Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze

by Harmsen, Peter

  On October 30, Zhang Boting turned up at the residence of Yang Hu, the Shanghai defense commissioner, and nominally the most senior military figure in the city. Located in one of the most exclusive areas of the French Concession, it was a sumptuous villa nested in a luxurious flower garden, a home worthy of an official widely rumored to be corrupt.55 Also present were Mayor Yu Hongjun and, more importantly, Alexander Telfer-Smollett, commanding officer of the British forces in Shanghai. Yang Hu got straight down to business. “The supreme commander of the Chinese forces has ordered the Lost Battalion to withdraw from the Four Banks’ Warehouse,” he said. “But we need to confer with the British army on ways to bring this about, with a view to the possible impact on the International Settlement.”

  “Do you know about this issue?” Mayor Yu asked the British general. Telfer-Smollet replied in the affirmative. “Our troops have been neighbors with your division across the creek for some time now, and we’ve become friends,” he said. “We’ll do our best to assist the withdrawal of the battalion, but how do you plan to bring it about?” Zhang Boting said the only way out was through the International Settlement. “The Japanese have set up a machine gun position and searchlights, covering the exit at Lese Bridge. We need your protection in order to make a withdrawal possible,” he said. Telfer-Smollett rose and patted Yang Hu on the back. “Don’t worry. Yang Hu and I are friends.”56

  Late that afternoon, the Japanese bombardment of the warehouse had become so intense that British soldiers abandoned patrolling Lese Bridge for the sake of their own safety. The order for the “Lost Battalion” to finally withdraw into the International Settlement came none too early and was received with relief. There was no real plan. They would simply have to run across the bridge as fast as they could, trying to escape before the Japanese understood what was going on. If the Japanese did notice the evacuation and opened fire, they just had to hope that the machine guns wouldn’t kill too many of them. The British soldiers would be expecting them on the other side.

  As night settled over ruined Zhabei, the Japanese moved their artillery even closer to the warehouse. This time the plan was to keep shelling the building until its defenders were dead or gone. Observers across the creek, watching the batteries serve up miniature barrages so close to the target, noted that the sound of the gun firing and the sound of the shell bursting merged into one prolonged “cra-ack!” After each barrage, a Japanese searchlight would move around the wall to inspect the damage. A Chinese soldier tried to destroy the searchlight by throwing a hand grenade from a window, but it fell short.57

  Amid the continued barrage, the battalion began the evacuation. They moved in a gradual manner to keep the Japanese in the dark for as long as possible. Every now and then, a lone shadow, or a cluster of shadows, would dash across the bridge. Each time, a Japanese machine gun posted near the north end of the bridge would open fire. Because of the darkness and the extreme confusion near the warehouse only a few were hit before reaching the British lines and laying down their arms. Yang Ruifu was able to run almost to the other side before being shot through the leg. In spite of the pain, he hurriedly hopped the last short distance to safety on his uninjured foot.58

  As the escape was getting under way, a Japanese column headed by a tank appeared near the warehouse, moving in to block the road. A platoon commander, Yang Yangzheng, manned a machine gun hoping to hold back the Japanese. He only managed a few bursts before the tank fired a shell in his direction. A piece of shrapnel hit the left side of his face. In a daze, he groped for his left eye, and touched only warm, wet tissue. Then he collapsed. Half-conscious, he had the feeling of being grabbed by the arms and legs and being carried by running men. Unable to open his eyes, he heard familiar voices explain that he had made it to the other side of the creek. Then he fainted. When he woke up, he was in a hospital bed. A doctor explained to him that his left eye had been beyond repair. “We had to remove it,” the doctor said. Yang Yangzheng understood. He accepted his fate. After all, he was lucky. He was alive.59 Some 355 other members of the “Lost Battalion” also survived. Miraculously, fewer than 100 died.60

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  A Chinese soldier injured in the battle for Shanghai had roughly a fifty-fifty chance of surviving.61 Those were tough odds, but he was lucky compared with a compatriot hit by an enemy bullet or shrapnel elsewhere in China during the long war with Japan. Shanghai had better hospital facilities than any other Chinese city at the time, and as the battle progressed, the facilities were gradually expanded as the spacious dance-halls of the downtown entertainment districts, the Vienna Gardens and the Lido, were turned into huge sickbays.

  Despite the extra capacity, the hospitals, both old and new, were stretched to the limit since they had to accommodate not just military casualties, but also a growing number of civilians who had fallen victim to the indiscriminate air war waged over Shanghai.62 Besides, transportation was a growing problem. Even those wounded just a few miles from the metropolitan area had to undergo an excruciating ordeal before reaching a hospital bed. A soldier injured south of Wusong Creek would have his wounds dressed in a rough fashion by his comrades and would then be made to wait for transportation back to Shanghai. The ensuing bumpy ride, along narrow, shell-torn roads, took place under the cover of darkness, with no headlights on. A trip that would normally last 80 minutes routinely took five hours.63

  Transportation could only happen at night because Japanese aircraft deliberately machine-gunned and bombed anything that bore the Red Cross. The official explanation given by Japanese spokesmen was that ambulances had been commandeered to carry war material to the front, while there were also reports of private companies using the Red Cross on their trucks as extra insurance against air attack. However, foreign observers suspected that the real reason for the Japanese practice was different. After all, hospitals were places “where soldiers were refitted for war.” Whatever the reason, it soon became well known that the Red Cross offered no special protection, and ambulance crews realized that they were better off covering the markings on the sides of their vehicles as best they could with mud and boughs of trees.64

  Inside the hospitals, small things were done to relieve the plight of the injured. Cabaret girls and dancers, out of a job because the war had put an end to much of Shanghai’s nightlife, donned uniforms and became nurses overnight. “The vision of a dainty, young girl arranging pink carnations in a jam jar beside a wounded hero gave a much-needed softening touch of beauty,” a journalist reported from a makeshift hospital. “Another soft-voiced creature was relating the day’s news to an interested group, while others were busy feeding canned fruits, which they had brought, to those unable to feed themselves.”65 Sadly, the Chinese supreme commander, the ascetic Chiang Kai-shek, would have none of this, and banned the female visits to the hospitals whenever he got wind of the practice.66

  Beyond the immediate reach of the Shanghai ambulances, in the area around Luodian for example, the conditions could be as bad as anywhere in China. It was not unusual for those who suffered non-lethal wounds to die because their units failed to provide them with rudimentary care in a timely fashion. It was a situation that in most other armies would have caused widespread consternation, but many soldiers in the Chinese military seemed to consider it the natural order of things. The Chinese as a nation were used to hardship, and the tenacity of the injured soldiers was a source of admiration and wonder among foreign observers. “Often pain-racked, with gory bandages, they are singularly cheerful and uncomplaining even when facilities are inadequate,” wrote a correspondent for the North China Daily News after visiting a field hospital.67

  Some Chinese units simply left those injured to their own devices. If they could, the wounded would get up and try to limp back in the hope of finding someone who would help them in their agony. Some officers with severe injuries managed to crawl aboard trains bound for Nanjing, where they arrived, driven almost mad with thirst, with bandages that had not been changed
for a week.68 Others roamed the countryside behind the front, living ghosts with nowhere to go. Falkenhausen suggested in a report in late October that these stragglers should be returned to their respective units, instead of causing confusion and clogging up transportation routes in the rear areas.69

  Being abandoned could actually sometimes be an advantage, considering the alternative. Missionaries in northern China reported how 200 seriously injured soldiers had been placed inside a barrack, which had then been set ablaze, not by the Japanese but by their own. There was nothing that could be done for them, the Chinese officers responsible for the atrocity said with a shrug.70 The medical service was “without a doubt the most sinister chapter of the Chinese Army,” the German war correspondent Lily Abegg wrote.71 Few would dispute that verdict

  Contemporary foreign observers tried to explain the callousness by referring to traditional culture, arguing that inherited norms did not call for help for those injured in war.72 Others pointed out that China was so populous and the pool of manpower so large that it made no sense to treat the injured rather than recruit new soldiers.73 Perhaps to a large extent, the shortcomings of military medicine were simply a reflection of the poor state of the medical profession in general in China.

  In the late 1930s the country had one doctor for every 45,000 inhabitants. By contrast, the number in the United States was one for every 800. Only a small number of the nation’s trained physicians decided to join the army, since the pay was one tenth of what they could make as civilians. Those who did enter came under such heavy mental strain from the suffering that surrounded them that they wanted out as quickly as possible. The consequence was that the average Chinese dressing station and divisional hospital was overseen by medics who, in the words of American journalist Theodore H. White, “would not be employed as soda jerks in American pharmacies.”74

  The doctors were not helped by widespread ignorance in the rank and file, especially outside of the elite German-trained divisions. In these second-rate divisions, which had been recruited overwhelmingly among China’s huge rural population, superstitition thrived. “The soldiers had contacted herb doctors all their lives,” White wrote. “Hygiene was a mystery to them, and they believed in charms and ancient remedies.” They ignored the doctors’ advice to boil water before drinking it, and got it straight from the paddy field. Sick soldiers ate from the same shared pot of rice as everyone else. They used the bandages from their first aid kits to swab out the barrels of their rifles.75

  Military medicine in the Japanese armed forces was a somewhat different matter, at least during the initial phase of the war in Asia. Each Japanese soldier was paired with a combat buddy who, if he was injured, would dress his wound and bandage it. If this was not possible, the injured soldier would be sent back to the company dressing station just behind the frontline. More serious cases would end up in field hospitals at battalion or regimental level.76 An uncertain fate awaited them there. Initially, the hospitals that the Japanese Army was able to take over in the Shanghai area suffered from a severe lack of resources. Medical officer Aso Tetsuo, who arrived towards the end of the battle, was assigned to a facility where there were 100 patients to every doctor, and all the medical personnel had to share one portable boiling-water sterilizer between operations. The sick and injured soldiers were lying shivering on the floor, still in their blood-covered uniforms, unable to take a bath.77

  At least they were not ignored like their counterparts in the Chinese Army. Japanese soldiers invalided home received a hero’s welcome. American journalist John Goette described what happened when two 10,000ton hospital ships arrived at the Japanese port of Mori. On the dock were long rows of civilians—officials, students and priests—all holding paper flags. As the returning soldiers were carried through the streets in buses and ambulances, every man and woman stopped and bowed deeply. Weeks and months of recovery lay ahead. Surgeons would restore damaged arms and legs. Instructors would teach them trades that could secure an income despite their disabilities. An organization arranged contact with girls willing to marry legless or blinded veterans. “I have seen the wounded of China, America, France and England brought back, but never have I been made conscious of such a surge of gratitude, such a oneness between fighting men and civilians,” Goette wrote later.78

  The Japanese Army’s policy towards injured soldiers made perfect sense, given the morale boost it provided to the rank and file. For the same reason, its attitude towards cholera patients was all the more mystifying. The dreaded disease soon spread among the troops in the Shanghai area, just as it did among the city’s civilians. Some units, such as the Amaya Detachment, had their ability to act as a fighting force severely compromised as it decimated their ranks.79 The army’s response was to place the patients inside rope fences and leave them to care for themselves. Nohara Teishin reported how a friend of his contracted cholera and ended up in a pen like this. “Give me water, give me water,” the friend begged. Nohara would boil it in a mess kit and hand it to him at the end of a bamboo pole. “When we went into battle, I had to leave him. I don’t know how often the medics came to take care of them. I just felt pity for my own friend. Many died. My friend died, too,” Nohara recalled.”80

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  The withdrawal from Zhabei and Jiangwan was the beginning of the end for the Chinese Army in the Shanghai area. It had moved to a fortified line that stretched along the south bank of Suzhou Creek, before bending north towards the city of Nanxiang, then veering slightly north-northwest and running all the way to the Yangtze. Suzhou Creek offered excellent conditions for defense as it formed a natural barrier of up to 150 feet across, with steep seven-foot banks on either side.81 But once this line was lost, there would be no other line to move back to. Losing Suzhou Creek would mean losing Shanghai. Losing Shanghai would in turn be construed as a decisive defeat not just by the Chinese public, but by the whole world. “Therefore,” German advisor Borchardt wrote, “the Chinese command was placing all its bets on holding the position as long as possible without risking the annihilation of units that would be essential for continuing the war.”82

  The Japanese planned their main attack directly south across Suzhou Creek, in order to seal off the troops inside Shanghai, but first they needed to create the necessary room for maneuver. For this reason, and in order to secure their right flank, they launched a major attack against Nanxiang on October 28, following a route along the railway from Shanghai. Benefitting from the usual intensive assistance from aircraft and artillery, the Japanese managed to penetrate the Chinese frontline with little difficulty. However, they did not take Nanxiang, and overall it was less of a victory than it looked, as the Chinese had organized a deep defense, preparing a two-mile band of obstacles and barriers east of the city. In another advance, which veered south, the Japanese engaged in a short battle before taking the town of Zhenru, of importance in part because it housed a radio station that transmitted most of Shanghai’s telephonic and telegraphic communications with the outside world.83

  At noon on October 30, the Japanese renewed their attack on Nanxiang, this time with a greater force than the day before, spearheaded by 30 tanks. They gained little ground and suffered heavy casualties, as Chinese units equipped with anti-tank weapons were waiting for them along the few roads that allowed armored movement.84 It was evident that continued attacks west would be extremely costly, and Matsui Iwane decided to temporarily halt the advance and instead focus on the more important crossing of Suzhou Creek. Time was of the essence, as he believed the Chinese defenders south of the creek were temporarily weakened after the withdrawal from Zhabei and were still waiting for resupplies of weapons and ammunition.85

  In preparation for crossing Suzhou Creek, for several days the Japanese had been assembling a small fleet of vessels commandeered from Shanghai’s civilian population, ranging from motorboats and sampans to simple bamboo barges.86 As early as October 31, the 3rd Japanese Infantry Division, at the eastern end of the Suz
hou Creek front, launched several crossings. In one of the attacks, carried out late in the afternoon near the village of Zhoujiaqiao, Japanese soldiers were able to reach the southern bank. They were immediately met by enfilading fire from Chinese machine guns and suffered serious losses. They also had to defend themselves against Chinese reserves, which had been summoned after a few hours to eliminate the threat. Nevertheless, they were able to keep their narrow foothold.87

  A parallel attempt by the same division a little further downstream, closer to the edge of the International Settlement, failed miserably despite an impressive display of Japanese material superiority. Engineers laid a mile-long smokescreen across the creek, while a dozen three-engine bombers protected by fighters constantly hovered over the battlefield, keeping an eye out for targets.88 A small landing party was able to cross the creek, but the moment it set foot on the other side, it was met by a strong artillery barrage, and a Chinese counterattack pushed them back into the creek. Foreign military observers speculated that this attack was reconnaissance in force rather than a serious attempt at crossing the creek in this sector. It seemed unlikely that the Japanese would seek battle so close to the International Settlement, since they would have been forced to carry out operations in heavily built-up areas.89

  On November 1, three battalions of the 9th Japanese Division attacked in small boats across Suzhou Creek near the place where the Chinese frontline bent north, and succeeded in establishing a bridgehead on the other side. That day and the following two days, the division managed to pour a large number of troops across, and eventually controlled an area stretching about half a mile along the south bank of the creek. On the following day, the Chinese made a determined effort to eliminate this growing threat. They made significant gains, but even so, failed in their mission to completely wipe out the Japanese landing party. This was in part because the Chinese were unable to use their significant artillery resources to their full extent. At the start of the day’s battle, 60 feet had separated the trenches of the opposing forces, and a barrage targeting the Japanese was just as likely to hit Chinese lines.90