Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze

by Harmsen, Peter

  His father, Philipp Borchardt, had been born with a deformed left leg and had not fought in the trenches. He could not even benefit from the modicum of protection Germany afforded its Jewish war veterans. Like Germany’s other Jews, Philipp Borchardt was subject to increasing discrim-ination—discrimination that would eventually see him sent to the notorious concentration camp Dachau.109 Meanwhile, his son was thousands of miles away, defending his nation’s honor against a Japanese Empire that, so many said, was in fact Germany’s natural ally in challenging the existing international order. In a world preparing for war, strange allegiances abounded.

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  Lu Chuanyong, 26, was in the 11th Class of the Central Military Academy in Nanjing and was about to graduate when war broke out with Japan in the summer of 1937. The school’s students had been spread across the countryside surrounding the capital to avoid aerial attack by the Japanese. Everyone knew that they would be sent straight to the frontline upon graduation, and for most it was a tough wait. They could not go fast enough. Graduation was on August 27 and it seemed there would be a minimum of ceremony, in view of the circumstances. The soldiers were given food and ordered to go to sleep in their uniforms, ready to get up and get going with minutes’ notice.110

  At 10:00 p.m. they were rushed out of bed and sent on a forced march through the night for about one hour, until they saw the dark looming outline of a Buddhist temple. In the courtyard was a banner announcing “Graduation Ceremony.” At 1:30 a.m. there was a commotion. Someone important had arrived. It was Chiang Kai-shek himself. He delivered an impassioned speech. “The Japanese invaders,” he said, “have now attacked Shanghai. They are approaching Nanjing. They want to destroy our China. We cannot stand it any longer. We cannot sit idly by.”

  Upon graduation, Lu Chanyong was assigned to the 87th Infantry Division, which had moved from the downtown area of Shanghai to the countryside north of the city to resist the Japanese landing forces. “When I reached the battlefield, I realized how difficult the fighting was,” he told an interviewer later. “It was not at all what I had expected. Once you were in the frontline, in the daytime basically you couldn’t move . . . The Japanese planes circled above our heads, and the instant someone moved and made himself a target, they would swerve down and start bombing.”

  It was only after dark that the real battle started. As a result, Lu did not get a good night’s sleep for two weeks. He taught himself how to march and doze off at the same time. With supply lines interrupted by Japanese air attacks, he learned like others before him to appreciate food—any kind of food—as a rare luxury. “We basically had nothing to eat and were constantly hungry. We would just grab a handful of dry uncooked rice from our pocket and munch it down, or scoop a bit of water from the ditch. We all got rather skinny in the end,” he said.

  Soon his platoon of more than 40 men had been reduced to little more than 20. It was close to breaking-point, and it would have made sense to withdraw to the rear for replenishment. Regardless, the high command ordered the men to stay where they were. It said an international meeting was coming up, and if they withdrew, Japan would be at an advantage.111 Therefore, instead of reorganizing in the hinterland, the unit received reinforcements straight at the frontline.

  The replacements came from all over the country. Often the young soldiers had been forced to make their way to the Shanghai front as best they could, which frequently meant by foot. When they arrived, they were exhausted and emaciated. Lu’s unit would cook porridge for them and help them regain strength as fast as possible. Still, there was only so much even a full stomach could accomplish. Even for a well-nourished infantryman life at the front would have offered a steep learning curve. “The new ones had no experience whatsoever. To think that they were to fight the well-equipped Japanese—it was unilateral slaughter,” said Lu.

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  Chiang Kai-shek would not give up Luodian. He personally called senior commanders to the Third War Zone’s headquarters in Suzhou stating that no matter what, it must be retaken. The commanders, in turn, threw entire divisions into the battle for the town.112 In one of a series of Chinese assaults, Qiu Weida, a regimental commander of the 51st Infantry Division, led a night attack against the southern part of Luodian. Moving quietly and stealthily through the dark, the Chinese force, which had the strength of about two companies, approached a Japanese camp, which was mostly at sleep.113

  The Chinese launched a speedy attack. They gave the Japanese no chances, shooting and bayoneting them while they were still lying down. The Chinese took over the camp and waited for the Japanese to launch a counterattack. When they did, they began a fighting retreat. This was in fact a ruse, meant to lure the Japanese into an open area in front of a line of well-armed soldiers lying in ambush. Once the Japanese were close enough, Qiu Weida released a signal flare. It was a pre-arranged sign to open fire. Infantry weapons with a range of calibers joined in. As dawn broke, Qiu raised his binoculars to view the scene in front of him. It was covered in a dense tangle of dead and dying bodies.

  In a similar engagement near Luodian, Japanese private Toshihara Tokaji had the bad fortune of being wounded and left behind in no-man’s-land after his unit withdrew. Together with three other stragglers, two unharmed and one lightly injured, he hid in the thick foliage of a swamp, and started waiting. At night they could hear Chinese voices, and they had to keep quiet and refrain from moving if they wanted to survive. Toshihara jotted down his thoughts in his diary. They mostly evolved around one thing: agonizing thirst.114

  “Seventh day,” read one of his entries. “I want water, water, water! I am so thirsty.” He crawled to a nearby creek and found it filled with bloated corpses, but nevertheless filled his flask. This provided some relief, but only for a few days. “I think of my wound to forget my thirst,” he wrote later. “Then I think of water to forget the pain in my wound.” On the ninth day, the four Japanese spotted a group of Chinese soldiers approaching, and quietly got ready for a fight. The Chinese, however, simply cleared the creek of the corpses, left them in a jumbled pile on the bank, and then disappeared. This gave the Japanese an opportunity to fish food from the pockets of the dead bodies—two cans of meat and raw rice.

  On day 13, the thirst again overwhelmed Toshihara. He fell into a delirious sleep and dreamt about a beer hall, until the sound of battle awakened him. “We talked about my dream to forget our thirst,” he wrote. In the days that followed, the battle moved nearer, but Toshihara and the other stragglers were so confused about directions that they did not know who was advancing, and who was retreating. Finally, on the 19th day, the front rolled over their swamp. Chinese troops passed within feet of their hiding place—and then they were found by advancing Japanese. “We thought we would all be dead by this time, but the God protected us,” Toshihara wrote. “I will never forget this day.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  “Rivers of Blood”

  SEPTEMBER 11—30

  THIS COULD BE THE WESTERN FRONT, VETERAN WAR CORRESPONdent Hubert Hessell Tiltman thought as he hunkered down in the dark trench, hoping it was robust enough to offer protection against the Japanese shells that were pouring down on the Chinese positions. The trained ear could easily discern the various forms of artillery, much the same way that a lover of classical music could pick out the individual instruments in a symphony orchestra. There were six-inch grenades, and there were “whizz-bangs,” military slang for high-velocity shells that traveled faster than the speed of sound, meaning that the men huddled in their dugouts heard the “whizz” of the shell flying through the air before the “bang” of the field gun that had fired it. The uninterrupted barrage played its deadly tune up and down the Chinese lines and also pummeled the rear areas in search of targets. This, Tiltman reminded himself, was officially described as “a quiet night.”1

  When exploding shells lit up the countryside it was possible to clearly make out the Japanese trenches about one m
ile away. The Japanese had withdrawn to that position after a massive, but ultimately futile, attack the preceding day. The Japanese were feared in battle, but their adversaries were fierce warriors too. Tiltman was impressed with the Chinese soldiers he had seen in the trenches. They were in excellent shape, they were wellequipped, and there were many of them. On the way to the frontline, he had observed large numbers of reserves of equal quality waiting to be deployed. It was understandable why the Chinese command would allocate forces of such strength to this section of the frontline, straddling the road from Baoshan to Liuhang, as it was of great importance to them. If the Japanese managed to punch through the Chinese lines and take Yanghang, the village right behind the line, they would be significantly closer to achieving the goal of cutting off the Chinese troops fighting in Shanghai proper.

  In the first days of September, an intense sense of resignation had set in among the senior Chinese commanders after the Japanese troops had taken stronghold after stronghold along the riverbank—first Shizilin, then Wusong and finally Baoshan. However, the rank and file remained determined to defend every inch of Chinese soil. Fighting along Wusong Creek, stretching west from Wusong, became extraordinarily bloody. “There were huge numbers of deaths on both sides, and the water of the creek turned red,” Chinese official Wang Jieshi wrote in his diary. “The saying about ‘rivers of blood’ turned into actual reality.”2

  Just days after Tiltman’s visit to the front, the Japanese commanders launched what they hoped would be the decisive blow allowing a breakout from the Baoshan perimeter. Elements of the 3rd Division were to move down the road towards Liuhang and occupy Yanghang. In the same assault, the 11th Division’s Amaya Detachment,3 which had arrived at Wusong on September 2, was to take Yuepu, a village on the other strategic road leading west from Baoshan that blocked access to Luodian and a link-up with the units under the 11th Division fighting in that area. It was an attempt to finally achieve the elbow room needed to seize Shanghai, and the Japanese threw everything they could spare into the effort.

  The artillery barrage began before dawn on September 11, with Japanese guns of all calibers taking part. As well as the usual whistle of shells from naval guns in the river, there were also attacks from land-based artillery, the sound of which had become much more familiar to the Chinese defenders in recent days, as the Japanese had been able to disembark materiel at the landing sites along the Yangtze and Huangpu Rivers for more than a fortnight. After daybreak there were air raids of unusual intensity. The Japanese were deploying all their available aircraft in this narrow part of the front, or so it seemed to the Chinese. Eventually, it was the Japanese infantry’s turn to attack.4

  While this was just the latest in a series of Japanese assaults, the sheer tenacity on display signaled to the Chinese that this time was different. Still, an entire day of fighting led to precious little territorial gain. The defenders had fought with determination bordering on fanaticism, despite a near-complete lack of air and artillery support, and had made good use of the obstacles provided by the canals cutting through the heavily cultivated area. By sunset, the Japanese had been able to advance no further than the eastern end of Yuepu, although the village had been completely destroyed by artillery fire. Yanghang remained entirely in Chinese hands. In the countryside between the two western roads leading from Baoshan, Japanese units had only been able to occupy land where their artillery and aircraft had literally obliterated the defenders.5

  From an outsider’s point of view, it would look as if the Chinese could breathe a sigh of relief. From the Chinese commanders’ own perspective, the situation was entirely different. Their biggest worry was the Japanese superiority in artillery. The contested area north of Shanghai mainly consisted of low-lying rice and cotton fields with relatively few trees, offering insufficient camouflage for any but the smallest units. This made it possible for the Japanese naval gunners on the elevated water of the Yangtze and Huangpu to sometimes directly observe the Chinese troops. Even when there was no direct line of sight from the ships in the rivers, they were helped by the directions of observers patrolling in aircraft or hovering in balloons over the horizon.6

  The Chinese had already known for some time that exposing their units to continuous attack from the naval guns simply played into the Japanese hands and that they would have to move away from the riverbank and the lethal fire from the Imperial Navy. The decision to withdraw would have come sooner or later, but it was hastened by the continuous Japanese pressure on the two roads from Baoshan, since their loss would cause a breach between Zhang Zhizhong’s 9th Army Group in the Shanghai area and Chen Cheng’s 15th Army Group on his left.7 General Gu Zhutong, a member of Chiang Kai-shek’s inner circle who recently had been appointed deputy commander of the Third War Zone, had witnessed how some of the best divisions were being chopped to pieces in the defense of Yuepu and Yanghang and was in favor of abandoning those two villages. Zhang Zhizhong, meanwhile, was pushing for a withdrawal of troops in Yang-shupu, which risked being transformed into a dangerously exposed salient if the breach were to become a reality.8

  The growing apprehension among the frontline commanders gradually crept up the ranks, all the way back to Nanjing. A tone of exasperation had started to appear in Chiang Kai-shek’s diary. “In recent days, the military situation has turned for the worse, and morale is starting to waver,” he wrote following setbacks around Luodian. After Japanese troops had taken possession of Baoshan he added: “Our troops have been forced into a passive role.”9 There were other indications that Chiang Kai-shek was pre-paring for more defensive tactics in the Shanghai area, including the issue, on September 6, of a set of broad operational guidelines. The guidelines called for the elimination of all enemy troops that had landed, but failing that, the Chinese forces were to make use of the terrain in conducting a vigorous defense. This was a signal that withdrawal, and a gradual shift towards trading land for time, had become an acceptable option.10

  The Third War Zone’s order for the two Chinese army groups to withdraw came late on September 11.11 Under the cover of darkness, the bulk of the divisions pulled back to positions that had been reinforced by re-serves in the preceding days. As thousands of soldiers moved several miles to the rear, the Japanese were unaware that anything unusual was going on, and the entire movement took place free from enemy harassment. Only skeleton crews were left in the original Chinese positions. On the morning of September 12, the new frontline stretched from the North Railway Station to the eastern edge of Jiangwan, bent west of Yanghang and Luodian and stretched north to the banks of the Yangtze. Without knowing it, the Japanese had become masters of heavily contested areas from Yangshupu in the south to Yuepu in the north.

  The Chinese military leadership tried to explain to the public that it had no choice, and that it had never had any serious expectations that it might be able to throw the Japanese back into the Yangtze, given the hundreds of naval guns at the disposal of the Japanese. “The objective of the Chinese command was to delay and harass the landing,” a Chinese military spokesman said in a statement. “It was not hoped permanently to repel the landing.”12 The Chinese proclaimed confidence in the new positions they had withdrawn to. Some even compared them to the Maginot Line along the French border with Germany, which at the time was still considered impregnable. Dutch spy de Fremery, however, was not overwhelmed. When he toured an entire 10-mile section of the front, he came across just one concrete pillbox. The trenches, he said, were secured by “the most primitive, if not entirely inadequate” barbed wire barricades.13

  By contrast, the advantages that the Japanese enjoyed after the Chinese withdrawal were considerable. They now controlled all the left bank of the Huangpu from Yangshupu to the mouth of the Yangtze. They were in possession of several good roads, some of them interconnected, which could act as supply lines for future attacks. Finally, they were also free to exploit a large number of modern Chinese wharfs and docks, setting the stage for an unimpeded flow of reinforcements
. “In this way, the Japanese command had obtained the room for maneuver needed for the successful continuation of the entire Shanghai operation,” one of the German advisors later ruminated regretfully in his account of the battle.14

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  Matsui Iwane woke up at his headquarters, set up at the Shanghai Fisheries College near Wusong, at 6:00 a.m. on September 12. It was his first night of sleep on land since departing from Japan. He washed, brushed his teeth, and bowed respectfully to the rising sun. Then he sat down in a pavilion in the middle of the campus and started meditating. He noticed how a flowerbed nearby had been left untended and had slowly withered away. Nevertheless, fresh wild plants were protruding from among the shriveled leaves. Matsui felt it as if the blooming oleander was smiling at him. It set off all kinds of associations. Deep in thought, the ageing general composed a poem:15

  South of the Yangtze, a magnificent view:

  Coquettish flowers come back to life.

  The righteous knight has gained victory,

  And is greeted by the bloom of the oleander.

  Matsui had good reason for being pensive. The preceding days had seen a string of local victories for the Japanese forces, but overall the advance from the landing zones had not been smooth at all. Attempts at taking Yuepu and Yanghang had proceeded at a snail’s pace. “The advance on Yanghang is not going well,” Matsui had written the day before in his diary. “It’s a great pity.”16