Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  Feng beamed at this description of himself. Bai looked at the ground for a moment, martialing his thoughts, then spoke. As he spoke he did not look at his two comrades but over their shoulders, as though he was addressing the outcrop of rock.

  ‘The whole world is interlocked. Let me begin with Europe. Our leader believes with great faith that England and France, seeing Japan’s aggression and fearing it threatens their own commercial and economic interests in China, will come to our aid. I’m afraid I see little chance of this. The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s thoughts are mainly dominated by his fear of Russian communism and he is thus likely to continue to appease the European fascists and influence the French prime minister to support him in this. He hopes that Hitler will turn east, as he has often sworn to do, and invade and destroy Soviet communism. Chamberlain has little interest in the Far East. The only other country with a large economic interest in China is the United States. Following the First World War its people are firmly isolationist in outlook and would show great hostility to starting a war in defence of China. And, of course, American industrialists are making large profits from selling oil and high-quality steel to Japan.

  ‘The only country we share a common geopolitical interest with is Russia. Russia has no interest in being invaded simultaneously from the west by European fascists and the east by Japanese fascists, both hungry for its raw materials. In the last two years there have been numerous aggressive attacks by Japanese troops across the border between Manchukuo and Russia. It is in Russia’s interest that we Chinese continue to fight Japan for as long as possible in order to absorb her military forces. Which is, of course, why the Soviet Union has for many months now been supplying us with advanced weaponry and pilots to fly our combat aircraft. We are profoundly grateful to them.

  ‘That is the past. What is the present situation? Japan as a nation is extremely short of raw materials to feed its growing population and industries. Its long-term aim is to invade Siberia to gain these raw materials in abundance. But they do not yet have the military strength to defeat Russia. So instead they invaded us because we have a certain amount of raw materials. They calculated, I believe, that if they invaded they would force us to surrender within three months. They have miscalculated. This war has already lasted six months. And, following the morale-boost of General Han’s execution, it is not likely to end anytime soon. What will happen as this war deepens? I believe the Japanese war machine will be sucked further and further into the interior of our country. The Japanese do not have a large population. We have a huge one. We have five times as many soldiers as they do – albeit poorly armed and poorly trained. In battles and skirmishes they only have to lose one soldier for every three soldiers we lose for them to run out of men far quicker than we do. As they are drawn further and further into our vast country, their supply lines will stretch more and more, and they will become increasingly vulnerable to counter-attack from local guerrillas and patriots. Like the Communists recently did when they trapped them in the Pinghsing Pass. Wiped them out. As all their high-technology weapons on which they rely get further and further from their maintenance and supply bases, the Japanese war machine will increasingly grind to a halt.

  ‘This is going to be a long and a terrible war. Of attrition, of slaughter, of massacre, of inhumanity. I know we all realize this. But what will be its outcome?

  ‘This is my calculation. Japan has started all these wars because it is desperate for raw materials. Bogged down in this hasty, unthought-out war in China, it is now even shorter of, more desperate for, these same raw materials. Where can they get them? There are only two sources. They could go north, to the Soviet Union, but the Russians are too strong for them. Which only leaves one alternative. The south. The oil fields of the Dutch East Indies, the rubber plantations of British Malaya, the rice fields of French Vietnam. I believe they will be forced to attack to the south. I doubt if those European powers have either the courage or the resources to defend their colonies. Appeasement is in their blood.’

  ‘So we’re screwed,’ stated Feng. ‘They’ll come at us from both ends.’

  ‘No,’ replied Bai decisively, and for once looked directly at his two companions. ‘In order to go south they will have to go through the Philippines. The American Philippines. The Europeans will not be interested in defending their colonies – they’re far too involved in what is happening in Europe – but the Americans will defend their colony. I am certain.’

  ‘So we will have the Russians and the Americans as our allies, the Japanese as our enemies?’

  ‘The European fascists will probably join with the Japanese,’ said Bai, ‘though that will be of no interest to us.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Of course, all this is contingent on General Li here winning the Battle of Taierzhuang.’

  Bai having finished his analysis, the three men moved away from the rock outcrop and over an open meadow. Each was followed by his own aide who had been noting down every word General Bai had spoken. They were in turn followed by a fourth aide who was noting every word spoken by everyone. This was for the benefit of Chiang Kai-shek, who wished to keep a very close eye on what all three of his generals were saying. The group approached a large table at which tea was being served and on which several maps had been laid out.

  General Li Zongren stopped at the table and Bai Chongxi and Feng Yuxiang stood one on each side of him. There was a large map which covered the province of Shandong in the north – including at the top the Yellow River and the city of Jinan – and stretching all the way south to the province of Jiangsu with Shanghai and Nanking at the very bottom of it. Taierzhuang and Xuzhou rested in about the centre of the map. From the top to the bottom of the map, from Jinan down to Nanking, ran the strategic Tianjin to Nanking railway line, with Taierzhuang at its very centre. Beside this map lay a smaller one of the countryside for fifty miles around Taierzhuang and then a smaller one of the city itself and its complex of streets.

  Li opened a fresh tin of Craven A’s and laid it on the table. He took one, lit it, drew deep and reassuringly from it, then started waving it at the large map on the table. He spoke in a sharp, emotional voice.

  ‘I expect the main Japanese attack to come down the railway line from Jinan, heading straight south to us here in Taierzhuang. I expect two simultaneous flanking attacks – one from the north-east coming down through Linyi, the second from the south, starting from Nanking and travelling north up the railway to Bengbu. I intend to halt these two pincer movements at Linyi and Bengbu. On no account must they be allowed to join up with the main Japanese attack, the Japanese 10th Division, coming south down the railway line. After delaying the 10th at Tengxian – let’s hope it raises their blood pressure – we will let the 10th, the 10th alone, through our preliminary defences so they can fall on our main force embedded here among the prepared rocks and fortresses of Taierzhuang. Then let them enter the city of Taierzhuang. It will be a horrible battle. Long and bloody and terrifying. Anyone deserting will be shot. And that includes my senior officers. I have told them this. They all know about the fate of Han Fuju.’

  ‘Do you believe you will win this battle?’ asked Bai Chongxi gently.

  Li thought. ‘Yes,’ he said, looking straight at Bai. ‘But it will be very close. The result might go down to the last five minutes. If we do not win, the gates to Wuhan, the gates to China, are open.’

  Again he fell into deep thought. Then he fumbled in his breast pocket and pulled out a small photo that he threw on the table. It was of a short unimpressive individual. He looked at it intently. The other two looked at it intently.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Feng.

  Li lit another cigarette. ‘Rensuke Isogai. Commander in Chief of the General Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army’s 10th Division. My opponent. The man climbing into his train and heading south. I have been studying him.’

  Li thought.

  ‘A horribly ambitious man. Of course he’s an emperor-worshi
pper. You don’t get anywhere in the Imperial Japanese Army without believing that Hirohito is God. But Rensuke Isogai is also a believer in that disgusting English faith – Social Darwinism. The science of racial superiority. Eugenics. The horror of believing all men are descended from apes and animals and that just as with animals, where it is natural for superior species to prey on inferior ones, so it is equally natural, moral even, for a strong race of men to treat all other races as inferior, to be exploited as animals and slaves, killing or sparing them as is convenient.

  ‘General Rensuke Isogai sees us Chinese as animals – to be disposed of like animals. His troops believe similarly. Seven years ago he and they were blooded in the butcheries of Manchuria. They have not stopped since.

  ‘You can of course excuse all this for military reasons. As General Bai just said, Japan has a very small population, so in fighting they must arm themselves with high-technology weapons – tanks, aircraft, poison gas – so that a few men can kill a lot of enemies. The Germans refer to this warfare as “blitzkrieg”. Using “blitzkrieg” tactics you can advance very fast, but then, because you have so few men, it is very difficult to hold the ground you have conquered. You need many troops to suppress a large population of armed civilians.

  ‘So you deliberately use the techniques of mass terror to panic the civilian population so everyone flees and chokes up the roads, disrupting your opponent’s counter-moves, while all his civilians run out of food and water and famines and diseases break out and millions of people die without you having to kill them. There is indeed some military logic to this. But I do not think, at bottom, that it is for military reasons that General Rensuke Isogai deploys such tactics. I think it is because, at bottom, he enjoys them. Enjoys the killing and the slaughter and the blood. And as such he is an inferior human being. He is, indeed, an animal. Far more an animal than all the Chinese animals he has so carelessly slaughtered. And he is even arrogant enough to believe he is superior to everyone in his own race, the Japanese – except of course his beloved emperor. Because at heart he is an intensely ambitious man. Aren’t you?’ said Li, leaning forwards and stubbing the photo with his forefinger. ‘You are so ambitious.’

  And with that Li relaxed and smiled. The other two generals were slightly puzzled at this sudden cheerfulness and peered down at the photograph to see if there was some clue they’d missed. Even the aides ruffled with curiosity.

  Li resumed. ‘Because it is through your ambition, your arrogance, that we will defeat you, isn’t it?’

  Li drew lovingly on his latest Craven A, waited a moment, then continued.

  ‘We will win because Rensuke needs so desperately to be the first to break through to Taierzhuang, the first one to win the race to Wuhan, the one to conquer China so he can present it personally to his beloved emperor. He will not wait for his flankers from Linyi and Bengbu to pin us down, surround us to ensure his victory. That would mean he’d have to share the glory. He will rush straight into Taierzhuang because he believes he and his troops are the masters of the master race. And in Taierzhuang we will grip hold of him. And our battle, among these rocks and ruins and tunnels and cellars and trenches, will be terrible. But we will grip him and grip him. And the more we grip that great charging beast the harder he will push in, because he believes he and his men are insuperable, and as we grip him ever harder and our pincer attacks from either flank are cutting off his supply lines and cutting off his escape route and as his troops are dying all around him in terrible, shameful numbers, then perhaps even he will start to think that maybe he should retreat and regroup. But then he of little intelligence but great ambition will think he cannot give up his battle, he cannot retreat, because for a Japanese general to retreat in the face of Darwinian apes and Chinamen is the ultimate shame and can only lead to his disgrace before the entire Japanese Army and an order to commit hara-kiri. So he will press on against all odds and all hopes and be ground and chewed between these great stone jaws of black granite until he dies.’ Li paused. ‘Or so I hope. It is our best chance.’

  ‘It is our only chance,’ said Feng emphatically.

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Bai.

  Tea was served. Li continued to nervously look at his maps. Bai consulted quietly with his aide. Chiang Kai-shek’s aide tried to overhear what they were mumbling. Feng beamed tremendously at all about him and congratulated the waiters on the quality of their tea.

  His consultation over, Bai clapped his hands and the meeting reconvened.

  ‘Friends,’ said Feng, ‘thank you so much for inviting me to this extremely instructive meeting. I feel deeply honoured to be here. And I feel heartened by what I have heard. Unfortunately, as you both know, our esteemed leader has ruled that, unlike you, I, wicked socialist that I am, am not to be allowed anywhere near a battlefield. So, while you fight for the very survival of our country, the supreme battle, I must be safely in Wuhan organizing our poor homeless starving people, trying to educate them to fight the Japanese. But be sure, all through this terrible conflict, my heart and my thoughts will be entirely with you.

  ‘Now, I’ve been allowed here for today only to advise you on urban warfare, close-quarter and night-time fighting. It’s very difficult for an under-armed, non-mechanized, poorly organized army such as ours to fight the highly developed weapons and technologies of the Japanese. No one doubts the courage and endurance of our troops. But ageing rifles cannot fight armoured tanks, straw hats are no defence against dive bombers, sandals cannot match boots. What defence is a handkerchief against poison gas? How do we fight back? Bring these bastards to their knees?

  ‘We don’t do it the way we’ve been doing it so far. Our great massed armies standing in ranks awaiting the enemy as Kutuzov awaited Napoleon at Borodino. All they have had to do is soften us up with their long-range artillery and poison gas then bomb us with their dive bombers and finally send their tanks and shock troops hurtling through our shattered, bewildered ranks. Time after time after time they’ve done that.

  ‘A modern war, a blitzkrieg war, is always fought at a distance. Our troops are defeated before their troops have even arrived on the scene. They rely on speed and shock. We have to nullify both their speed and their shock. Instead of allowing them to defeat us from a distance, we have to at all times be close up to them, as close as possible, to give them no time to build momentum or shock. We must embrace them.

  ‘And that, I see, is exactly what you are preparing in Taierzhuang. As we drove here I saw the trenches being dug, tunnels excavated, each building being fortified, all the tunnels and trenches linking up every building so that you can retreat with speed as the enemy advances and then emerge behind the enemy so he is surrounded. Tanks hate rubble – it breaks their tracks. The more rubble the better. Blow things up. Make use of whatever sewers there are. Take the wooden doors from houses and place them over the top of the trenches so the enemy can’t see you moving and you can observe him just by lifting up the door an inch. Tank drivers will not see them and will drive over them –and as they do so, blow them up from underneath. All the time be close to your enemy. Hug him as a friend. If you are within twenty feet of the Japanese then General Rensuke Isogai will not dare bomb you or shell you or gas you because he’ll fear he’ll hit his own troops as often as he’ll hit yours. He cannot afford to lose as many men as we do. Terrible as that calculation is.

  ‘And cuddling close to your enemy, twenty feet between trenches if you can, always remind him of how close you are, of how much you are thinking of him. Sing him merry, happy songs, repeatedly, get a wind-up gramophone and play him endless dance hall numbers, especially at night when he’s trying to sleep. Croon along with them. If you have a Japanese speaker listen in on their conversations, then commiserate with them about what a bastard their sergeant is and how they haven’t had any food for four days. Eat away at their morale, eat away at their discipline.

  ‘With trenches so close your most effective weapon is the hand grenade. Wait til you hear a lot of voi
ces, then throw several. A good sniper can terrify a whole company of troops. Our troops are already good at hand-to-hand fighting, their natural courage shines through. The Japanese dislike it, they have been trained to fight from a distance. In hand-to-hand trench fighting bayonets are not much use. You need a lot of space to wield them in and you have to pull them back before you can thrust again. I taught my troops how to use broad-bladed sabres. One swing to divert his bayonet thrust, the back swing through his face and neck. And don’t forget the hilt. Crown him with it if he’s being a nuisance. Or if you’re not trained in broad-bladed sabres a sharpened shovel or entrenching tool is just as good. Gouge out an enemy’s guts with one dig, then smash the next man’s brains out with the next. They become like extensions of your arms. In night fighting you sense your opponent rather than see him.’

  The aides were writing fast and wincing occasionally at this information.

  Feng stopped and looked around him.

  ‘I could go on and on with this stuff, but it’s all largely common sense. Our men will work it out for themselves pretty soon. Just look at what they achieved at the Sihang Warehouse in Shanghai – a few men staving off wave after wave of Japanese for weeks. But if they know this stuff before they go in it will save some of them.’

  Feng suddenly looked a bit downcast, but then cheered up.