Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

  At 5.15, the crackle of small arms fire broke from Hill Four. It was still dark and the muzzle flashes sparked like fireworks around the summit. Within seconds, a massive barrage of B-40 rockets, fired from Hill One, arced across the mountain trailing streamers of fire behind them. Then followed the sharp crack of recoilless rifles and the flashes of impacting rounds. But the 120 mm mortars, the mainstay of communist firepower, had yet to open up. Kyi Myint was screaming in Chinese over his walkie-talkie. I asked Kyaw Nyunt what the matter was.

  “The heavy weapons unit says the situation’s not clear. They don’t want to open fire.”

  “I thought they’d been given an order.”

  He shrugged. It appeared that in an army where everybody was yebaw, or comrade, and ranks did not exist, some points of command and control remained to be ironed out. Whether this was the best time or place to do it was another matter. Furious, Kyi Myint was again shrieking and cursing into the walkie-talkie. Finally, there was a roar from Hill One as the first 120 mm mortar went off. The round exploded right on the summit of Hill Four. It was followed by another; and another; and yet another.

  Dawn broke at 6 am to reveal a tattered pall of smoke and dust billowing from Hill Four; the position was literally being blown apart by the bombardment. Fifteen minutes later, a green flare exploded above the hill and seemed to hang suspended, a ghostly splash of colour against the sombre half-light of dawn. I looked enquiringly at Kyaw Nyunt.

  “Signal to the heavy weapons unit to cease fire. The infantry are going in.”

  Almost as he spoke, a sudden storm of automatic weapons fire burst out around the embattled summit. The intensity of the firing seemed to rise and fall and rise again to a crescendo. Abruptly, the radio operator, headphones on, looked up. He called out something in Chinese and the people at the command post broke into wild cheering. Kyaw Nyunt translated:

  “Hill Four has fallen. Our forces are already in the bunkers and trenches. Most of the enemy have been killed and the survivors have fled to the headquarters hill.”

  All attention was now directed towards Hills Two and Three which were already under simultaneous bombardment. Watching through borrowed field-glasses I could see black and brown smoke swirling around the features as one shell, rocket or mortar bomb after another slammed in. The punishment continued relentlessly for about an hour. Then, another message came in, this time an intercept of Burmese radio traffic.

  “They’re asking for reinforcements. Two companies are on their way from Mong Yu and Namhpakka. They’ll be here soon unless our forces can block them.”

  Just before eight, some civilians came up to the command post, carrying baskets of food. Breakfast consisted of rice and fermented soyabean curd in banana leaf-packets—no feast but an indication of thorough preparation. As I ate, I could not but reflect again on the fact that the defenders had been taken totally by surprise. Of their tenacity—displayed under intense fire even as we watched—there was no question. Their Achilles Heel was poor intelligence, a direct reflection of the lack of co-operation they could expect from the local population in insurgent areas. Even the communists—who unlike the KIA or SSA made no appeal to nationalist sentiment—enjoyed a closer relationship with the local people than the government’s army.

  Another message came in.

  “Hill Two’s been overrun!”

  I glanced at my watch: It was eight o’clock exactly. There was more wild cheering in the command post—until the radio operator spoke again and the smiles abruptly vanished.

  “Planes are on their way from Meiktila Air Base. Fighter-bombers.”

  I looked at Kyaw Nyunt who passed my unspoken query on to Kyi Myint. The reply was curt:

  “If they bomb, you’ll have to move. We can’t risk it. But don’t worry. We’ve got seven anti-aircraft guns on these hills.”

  The bombardment continued. Once having adjusted their range the 120 mm mortars and 75 mm recoilless rifles were pouring in direct hits on government bunkers and breastworks. Casualties on the summits had to be heavy. Quite aside from communist superiority in firepower, the ratio in manpower was—in line with classic Maoist military doctrine—nearly ten to one in the attackers’ favour.

  But still there was no sign of any interest in surrender. Even though I was observing the attack from the communist side, it was impossible not to be impressed by the sheer staying power of the defenders. In Kesan Chanlam where I had been in the less comfortable position of being attacked, the tactical skill and tenacity of the Army had been apparent. Despite the heavy casualties they had suffered during the first day’s fighting, the pattern had been the same: no surrender—dig in and hold out.

  Casualties on the CPB’s side were harder to estimate. But scanning the battlefield through the field-glasses, I suddenly focused in on a long line of militiamen trudging up towards Hill One carrying bamboo stretchers. It was now time to begin reckoning the cost of victory in terms of blood, mutilation and death.

  At 10.30 am Hill Three fell to the CPB. Now only the headquarters hill behind the actual Hsi-Hsinwan range remained. Kyaw Nyunt looked at me.

  “The survivors are regrouping there. Our units are reporting the enemy is dragging his dead and wounded along.”

  Battle Map B: Hsi-Hsinwan

  Almost simultaneously, the sound of gunfire came from some point well beyond Hsi-Hsinwan. Kyaw Nyunt appeared concerned.

  “Must be the reinforcements from Mong Yu.”

  The delay with the heavy mortars early in the morning was not the only sign of lack of co-ordination between the CPB’s various units in the field. The command post had also lost contact with several of the columns which had been deployed to block the reinforcements from Namhpakka and Mong Yu. Evidently, some of these had already reached the western and northern foothills of Hsi-Hsinwan.

  All efforts were now concentrated on bombarding the headquarters hill. One 120 mm mortar round after another burst on target. But even though the position was being blown to pieces around them, the defenders were not withdrawing. I asked Kyaw Nyunt what the reason was for the refusal to give up; the place had to be occupied by as many dead and wounded as able-bodied troops.

  “Their base command has radioed with orders not to surrender. They’ll come and help, they say. With infantry, artillery and air support.”

  The sound of explosions and gunfire continued to echo across the mountain—and more stretcher-bearers plodded to retrieve the casualties. Kyi Myint tried to conceal his concern with jovial gestures and loud laughs. His earlier enthusiasm every time a hill had been captured had not been feigned. But I began to suspect that he was now far less sure of the final outcome. Finally, he turned to me:

  “You’d better leave. If there are air strikes, it’s going to be dangerous.”

  I had no reason to protest. Most of the initial fighting was over and I had sufficient photographs and taperecordings. Kyaw Nyunt and I began walking downhill, back to the base camp where we had spent the night. We found it crowded with soldiers, officers, and medics treating the wounded. Nearly all the CPB’s troops were dark Wa tribesmen. Most of them were young, some hardly in their teens, and they giggled like schoolboys as I passed. The outcome of battle was of far less concern to them than the novelty of a tall, white foreigner in a bush hat armed with a camera.

  I looked over at some corpses laid out on the ground near a clump of trees. Some of the dead could hardly have been 17 or 18. A faint breeze stirred the green cloth of their baggy, Chinese army trousers, seeming only to emphasise how motionless the bodies lay. Many had been hit by bullets squarely on their foreheads where open red wounds gaped. The Burmese infantryman again emerged as a lethally good shot.

  I reflected sadly on my own youth and the chances I had had in life which had been denied these hill tribe lads. I doubted whether any of them had been to school or really knew—much less cared—anything about the ideology for which they had sacrificed their lives. It was as if Kyaw Nyunt could read my thoughts.

&nbs
p; “War is cruel.”

  We walked together in silence down the mountain to Mong Paw. Most civilians had taken to the bush when they had heard news of imminent airstrikes, and the village was all but deserted. But a few intrepid khao soi vendors were still behind their stalls in the market and we sat down and ordered a bowl each—along with a small bottle of rice liquor. We both needed a stiff drink.

  “All the people are looking at you,” Kyaw Nyunt grinned as he began to relax. “They wouldn’t believe me if I told them you’re a journalist.”

  “So what do they think I am?”

  “Well, they most probably think you’re a Soviet adviser. They know the relations between the CPB and China aren’t that good any more. So they’re probably betting you’re a Soviet adviser who’s come via Laos to direct this battle. Wait until the rumour spreads!” We both laughed.**

  Throughout the meal, the sound of artillery echoed and rolled off Hsi-Hsinwan. It did not die out until the late afternoon when we learnt the headquarters hill had finally been overrun.

  “It’s over now,” Kyaw Nyunt said as we strolled back along the dusty village road towards the camp in the old mission compound. I was not so sure. Reinforcements were undoubtedly on their way, and although the planes had failed to put in an appearance, the report indicating they had taken off would not have been sent without reason. I picked up a bottle of Chinese whisky from a shop on the way and we sat and shared it that night to a backdrop of renewed but sporadic gunfire in the distance. We were too tired even to bother finding out who was firing at whom or where.

  We had breakfast the following morning together with Kyi Myint, Ohn Kyi and some other officers who had just returned from the front.

  “Only 43 enemies escaped the bombardment of our People’s Army. And eleven of them were badly wounded. So we annihilated more than 50 reactionary mercenaries,” Ohn Kyi announced, shovelling rice into his mouth.

  “What about your own casualties?” I asked. A hasty exchange of glances.

  “Twelve comrades made the ultimate sacrifice,” said Ohn Kyi with a curt nod, as if to close the matter.

  There was no way I could crosscheck these claims, but I felt certain casualties had been high on both sides. I asked about the reinforcements from Mong Yu, Namhpakka and Kutkai. Kyi Myint and Ohn Kyi again exchanged glances.

  “Two battalions of enemy troops are already close to the headquarters hill and more are on their way.”

  “And the planes?”

  “Well, they didn’t come yesterday. Maybe today or tomorrow. The enemy’s going to launch a counteroffensive.”

  As a precautionary measure, I was shown after breakfast to an air raid shelter on the hillside just below the camp. It consisted of a large cave carved out of the damp clay, but appeared solid enough. Having deposited my notebooks and film inside, I asked Kyi Myint whether I could go and visit the captured positions on Hsi-Hsinwan. He agreed.

  “But only to Hill Two. Beyond that, we can’t guarantee your security. The enemy forces are closing in.”

  I put Hseng Noung’s cameras in my knapsack and set off for Hsi-Hsinwan together with Kyaw Nyunt and an escort of three Wa soldiers. An old Chinese truck was still plying between Mong Paw market and Panghsai. Kyaw Nyunt and I climbed into its cabin; the back was crammed with villagers. With dramatic gestures and by mimicking the sounds of rockets, they were refighting the battle they had heard on the previous day.

  A few kilometres outside Mong Paw, we spotted a group of CPB soldiers escorting a wounded man. He appeared almost mummy-like, his head and right hand swathed in bandages, and was staggering along the road, supporting himself with a staff.

  “A wounded government soldier!” exclaimed Kyaw Nyunt.

  There had been talk of one government soldier having been left behind by the forces that had retreated from the headquarters hill. The CPB had brought him back to their field hospital at the base camp where they had patched him up. Part of the communists’ philosophy in war, another basic Maoist precept, was never to kill prisoners, and to treat enemy wounded as they would their own casualties. The only gratuitous hardship inflicted on them would be political lectures given by rabid ideologues like Ohn Kyi.

  I asked if I could interview the wounded soldier. The answer was no.

  “He might be sent back soon. But if you want pictures, I can get out and talk to him while you take photos through the lorry window.”

  Kyaw Nyunt got out and with a notebook in hand, began to pretend to interrogate him.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sergeant San Aung.”

  “Number?”

  “289346.”

  I could see the man’s eyes were focused on my camera rather than his interrogator. He looked as if he had seen a ghost. Exactly what he would report when eventually he was released and sent back was anyone’s guess. But I was disappointed at not being able to interview him. I would at least have liked to tell him I had been impressed by the fighting spirit of his unit.

  We got down from the truck just below Hsi-Hsinwan and continued uphill on foot. The base camp was heaped with captured weapons: the standard G-2 and G-3 rifle of the Burmese Army, light artillery in the form of 75 mm recoilless rifles, a 90 mm US-made rocket launcher, heaps of mortar bombs, grenades, Claymore mines and rifle magazines. I snapped off a few frames before walking on, up to Hill One where young CPB soldiers were basking in the sun after the previous day’s fighting. The atmosphere was quiet but still tense, the calm after the fury of the storm.

  More troops joined us and we followed a winding trail which had been cleared by the victors through the tall elephant grass. The mountainside was covered in minefields and I was told to stick strictly to the newly made path. We struggled along in the mid-day heat for nearly an hour until we reached Hill Two.

  The position was one of the best-fortified I had ever seen, consisting of a complex of bunkers covered with logs and earth. Tunnels, barbed wire entanglements and trenches hedged with sharpened bamboo stakes encircled the hilltop. In the camp, blood-stained blankets littered the bamboo beds inside the bunkers. Outside was a small Buddhist altar, also made from bamboo, adorned with still fresh flowers and incense sticks. A few dozen Wa lads with automatic rifles lay around. There was no sign of action in the vicinity, but Kyaw Nyunt urged me to hurry up with my photography: government forces were advancing towards the northern foothills.

  We left the ridge in the afternoon and walked back to the camp near Mong Paw. Kyi Myint was studying captured documents when we arrived. My eyes fell on one of the maps which lay on the table. It showed Hsi-Hsinwan, the Burmese Army positions there, and—startlingly—arrows pointing downhill towards Nam Tao, Mong Paw and Panghsai.

  “Did they plan to capture this area?” I asked. My query was gently brushed aside. But I realised immediately that the timing of the attack on Hsi-Hsinwan had been no accident: it had been a question of who was going to strike first. I wondered whether the original government plan had been abandoned, or if the Army would now be more determined than ever to implement it. China’s position was, of course, crucial to the final outcome of the battle. Most of the ammunition I had seen being trucked up to Hsi-Hsinwan had been conspicuously new; there seemed to be no doubt the Chinese at least for the time being—and for obvious commercial reasons—supported the CPB’s efforts to secure the trade route to Panghsai.

  On the table was also a bundle of letters written to relatives and friends back in the soldiers’ home towns and found in the bunkers on Hsi-Hsinwan. The company positioned on the mountain would soon have been rotated out, another consideration in deciding when to launch the attack; the communists calculated that the knowledge they would soon be going home would render the garrison less vigilant than a newly arrived unit.

  Some CPB soldiers were very young.

  I asked Kyaw Nyunt to translate some of the letters. They made depressing reading. One was written to a young soldier by his girlfriend in Kalaw, a garrison town in southern Shan State whe
re his unit was based. “When you come back this time, we must get married,” wrote the girl. “My family is preparing for our wedding.” Whether this soldier had been among the survivors of the battle was impossible to say, but as the girl’s love letter had been left behind, I rather suspected he had been one of the casualties.

  Her reaction on learning her sweetheart had been blown to pieces by 120 mm mortars while defending a barren mountain in a remote patch of borderland I preferred not to dwell on. Officially, he would be a hero who had died defending the unity of his country. But he would go nameless and numberless, casualty figures being invariably understated so as not to alarm the public.

  The sound of heavy weapons fire woke us up at five the next morning. The counter-offensive had begun. And this time, aircraft were definitely on their way: four fighter-bombers from Meiktila Air Base. Kyi Myint was already directing troop movements over a walkie-talkie; and had ordered a jeep to pick up Kyaw Nyunt and me.

  “You’re leaving for Mong Ko today. The fighting’s going to be heavy.”

  He looked determined but less confident than the day before. Only Ohn Kyi was wearing his permanent grin and holding forth on the politics of the carnage.

  “They can never defeat us as long as we have the support of the masses. This is a people’s war,” he intoned. “Socialism and communism will emerge victorious at last. That’s the law of history. Nothing can reverse it.”

  CPB troops getting ready to attack Hsi-Hsinwan.

  For the time being, however, my best course of action was to move on to Mong Ko, the CPB’s regional headquarters close to the Chinese border, 38 kms to the northeast of Mong Paw. The jeep arrived shortly afterwards and the driver, a sturdy Kachin in a brown cardigan, drove at a high speed along the Mong Paw valley trailing a cloud of dust behind us. The road led uphill as we left the valley. It had rained during the night and the surface was slippery. The jeep skidded sideways on the slope, the engine snarling. In the rush to leave, the driver had forgotten to bring chains.