Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze

by Harmsen, Peter

  “Outside of the streets of Zhabei,” he said, “the suburbs consist of flat land with little opportunity for cover. It’s not suitable for guerrilla warfare. The idea of defending small key points is also difficult. The 88th Division has so far had reinforcements and replacements six times, and the original core of officers and soldiers now make up only 20 to 30 percent. It’s like a cup of tea. If you keep adding water, it becomes thinner and thinner.3 Some of the new soldiers we receive have never been in a battle, or never even fired a shot. At the moment we rely on the backbone of old soldiers to train them while fighting. As long as the command system is in place and we can use the old hands to provide leadership, we’ll be able to maintain the division as a fighting force. But if we divide up the unit, the coherence will be lost. Letting every unit fight its own fight will just add to the trouble.”

  Gu Zhutong nodded, but asked what alternatives were available. “Chiang Kai-shek’s instruction is aimed at strategic objectives,” said Zhang Boting. “He wants to direct attention towards Japan’s aggressive behavior, and since Shanghai is an international city which has the eyes and ears of the global community, he wants to bring the realities of the combat in Shanghai to the (Brussels) meeting . . . Leaving troops in Zhabei for a final battle will be tantamount to sacrificing them, whether it’s a large force or a small one. Whether we stay and fight for a large number of strongholds or just one or two strongholds, it has the same meaning: We stay and fight. The most important thing is to pick a unit that is just right for doing this job.”

  “Sun Yuanliang made similar comments on the phone this morning,” Gu Zhutong said, “but he didn’t specifically say how many troops we should leave behind. He also didn’t say which strongholds they should defend.” Zhang Boting replied that an elite formation of no more than regimental size would be enough to hold on to one or two high-profile positions in the Zhabei area. Gu Zhutong thought it over quickly, and then made up his mind. “Time is short,” he told Zhang Boting. “I want you to immediately return to Sun Yuanliang and order him to proceed according to this plan. If you have carried out the necessary arrangements by evening, I will be able to report back to Chiang Kai-shek.”

  Zhang Boting rushed back east towards Shanghai, but the road had become even more clogged and disorganized than before. Near a major bridge, he encountered a huge traffic jam caused by vehicles of all sizes seeking to escape the advancing Japanese. An old friend of his, an officer of the 87th Infantry Division, came up to him. His left hand was bandaged and he was waving a submachine gun with his right. It was impossible to continue this way, he told Zhang. The Japanese had already broken through the line to the north, and an enemy tank column was heading in their direction.

  Zhang Boting decided to make a detour and told his driver to take the car to the International Settlement. From there he hitched a ride across Suzhou Creek on board a small wooden boat. When he returned to the 88th Infantry Division’s headquarters, inside the Four Banks’ Warehouse right next to the creek, he found Sun Yuanliang pacing up and down the floor, as was his habit when he was pondering a tough issue. He had already talked to Gu Zhutong by telephone, and knew that his proposal to keep a small force in Shanghai had been adopted. What remained was to pick the unit that was to stay behind and in all likelihood fight to the last man.

  Suddenly, Sun Yuanliang stopped pacing, a sign that he had reached a decision. He wanted the very building they were standing in, the five-storey Four Banks’ Warehouse, to be the position where the last stand was to be made. It was a large and easily recognizable structure, and it was within direct sight of the International Settlement, giving it exactly the exposure that was its raison d’etre. However, Sun Yuanliang thought a regiment was too big a unit for the job. It would be hard to supply so many men for a prolonged period of battle. More importantly, he was loath to squander so many lives on what was essentially a public relations exercise. Sun Yuan-liang had made his pick. The task of showing to the world that there was still fight left in the Chinese had fallen on the 1st Battalion of the 524th Regiment. It was about to gain global fame as China’s “Lost Battalion.”

  ————————

  By the time Zhang Boting made his trek on October 26, the situation west of Shanghai had changed markedly. The stalemate around Wusong Creek that had characterized most of the month of October had given way to sudden, rapid movement. The 9th Japanese Division’s successful defense against the counterattack carried out by the Guangxi troops from October 21 to 23 had shaken the Chinese, as had minor Japanese advances elsewhere. On the night between October 23 and 24, intelligence reached Matsui Iwane suggesting that the Chinese were reducing their troops on the frontline, possibly in preparation of a withdrawal.4

  Matsui had been planning for the major drive south aiming for Dachang, and the sudden fluidity of the situation prompted him to speed up these plans. He had originally wanted to call a meeting with the division commanders and explain his intentions, but instead he phoned each of them from 9:00 a.m. on October 24 ordering the attack, stating that more detailed written orders would follow in the afternoon. Within just a few hours both the 3rd and the 9th Divisions managed to reach Zoumatang Creek, which ran from the west to the east two miles south of Wusong Creek. The 9th Division even succeeded in gaining a foothold on the other side.5

  However, Matsui was not satisfied and felt his troops could have moved in a more aggressive manner in pursuit of the retreating Chinese. He reasoned that they had been hampered by Zoumatang Creek, a natural obstacle, but more importantly he believed the weeks that the soldiers had spent in the trenches had caused them to lose their feel for mobile warfare.6 In the middle of the afternoon on October 24, he ordered the divi-sional commanders to meet him at his headquarters. They all seemed to appreciate the need for speed, but they explained that lack of supplies caused them to move slower than they wanted. In particular, the 9th Division was still waiting for new weapons. At present, it only had between 200 and 300 rifles per battalion, and it was not equipped for effective pursuit of the enemy.7 It is also likely that after heavy attrition and the loss of some of their best troops, the Japanese officers had adopted a more cautious approach to battle. Understandably, they did not spell this out to their commander.8

  In preparation for the battle, Japanese planes had dropped thousands of leaflets over Chinese positions, urging the soldiers to give up the fight. As an added incentive, the leaflets offered each soldier who laid down his arms five Chinese yuan, or the equivalent of about one and a half U.S. dollars at the exchange rate of the time.9 The tactic did not appear to have had much of an impact, if for no other reason then because all the Chinese were aware that the Japanese rarely, if ever, took prisoners. Rather, the Japanese advance benefited from a continued Chinese withdrawal on the night between October 24 and 25, which also pulled out of battle the Guangxi troops who had been pushed to near exhaustion by an intense week on the frontline. Most of the retreating troops moved to positions that had already been prepared north and south of Suzhou Creek, the last remaining natural obstacle to a Japanese victory in Shanghai.

  As had happened before during the Shanghai campaign, in the first hours after daybreak on October 25, the Japanese did not immediately detect the changes that had taken place in the dark hours, and only gradually realized that the Chinese positions they were facing were occupied by skeleton crews. But once reconnaissance troops had established how weak the enemy in the immediate frontline was, they quickly attacked and wiped out the token resistance left in their path.10 The Japanese took advantage of their superiority in the air, deploying hundreds of planes. They also carried out “creeping” artillery fire, perhaps for the only time during the entire Shanghai campaign. The procedure, which had been used to considerable effect during the Great War, called for a barrage of artillery shells to gradually move forward, protecting the assault force following immediately behind. However, in this case, the barrage was kept 600 to 700 yards in front of the advancing Japanese and ga
ve the Chinese defenders sufficient time to emerge from cover and re-man the positions they had abandoned while under artillery fire.11

  Despite the general withdrawal from the positions south of Wusong Creek, several Chinese divisions were charged with mounting a strong defense around Dachang. Two strategic bridges across Zoumatang Creek, in the area west of Dachang, were held by one division each. The defense of the westernmost of the two, Old Man Bridge, was the responsibility of the 33rd Division, which had recently arrived in Shanghai. The 18th Division, another new arrival, was positioned around Little Stone Bridge, closer to Dachang. Neither division was any match for the Japanese steamroller. On October 25, a Japanese column spearheaded by more than 20 tanks swept away the 33rd Division’s defenses and took Old Man Bridge. In the ensuing hours, as the Chinese division tried to carry out a fighting retreat towards Dachang, it was nearly annihilated by the superior Japanese firepower. By mid-afternoon only one in ten of its officers and men was fit to fight. Even the division commander had been injured.12

  The Japanese force moved on to Little Stone Bridge, and after bitter fighting with the 18th Division, which lasted until sunset, that bridge too ended up in Japanese hands. The 18th Division, meanwhile, moved into Dachang. Here the division commander Zhu Yaohua received a message from Gu Zhutong pointing out in terms hard to misunderstand that Dachang must be held at any cost. “Those who disobey this order will be court-martialed,” Gu Zhutong stated curtly.13 Zhu Yaohua feared that giving up Little Stone Bridge might already be enough to put him in the dock and hastily arranged a nightly counterattack to recapture it. It turned out the Japanese had foreseen that eventuality and had prepared strong defenses near the bridge. The Chinese attempt failed miserably.14

  There was no doubt that on October 26 the Japanese threw every available piece of equipment in that section of the front into an all-out effort to take Dachang. The town had, by that point, been reduced almost entirely to rubble, the ancient wall the only indication that it had ever been home to any significant number of people.15 Up to 400 airplanes, including heavy day bombers, attacked Chinese troops in and around Dachang, killing both people and large numbers of pack animals. A western correspondent observing from a distance, later called it the “fiercest ever [battle] waged in Asia up to that time.” It was a “tempest of steel” released by Japanese planes flying lazily over the Chinese positions, guided to their targets by observation balloons spotting any movement on the ground. “The curtain of fire never lifted for a moment from the Chinese trenches,” the correspondent wrote in his memoirs of the Shanghai campaign. “This was no battle among ruins but straight-out positional warfare in open, flat country.” 16

  After the aerial attack, more than 40 Japanese tanks appeared west of Dachang. The Chinese had nothing that could stop such a force, as they had already withdrawn their artillery to safer positions further behind the front. Their infantry was left to its own devices in the face of the moving wall of enemy armor, and it was overwhelmed.17 The defending divisions, including Zhu Yaohua’s 18th, never had a chance and were crushed by the materially superior foe. After a short fight, the victorious Japanese could march in and claim the town, which was by then a sea of flames.18 Matsui felt deep satisfaction at the sight of the banner of the Rising Sun over the burning ruins of Dachang. “After a month of bitter fighting, today we have finally seen the pay-off,” he wrote in his diary.19 Zhu Yaohua, on the other hand, immediately faced reproaches from his superiors and his peers who thought he could have done more.20 The humiliation was too much to bear. Two days after his defeat at Dachang, he shot himself in the chest, inflicting a mortal wound.21

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  Even before Dachang fell, and despite the threat to court-martial anyone leaving his post, a general withdrawal of all Chinese forces in the Jiangwan salient had been underway. As early as the night between October 24 and 25, the divisions inside the salient had been ordered to move baggage trains and support services back southwest across Suzhou Creek, using the Zhongshan Bridge and Jessfield Railway Bridge. As the fighting raged north of Zhabei in the following days, the stream of soldiers, vehicles and pack animals continued, and on the night between October 26 and 27, the Chinese vacated metropolitan Shanghai north of Suzhou Creek entirely. “The enormous Chinese army simply melted away and at dawn the Japanese found themselves facing empty positions,” a foreign journalist wrote. “The two armies were no longer in contact.”22

  As the Chinese retreated from Zhabei, they systematically set fire to thousands of Chinese shops and homes, carrying out a scorched earth policy.23 At 7:00 a.m. on October 27, eight narrow arrows of smoke pierced the horizon from one end of Zhabei to the other. Two hours later, they had become “huge black pillars stretching towards the azure sky.”24 By afternoon, a four-mile-long massive wall of smoke towered thousands of feet into the air.25 In the words of a German advisor, it was a fire “of unimaginable extent” which raged out of control for several days and repeatedly threatened to spill over into the International Settlement.26 Refugees who had left Zhabei weeks or months before and hoped to return now the fighting finally appeared to be over were devastated as they saw their homes devoured by a vast sea of flames.27

  The Japanese Army, or more precisely the doctrine guiding it in the field, had failed in two respects by letting some of China’s best divisions escape the trap that it itself had set for them. First of all, on the evening of October 26, after taking Dachang, the Japanese columns could have moved onwards across Zhabei all the way to the edge of the International Settlement. Instead, they followed orders and halted at the line they had reached at sunset. “The only explanation for this is the lack of independent thinking among junior Japanese commanders and their fear of erring even in the slightest bit from a plan of attack that had been laid right down to the smallest details,” German advisor Borchardt wrote after returning home from China.28 “Since the Japanese concentrated on rallying and reorganizing their forces after the fall of Dachang,” Borchardt wrote, “they missed an opportunity for a victory so decisive that the Chinese would have been forced to give up their continued resistance in Shanghai.”

  If the Japanese committed a first error by leaving a door open that the enemy could escape through, they made themselves guilty of a second error by not even noticing that the enemy was using that door. Although Japanese reconnaissance planes kept a watchful eye on the two main bridges used by the Chinese to escape, and even sent down parachute flares to detect night-time movements, they almost inexplicably failed to spot the Chinese withdrawal.29 The retreat was carried out exactly according to plan. Even the artillery was pulled out to the last piece. This gave the Chinese a chance to occupy prepared positions south of Suzhou Creek and around Nanxiang, and enabled them to fight another day.30

  Despite their mistakes, the Japanese initially treated their conquest of Zhabei as a triumph, planting thousands of small Rising Sun flags throughout the ruins of the district. Against this sea of white and red, the only reasonably intact building, the Four Banks’ Warehouse, stood out as a stark reminder that the Chinese had maintained a foothold north of Suzhou Creek. Rumors started spreading that the soldiers inside had sworn to fight to death. The Japanese realized that their victory in Zhabei would look flawed, and even appear like a defeat of sorts, as long as the warehouse was in Chinese hands.31

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  No one who had met Xie Jinyuan could be in any doubt that he was the perfect choice to lead the battalion that was to stay behind, holed up inside the Four Banks’ Warehouse in a corner of Zhabei, and prove to the public at home and abroad that China remained determined to resist Japanese aggression. The 32-year-old graduate of the elite Central Military Academy, who had been in Shanghai with the 88th Division since the start of the hostilities in August, was a soldier to the core. He stood as straight as a bayonet, and even in a mask he would have been recognized as a military man, said a foreign correspondent who met him. He was, in the correspondent’s wor
ds, “modern China stripped for action.”32

  The moment Xie Jinyuan received his assignment on the night of October 26, he went straight to the warehouse, and he was pleased with what he saw. It was a virtual fortress. Each of the walls was pockmarked with dozens of rifle slots, so attacking infantry would be met with a wall of rifle fire from the building’s well-protected defenders. It was clear that once the Japanese arrived, they would surround the building on three sides. Still, a link remained to the International Settlement in the south across Lese Bridge. British forward positions were as close as 40 feet away, and with a bit of stealth, and a little luck, it was likely that the injured could be evacuated under the cover of darkness. Tactically, it was an ideal location.33 However, it could be further improved, and he ordered the soldiers who had already arrived to work through the night to strengthen their positions. They had exactly what they needed just at hand—thousands of large bags filled with wheat and corn, which proved to be excellent substitutes for sandbags.34

  Xie Jinyuan’s first challenge was to rally the soldiers of the 524th Regiment’s 1st Battalion, who were to man the positions at the warehouse. It was a complex task, given the short notice, as the companies and platoons were spread all across Zhabei, and some, unaware of the orders their battalion had received, had started moving west along with the rest of the Chinese Army. Throughout the night, Xie and his second-in-command, Yang Ruifu, sent out orderlies through the blazing streets, hoping to locate their men amid the mass of retreating of soldiers. Eventually, they succeeded. By 9:00 a.m. on October 27, the last remaining soldiers of the battalion turned up at the warehouse.35 By then, Xie Jinyuan’s force consisted of slightly over 400 officers and soldiers. It was a tiny number when compared to the might of the Japanese military, and they were put to the test almost immediately.