they go with their damn bombs!”
She led us quickly out the door she’d just entered and across a field, opposite the airstrip, to an underground shelter that wasn’t much more than a pit covered with timber and sandbags. The ground attendant rushed the remainder of the passengers and their receiving parties down into the hole, and the forty or fifty of us huddled together listening to the enemy come in low over the airfield.
She cocked an ear. “Mitsubishi two-seaters. Three of them.”
“Where are they coming from?”
“Off Shanghai,” she said. “They pay us regular visits every time I come out here, but they don’t seem too interested in anything more than getting rid of their bombs. As if they just want to get back to where they started from. They hardly ever hit anything, just pester us. Mind you, they have a way of getting on your nerves.”
“And can we count on any Chinese attack planes?”
“What planes would those be?” Miss Smedley said, dryly.
A male voice, the class clown most likely, called, “Welcome to Hankou,” for which he got a few nervous twitters. Miss Smedley and I began chatting again, but every time the Japanese planes rounded and swooped low over the field a silent, collectively drawn breath was felt in the shelter. And when explosions were finally heard in the distance and the planes sped off, a palpable shared sigh issued before the chatter started up again. This happened five or six times, with at least one or two explosions on each pass, but the raid lasted no more than fifteen minutes.
When the all-clear siren sounded Jean and I decided to hang back in case we were needed. Two bombs had damaged the main building, and soldiers and the ground crew led us through the destruction, looking for casualties, with Agnes close behind offering rhetorical advice and direction. “Oh yes, move that beam. Yes, look under there. Well done.” She was well-intentioned, at least.
The attack could have been much worse. Five other bombs had landed somewhere in the fields, far off their mark. But the acrid smell of cordite, a smell I knew so well, lingered in the air.
We found no casualties in the main building, and gathered our things together before proceeding to Miss Smedley’s automobile, a green 1930-model Citroën. Then we heard a man calling as he ran toward us from the west. His clothes were lightly burned but he seemed none the worse for wear. When he caught up to us he spoke rapidly, not stopping to catch his breath, and kept pointing behind him. Naturally, I had no idea what he was saying. When Jean translated the gist of his message, we drove to the racetrack we’d flown over on our descent and found sixteen of his twenty horses had been killed outright by the Japanese bombs. He was their groomer. The stables had sustained a direct hit and the smell of burning horse flesh filled the air. Using an old pistol produced from Smedley’s automobile, we euthanized the remaining four.
“Yes, welcome to Hankou,” Smedley said bitterly, then walked out into the field and vomited.
Somewhat deflated, we climbed back in the car and drove for thirty minutes to a quiet, snowy street on the western edge of town, a few blocks up from the river. Here we found, behind clusters of poplars and birch, the modest home of Bishop Roots, an American Episcopalian convert to all things Chinese.
Opening his door to us, the Bishop gave a brief bow and boomed, “Well, the Japanese welcoming committee didn’t put an end to you after all. You’ve survived your first day in Hankou. Well done. Please, enter,” and waved us in.
As generous as he was bald, erudite and long-thinking, he and Agnes had organized a small reception of some twenty or twenty-five local VIPs. He’d been in China for over forty years, and knew everyone worth knowing. It was an impressive showing. Over the course of the evening we were presented to military officials mostly, but also journalists, artists, missionaries, professors and even a well-known actor from the Chinese stage, whose name escapes me now. The Bishop smiled broadly and nodded when introducing. His sense of destiny and assuredness reminded me of my father, in that he harboured no doubt whatsoever regarding the rightness of the struggle.
“Don’t think of this war, Doctor Bethune, as you might of Spain, or any other,” he said, leading me about by the elbow. “This is a Chinese war, and like all things Chinese it is unlike anything else. Imagine the struggle in Spain expanded a thousandfold, with a third prong, the full brunt of the Nazis, marching on Madrid. That third prong here, the Japanese, will fail, ultimately. But that will take time, in which the Communists will do most of the fighting. What’s certain is that Chiang Kai-shek has already shown himself to be a coward. Only his kidnapping last year brought his Nationalists into the United Front in the first place. If the Communists hadn’t turned him around, he’d still be a coward and an appeaser. Even his generals know this. They were behind his kidnapping, you know. Chang Hsue-liang and Yang Hu-ch’eng. This miraculous conversion. Suddenly he stopped talking about eradicating the Communists and turned his attention to the laps. The lord of the house had permitted the infestation of rats in his basement, on the promise that they wouldn’t raid the larder! Men like Chiang, you see, are very brave with the lives of others; with their own, the matter is quite different.”
I asked the Bishop if he thought the United Front would hold.
“My daughter has just returned from Shensi Province, where Mao’s forces are based. She reports wonderful things. An animated, galvanized people. This is more than a gathering movement. It’s a revolution, and I believe it will hold long enough for the Maoists to defeat the Japanese in the north and extend their influence southward toward Nationalist territory. Their support spreads by the day. Chiang’s willingness to tolerate the Japanese presence is mocked there on a daily basis by the common people. The United Front will last, but only as long as the Communists need it to.”
He wasn’t as interested in specifics, only the larger picture. He was impatient with talk of shifting front lines, supply routes and international aid—all subjects I was deeply interested in. He was perfectly avuncular, though, and in so being could not have been less condescending or superior. His contempt for Generalissimo Chiang, the Chinese Franco, was refreshing.
“Of course,” he said, “the important thing is that the Japanese be repelled. A most barbarous enemy, I believe. There is talk of rape houses they call Consolation Houses. No, we’ll accept the meagre Nationalist support until we drive these devils out. And if Chiang can stomach the alliance long enough, we’ll use his resources. Land for time, that is what they’re saying these days. China has enough terrain to kill an enemy twice or three times as powerful as the Japanese.”
“Land for time?” asked Jean.
“Ceding land so the Chinese forces can regroup—buying time, as it were, acre by acre, in order to put something of a resistance together and establish factories in the west of the country.”
“The farther away from the ports,” I said, “the harder it is for the Japanese.”
“The Japs have a superior air force, but yes, you’re right. The existing industries are on the coast. The farther they have to extend themselves, the better for Mao.”
“High-stakes poker,” I said. “How much do you give? How long do you wait?”
“It’s the only game the Communists can win at this point. You’ve seen what the enemy is capable of doing. Peking, Shanghai, Nanking, all cities within a hundred miles of the coast. They can control city blocks and government buildings in Shanghai, but let’s see if they can control the Chinese countryside, five million square miles.”
The Bishop introduced us to a Dr. R. K. S. Lim, head of the Chinese Red Cross. The small man bowed politely before me, expertly balancing a cup of tea as he did so. I bowed in return, and the Bishop acted as our interpreter. Lim, noting that my repu
tation preceded me, said he was eager to have me and my assistant join his organization. “They’re in the thick of things, really,” said the Bishop, “but since the Red Cross is a non-aligned organization, your safety is quite assured. But then, anything can happen.”
“Please tell the doctor that we are not concerned for ourselves but for the men offering their lives in the fight against Fascism.”
“May I wish you all the best,” Dr. Lim said, and withdrew.
We were next introduced to Lieutenant Chin Po-ku, the Coordinator of Medical Supplies for the Communist Eighth Route Army, presently engaging the Japanese, and under the military command of General Chu Teh.
“It is an honour, sir, to meet the great war surgeon Bethune,” he said. His hair was parted down the middle, Western style. “The Chinese people have observed your struggle against European Fascism.”