by Dennis Bock
*
The following Saturday in Hankou, stealing a moment away from the hospital, we hired a rickshaw to deliver us to the studio, located in an industrial corner of the city, with the Yangtze at its eastern edge. The lot covered twelve acres and was a busy hive of men and women, all eagerly serving the war effort. My first five minutes there I was obliged to remind myself that the wounded I saw walking about laughing, with their heads bandaged, bleeding from gaping wounds, were in fact actors in costume. The set we visited was a perfect replica of the interior of a city apartment, with its walls blown out and windows smashed. The resources were vastly superior to those we’d had at our disposal in Madrid. We did not find Capa but spent an interesting hour watching them shoot a propaganda film that would be completed and ready for the screen within two months.
Two days later, another rickshaw brought me to the offices of Chiang Kai-shek’s confidant and publicity chief, Hollington Tong. He was a severe-looking man with square shoulders and a hard, impatient gaze. Every afternoon he stared down a gathering of jaundiced American and British correspondents who, unimpressed, slouched in their chairs, doodling, daydreaming or otherwise waiting for the true story to come their way. At the conclusion of each press conference, these men reconvened at The Blond Dutchman, a bar frequented by white Russians and voyeuristic Americans, where they caught up on the real news from the front. This, at least, according to Agnes Smedley. I was very eager for the latest word on the war, both official and unofficial, and this, she told me, was where you could hear it. At the press conference, the government told you what it wanted you to know; for everything else you went to the Dutchman.
I arrived early, under a cold grey sky, and was ushered into a small room by an unassuming clerk. Uncomfortable wooden stools had been placed before a large oak desk, from which I presumed the daily press release would be read. Posters on the walls declared the rightness of the Generalissimo and Madam Chiang’s New Life Movement. This was Chiang’s thinly disguised attempt to fill the vacuum left in the hearts and lives of people who have been denied the inspiration of Communism. In place of a true social ethic, Chiang’s movement calls for a ban on spitting, smoking in public places, and the fraternization of men and women in the street. There is even said to exist on file the proper length of sleeve of a chaste woman’s frock—one inch longer or shorter and her virtue will be questioned. In its highly rigid code of conduct, you find nothing directed to the inspiration of the spirit, only a schoolmarm’s list of rules.
Other posters consisted of colourful drawings of a group of Chinese tanks, a squadron of I-15bis fighter planes and troops rolling forward to the Sea of Japan. There was no mention here of the Red Army or Mao’s heroic trek north to Shensi or the tens of millions of peasants who’d taken up arms in his name. This was the sanitized face of two Chinas, united for the time being against the Japanese. I sat at the back of the office and was wondering if I’d come to the right place when Eli Ansell, the journalist I’d met on board the Empress of Asia, stepped inside and smiled. “Good to see you again, Doctor Bethune,” he said. “They told me you were in town. Have you met this degenerate? We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
The degenerate to Ansell’s left was in fact a very handsome man with a wide grin. I recognized him immediately as Robert Capa, his likeness having accompanied some of his magazine work. His dark wavy hair was slicked back, Valentino-like. The man deserved a harem. You might be forgiven for imagining you were in the presence of a motion-picture celebrity or high-living Continental but for his reputation as a recklessly brave and superbly talented photographer. He was barely in his mid-twenties, I think. After we were introduced he asked what had drawn me from Madrid.
“Wouldn’t it be the rightness of it?”
“Convincing enough answer,” he said. “Madrid was right, too, though, wouldn’t you say?”
“What about you, Ansell, did you get to Nanking?” I asked. “Did you meet your good Nazi? What was the name?”
“Yes. I tracked him down. John Rabe. I found him at the German Consulate smoking a large cigar. He’s saved more lives than a whole fleet of surgeons. Incredible, really. But still a loathsome sort. A wonderful study in contrasts.”
“I trust you’ll do something with it,” I said.
“Likely. But I’ve got this degenerate on my hands, and all he wants to do is take pictures of beautiful girls and get drunk.”
“I prefer the Spanish face,” Capa said.
“Isn’t that scandalous? You’ve no shame, do you, Capa? You should be congratulated for your candour, then shot for your vanity.”
Soon three other correspondents arrived to complete our small gathering, two Brits and an American. We chatted briefly, then sat down on our uncomfortable little stools. Mr. Tong entered the room, followed by a small man wearing glasses. This second man was Mr. T. T. Li. Mr. Tong began the press conference by rapping his knuckles on the surface of the table where he sat, clearing his throat and welcoming us to Hankou on behalf of General Chiang. His presentation lasted perhaps three minutes. He spoke in unadorned English of the United Front’s triumphs, studiously avoiding any mention of its setbacks. He received no questions from the gallery, whereupon he vacated his seat for Mr. Li, who then read the day’s official press release. Afterwards, we all made for the Dutchman.
“I saw you in Kline’s documentary,” Capa said. “I’m here to make one myself.”
He explained that he wanted to find a mobile unit of the Eighth Route Army and follow a child soldier around to see if that could be turned into a documentary. “You know, a child’s face in war.”
“There are lots of those,” I said.
The Dutchman was underground, cavern-like, with arched brick ceilings and deep recesses like the vestibules I’d seen under Madrid. We sat at a wooden table in one of these recesses. The bar was loud. A man at the far end of the room was playing a piano, his long, scrawny back hunched over the keys, swaying slightly. The air was thick with tobacco smoke. I saw no Chinese.
“Your friend here believes you should be shot,” I said.
“The Hungarian is to be shot at dawn,” Capa said. “Do you know what Capa means, Doctor? It is not my real name. My old name is Friedmann, you know. But Capa—capa, that’s ‘shark’ in Hungarian. Shark. Do you know who Robert Capa is? He is my invention. It’s true. I am an invention. He who sits before you is an invention. At this precise moment a drunken invention. If I cease what I’m doing I no longer exist. I know I will die soon.”
“That’s lovely,” I said.
“But you are not an invention, I can see that. You are a serious man, Doctor. You are a scientist. A pragmatist and a realist.”
“I think the Shark is drunk,” I said, turning to Ansell.
“Have you ever brought a dead man back to life, Doctor?”
“I suppose you have?” I said.
“You think I’m drunk but I have. More than once. My falling soldier’s alive, you see. He is alive. He lives on in VU magazine, September 23, 1936. And LIFE magazine, July 12, 1937. I have given him life. He is resurrected. This is the power of art. Such a man didn’t have a fighting chance before he died, if you see what I mean. Perhaps he was a noble fellow. Perhaps he loved his wife. Perhaps he had children and a glass of wine after work. But now he is immortalized.”
Ansell was sitting in the corner, his back against the brick wall. “We need more to drink,” he said. “I think the Shark’s falling asleep.”
Capa said, with his eyes closed, “I think I’ll go find the war tomorrow.”
*
It occurred to me yesterday that this landscape in northern China is a tremendous demonstration of God’s great will and design. Isn’t that a funny thing to admit? Or something my father might have said? How pleased he would be to know that, but in truth I’m almost inclined to agree with him on this point. It is really quite stunning
out here, these hills so perfectly formed. Can nature be so geometrical, so studied? They say the Russian steppe is quite similar. But beyond this mathematical precision, what befalls you here is a sense of tranquility. Is this only my yearning for some order among all this raging chaos? Could this be the same reason my father aspired to his God? The irony is not lost on me that this landscape is busy with death. But let us remember, it is not this good earth’s fault that so many murderous armies should prowl over her fine skin!
*
I would not wish upon my worst enemy a journey as difficult and circuitous as ours was to reach the Eighth Route Army in Shensi Province. Thousands of uprooted peasants swelled the railcars, and the lines we travelled on and the various towns and villages we passed through repeatedly fell under attack. It was an ordeal I would like to forget. Rivers ran swollen, slowing our progress. We stopped often to treat the wounded, and this too slowed our progress. The Eighth Route Army was in retreat, and eventually we were forced to fall into retreat with them. At Tung-kuan, our first stop, a Canadian Red Cross worker advised us to turn back. It was advice we decided to ignore, instead waiting a number of days until we were finally able to find a train heading north to Linfen. Upon our arrival, the city was in a frenzy of motor vehicles, horse-drawn wagons and civilians on foot, carrying with them what few personal belongings they had, streaming south to Tung-kuan, where we’d just come from. The state of confusion was so great that we weren’t able to report to the local military commander, for whom we might have done some good. After painful deliberation we decided we had no option but to return to Tung-kuan.
We found room in a railcar loaded with an irreplaceable cargo of government-issue rice, perhaps four hundred bags in all, stacked right to the ceiling. Approximately three hours into our journey, however, in the middle of the night, I was awakened by an all-encompassing silence. We were no longer moving wondering if the track had been sabotaged or blockaded, or if at any moment we’d fall under attack, I leaned my head out the window into the darkness. Crickets were all I could hear. I looked ahead and saw that the locomotive had left us behind on the siding of some backwater station, in a village called Goasi, if I was to believe the sign posted on the wall. Ours was the only car left behind.
I woke Jean up and said, “It’s time we made some new plans.” After I explained our situation, we stepped down from the railcar.
“How far behind do you think the Japanese are?” she asked.
“Far enough not to worry. I’ll find the quartermaster.”
It was a clear night, the stars shining overhead. It seemed all of China was asleep. The quartermaster, the major who’d granted us permission to ride back to Tung-kuan, was already off the train and organizing the nearby villages for the evacuation of his precious rice.
By first light the following day he had arranged, in the name of the United Front, for the purchase of every mule in the village, totalling forty-two, along with a cart for each beast onto which volunteers would transfer the load. After three or four hours of lifting, sometime near mid-morning, I discovered that almost all my personal possessions, trunk and portmanteau, were gone. I was down to the old Remington and my kitbag, as was Jean down to hers, though she didn’t seem the least bit concerned.
It was near noon by the time we’d transferred the last of the rice sacks. The quartermaster informed us that instead of going on to Tung-kuan, he and his guard, approximately fifty men and boys carrying only five rifles among them, would make the three-hundred-mile trek to Yan’an, back in the direction we’d just travelled. We were left with no alternative but to accompany them, for otherwise, with no transportation whatever, we’d have been abandoned in that village.
The first ten miles, despite the circumstances, made for an almost pleasant outing. The air was clear and the sun shining. Over my shoulder was slung only my kitbag, to the outside of which I’d securely lashed the Remington. My boots were still in a decent state of repair. I was not yet skin and bone. It seemed this leg of the journey might provide some temporary respite from the chaos we’d witnessed at Tung-kuan. I might even have smiled out there on that dusty track, for the peace that descended over me, moving as we did at our snail’s pace over that seemingly endless expanse, might almost have been described as “trance-like.”
A few miles on, however, the reality of the war returned to me. In quick succession we encountered three walled villages whose inhabitants had fled or were unwilling to show themselves. The terror that was sweeping the land could not have been made more clear. Or so I thought, until my melancholy was replaced with fear by the sound of approaching aircraft. Two Japanese bombers appeared on the horizon as two missiles. Their drone grew louder, and then ferocious as they screamed overhead. We scattered, leaving the mules and cargo helplessly exposed. As the two aircraft roared past, the lead bomber dipped its wings to and fro to indicate to the second plane the decision to attack. Cutting a wide arc against the blue sky, they came around again to begin the hunt. The animals waiting below were easy prey, still locked to their carts.
What followed was a vicious display.
When the planes retreated Jean and I tended to the four wounded men, none of them critical, and then helped to clear the mule carcasses, which we heaped at the side of the road like mounds of red and grey sacking.
It was a miserable night of walking. Our spirits were battered by the attack, and matters were made worse by the damp cold that stung to the bone. We walked in silence. The night sky beckoned; the hard dirt road battered the feet.
Before first light we reached the Fen River, where we rested at an inn while waiting for an opportunity to cross over to Chiang-chou. As the barges that were finally provided for our animals and cargo were loaded, I studied the river and the far bank and the profile of Chiang-chou as it sat upon a low hill. I pulled my coat collar up against a biting wind. The Fen was swift and dangerous-looking, and when, mid-morning, I finally stepped onto the far bank and entered the town, newly chilled but grateful we’d made it that far, I discovered that it was largely abandoned, like those walled villages behind us. The Japanese cavalry was said to be only a half day’s ride to the east. Mostly the old and the infirm remained. We treated as many of them as we could through the day and into the night before nodding off in a small room of the rectory provided for us by the two Dutch Franciscan priests who presided over this dying town.
Shortly after the noon hour on the following day we resumed our journey. A cold wind rushed at our backs and whipped up the tails of the animals before us. Our immediate objective being Ho-chin, some thirty miles distant and set on the banks of the Fen, we followed the river’s southwest flow. We encountered dozens of wounded, all of whom we tended to with our ever-diminishing cache of supplies. As we walked, our ranks were joined by hundreds of refugees: desperate, lost souls who seemed much relieved to fall in with our ragged column. We were a river swollen by many dozens of human tributaries, and on March 3, still barely twelve hours ahead of the Japanese, we entered Ho-chin.
That grim town had fallen into a riot of misrule. Officers had lost the trust and discipline of their retreating soldiers. There was no organization among them. Desperate men roamed the neighbourhoods kicking at the black, long-eared pigs that snorted through the refuse piles heaped and stinking at every turn. Our numbers dispersed into the muddy streets for the night, and the following morning, anxious to leave that place, we made for the promise of the Yellow River. On the other side lay Shensi Province, our promised sanctuary. We would put the river between us and the enemy.
We collected in a deep gorge on the banks of the Yellow River, our party and many thousands of pitiful refugees and armed fighters, a full day’s march from Ho-chin. It was an interminable night we passed on that cold, rough ground. The river pulsed and splashed out there in the dark, and in the dim light of the hundreds of campfires scattered along the riverbank crouched our expanse of miserable humanity. I walked amo
ng these people and offered what cursory medical attention I could. Infants, toddlers, young mothers. The aged. As I tended to the wounded and the infirm I read the fear of the unknown in their faces. How much had the enemy gained on us? Would we even survive the night?
In the morning Jean and I were among the first to cross, along with many wounded and precious supplies. Snow fell heavily from a charcoal sky to further engorge the river, which was, I now saw in the dim light, treacherous with jagged ice floes. There were only four junks in service at this crossing point, each with a capacity of approximately one hundred passengers. It would be slow going to clear the east bank, I remember thinking, and easy hunting for the enemy should the evacuation stall.
The first night on the other side, we set up a makeshift triage unit in a nearby village, which we then transferred to a cave closer to the river when the Japanese artillery barrage began the following afternoon. There in that cave, some forty feet underground, Jean performed with a consummate and unwavering professionalism. If she felt fear during the attack, I couldn’t see it in her eyes or her actions. Committed to caring for the wounded, she showed no thought for her personal safety and repeatedly forswore the security of the cave to greet the stretcher-bearers, without regard for the constant shelling.