Mei-ling gave no hint of her reaction to this suggestion but she followed her brother to the doorway,--looking earnestly into his face. “Please be careful tonight, Chiao.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll meet again soon — on the west bank of the Hsiang!”
Chiao turned to pull the sacking aside but Mei-ling plucked suddenly at his sleeve.
“Chiao, I’ve just remembered something strange. Today on the march, among the prisoners, I think I saw somebody we know. .
Her brother, anxious to be gone, frowned impatiently. “Who was it?”
“Do you remember the English missionary we met on the ship coming home? The one who led the hymn singing during the typhoon?”
Chiao’s face clouded with the effort of remembering; then he nodded quickly, without interest. “Yes, I think so.”
“He’s one of the prisoners. I wasn’t certain at first. . . . He was covered in mud like all the other poor devils. And he has a beard now.”
“How can you be sure it was the missionary, then?”
“As I rode past I heard him call my name.”
“Why are you thinking about an English prisoner at such a time as this?” asked Chiao.
Mai-ling dropped her eyes as if she suddenly realized she had spoken without thought. “He looked half-dead. . . his wrists were bound behind his back. His face was twisted as though he were in great pain . .
Chiao smiled. “Perhaps you should tell our foreign expert. He might be interested to know he’s not the only ‘foreign devil’ marching with us after all.”
The Red Army captain turned toward the doorway again only to find himself confronted by a tall, broad-chested European dressed in a crumpled gray uniform. Tufts of blond hair were visible beneath his red-starred cap and his blue eyes, surveying the room warily, shifted back and forth from Chiao to his sister.
“My Chinese is very poor,” said the European, speaking English with a heavy German accent, “but I swear I heard you mention the ‘foreign expert.’ What is it he should know about?”
Mei-ling turned away, saying nothing, but Chiao grinned cordially and replied in English. “My sister has just told me she thinks there might be an English missionary among the prisoners — so perhaps, Comrade Braun, you’re not the only European among a hundred thousand Chinese after all.”
Otto Braun looked hard at Chiao, searching his face for any hidden meaning in his words, then nodded abstractedly. “I think I may have seen the prisoner you speak of this afternoon. Good night, Comrade Chiao.
Braun pointedly held the doorway sacking aside so that the Red Army captain could leave, and he and Mei-ling watched as Chiao strode to his horse, which was tied to a nearby tree. Along both edges of the street of the burned-out village, endless lines of mules were being tethered beside tumbled heaps of boxes and bales which the muleteers were unloading. The occasional artillery flashes emanating from the mountaintop batteries illuminated growing heaps of sewing machines, arsenal hardware, mint equipment, printing presses, document boxes, and baskets of silver dollars and bank notes which lay scattered in profusion along the muddy gutters. Improvised oil lamps burned in all the blitzed cottages above hunched groups of army commanders and civilian cadres; orderlies dashed back and forth between them and a constant stream of messengers galloped in and out of the street on lathered ponies, carrying messages to and from the battlefronts.
The surge of activity in the ruined street where the General Headquarters column had chosen to billet itself had a desperate, frenzied air, and Mei-ling and the German stood momentarily fascinated in the doorway, watching Chiao spur his horse away into the seething crowd. When at last the night swallowed him up, the German let the sacking fall back into place with an exasperated sigh. He lifted one hand wearily as if to touch Mei-ling’s cheek but at that moment the baby awoke, coughing once more, and she turned away from him without a word and hurried back to the bed.
21
In a wooded hollow close to the sandy shore of the Hsiang River, Captain Lu Chiao strode swiftly back and forth among his squads of raft makers, carrying a shaded electric flashlight. The rising wind was whipping the surface of the rushing river into choppy waves and squalls of rain were blowing in among the trees; drenching the engineer companies and two battalions of the Red Cadres Regiment lying in hiding in an adjoining valley. Shaded hurricane lamps set in shallow holes in the ground cast a feeble circle of light around each working group and Chiao had to pick his way carefully among piles of bamboo, ropes, doors, and roof beams that had been dragged from cottages in the deserted villages along the riverbank.
By each squad Chiao stopped and shone his flashlight on the raft the troops had made, squatting on his haunches to question the squad leader and check that the three tiers of bamboo were being correctly interlaced and woven together to make them strong enough to withstand direct hits from the enemy artillery. Small, round boulders gathered from the shore were being lashed to anchoring cables to provide moorings for each raft, and men designated as oarsmen were cutting and shaping the longest, sturdiest bamboos so that they would be able to pole the sections of the floating pontoon into position.
The moonless night was black overhead, but to the east, north, and south along the riverbank there was a faint orange glow in the sky and the continuous rattle and rumble of mortar and machine- gun fire from all directions confirmed that the battles on three fronts were moving closer as midnight neared. Every few minutes the darkness above the hollow was illuminated by a star-burst of light from a chandelier flare fired across the river by one of the Kuomintang batteries dug in on a high bluff. A salvo of enemy shells inevitably followed, to be answered immediately by the Red Army guns; during each exchange the raft makers hugged the ground as the blast washed over them and tall plumes of water rose high above the river.
Chiao counted off the seconds between each star-shell, calculating how much time he might have to get the first rafts into the water to begin the hazardous two-hundred-yard crossing. ‘The flares had been bursting at three- to four-minute intervals since dusk and the frequency showed little sign of varying. He had decided to send two platoons of the First Special Course Battalion assault force across the river on the first dozen pontoon sections to set up a small beachhead at the foot of the steep cliff that rose opposite them. These elite groups of specially trained troops, armed with stick grenades, broadswords, and light machine guns, would try to provide some covering fire for the engineers as they began anchoring and building out sections of the bridge from the far bank. At the same time a similar operation would begin on the eastern shore so that the bridge could be constructed rapidly with its two ends eventually joining up in mid-river.
Thirty or forty completed rafts had already been moved in readiness to the mouth of the wooded hollow close to the beach and as the incandescence of another flare faded, plunging the river and the woods into darkness, Chiao decided on a sudden instinct that the time was ripe. Running forward, he rapped out orders to the vanguard raft parties and watched with bated breath as a dozen groups scurried forward, lugging the heavy bamboo caissons and their stone anchors across the dark sands of the flat beach. He also dispatched one of his messenger orderlies to send radio alerts to all mortar and heavy machine-gun units along the eastern shore to ensure that they would be ready to provide immediate covering fire. After he had done this, he stood staring up into the rain-swept darkness, counting the seconds quietly inside his head, waiting for the next flare to burst.
Nearly four minutes passed, and when the next shell bathed the river in its luminous glare, the twelve assault rafts were revealed twisting and spinning slowly in the strong, choppy currents just beyond midstream. Swollen by the heavy rain funneling down from the mountains, the engorged river was flowing at great speed, and some of the Special Course Battalion troops had slipped into the water and were swimming hard, helping the frantically poling engineers to propel the pontoon sections across the deepest parts of the river. Within seconds the Kuomintang guns open
ed up, raising plumes of spray all around the rafts, but the pole men and the swimmers kept them moving smoothly toward the far bank. Almost at once a direct hit lifted one raft high out of the water, tipping its screaming occupants into the fast-flowing river, and Chiao could only watch helplessly from the wooded hollow as the empty bridge section careered rapidly away downstream to be swallowed up in the rainy darkness.
In spite of the daunting odds, the little task force forged on under the withering bombardment, the assault troops courageously returning fire with their light machine guns from crouched positions on the exposed pontoons. They made slow headway and the Kuomintang barrage took a growing toll of casualties among both engineers and assault troops, toppling them one by one into the swollen river or crumpling them in lifeless heaps on the pontoons themselves. Another raft was swept away downstream when its pole man was killed, but to-Chiao’s great relief ten of the makeshift bamboo craft succeeded in grounding under the cliff on the far shore and the handful of surviving assault cadres leapt ashore to begin fortifying their precarious foothold.
The Red Army artillery batteries had begun to roar in reply the moment the first flare-shell burst and the earsplitting din of the artillery duel quickly filled the night. Machine-gun tracers crisscrossed in the weeping sky above the river, tall geysers of shell-burst flame gushed from the hills, and in mud-filled trenches on both banks fearful men of the Kuomintang and the Red Army alike crouched low, clutching their rifles as searing shards of metal smashed and maimed the bodies of comrades all around them.
On the near shore, the Red Army engineers quickly manhandled twenty or thirty more rafts into the river: although these also attracted a new hail of fire, the engineers immediately began the hazardous task of lashing them together and ‘within minutes a short finger of latticed bamboo jutted into the flood, pointing the way toward the Kuomintang bank. A pair of supply sampans piled high with ropes and timbers was launched and maneuvered alongside the floating bamboo caissons — but these craft, manned by Chiao’s deputy commanders, quickly became prime targets for the Kuomintang gunners. When one exploded in flames, Chiao dashed out from the cover of the wood and waded into the swirling water to supervise the bridge construction himself.
[-us engineers were working in the water stripped to the waist, their half-naked bodies glowing orange in the glare of the shell bursts, and Chiao wrenched off his own tunic to wade and swim from group to group. Ignoring the gunfire kicking up the water around the floating sections, he helped the men fix two sleepers between each triple— tiered bamboo raft and made sure that they lashed three or four crossbeams to them in every case, in accordance with his design. On top of these sturdy joists he ordered the engineers to spread the cottage doors, which were latticed with thin wooden slats. Some of the completed sections were repeatedly struck by artillery fire, but although they dipped and bucked in the water under the impact of the shells, Chiao was relieved to see that the interleaved bamboo structures always righted themselves and floated again in spite of being holed.
He had calculated that about one hundred sections would be required to bridge the river and by one o’clock in the morning, sixty or so were in place. Two further groups of Special Course Battalion troops succeeded in poling through the waves of the raging river under heavy fire to reinforce the tiny bridgehead, and a narrow bamboo peninsula of thirty or more pontoons expanded slowly from the far bank toward midstream. By two o’clock the gap between the converging sections had narrowed to twenty yards or so and Chiao allowed himself to hope that the floating bridge would soon open the way for a fully-fledged infantry assault on the Kuomintang shore.
But in the middle of the river the swirling current flowed most swiftly, and two more rafts were swept away downstream before they could be anchored. Watching from the shore, where he had returned to hasten the construction of reserve rafts, Chiao saw a third pontoon spinning dangerously out of control and suddenly he realized that the whole of the delicate bamboo structure jigging on the angry surface of the river was at risk. His force of nearly five hundred engineers was already severely depleted: at the outset he had divided the men into separate detachments responsible for supply, raft making, bridge construction, and anchoring. He had created rescue and reserve sections and had watched with growing dismay as his rescuers carried dead and wounded comrades away from the riverside on stretchers made from doors. Barely half a dozen men remained in reserve and most of the bridge-building materials were exhausted. There had been little letup in the artillery bombardment and he could tell that the strain of working under fire for so long was beginning to affect the surviving engineers.
As he watched, one of the engineers detached himself from the crowd of troops thronging the unfinished bridge and raced back along the bucking pontoons toward him. When he halted, panting, in front of Chiao, the young peasant soldier, who had been a boatman before he joined the Red Army, was pale with anxiety.
“The stone anchors won’t grip in midstream, Comrade Commander! The current is too strong and they’re rolling along the bottom. None of the central pontoons will hold out there.”
Chiao absorbed the information in silence, staring desperately toward the tantalizing gap that remained between the two arms of the floating bridge. In his ears the sounds of fighting all around the Red Army perimeter seemed to be growing louder by the minute, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a mounted messenger galloping full pelt along the riverbank from the direction of the General Headquarters.
“Weave two dozen baskets out of bamboo-strips-,”ordered-Chiao calmly. “And fill them with smaller stones from the beach. Push three sharpened pine stakes through each basket so they will stick in the riverbed. And hurry.”
As the soldier ran off to carry out the orders, the General Headquarters messenger jumped from his horse and thrust a folded sheet of paper into Chiao’s hands. When he opened. it he saw by the beam of his flashlight that it bore the distinctive circular red stamp of the Revolutionary Military Commission. Above the signature of its chairman there were two brief lines of handwritten characters. The message read: “The Fifth and Ninth Corps must retreat soon or face wholesale slaughter. The bridge across the river has to be completed and ready for use within half an hour at all costs!”
The heavy rain began to blur the characters even before Chiao had finished reading the message. Returning it to the hands of the messenger, Chiao spoke slowly and clearly to make himself understood above the roar of the artillery. “Tell the leading comrades of the Revolutionary Military Commission that the floating bridge will be ready on time. They should begin moving the vanguard regiments toward the riverbank at once!”
The messenger nodded emphatically, sprang back into his saddle, and galloped off in the direction from which he had come. A moment after the horse and rider had disappeared into the rain, a Kuomintang shell scored a direct hit on the last remaining supply sampan, which was maneuvering between the two unfinished ends of the bridge. The craft was transformed instantly into a blazing pyre, bathing the river in its glare, and as the sampan drifted swiftly away downstream, the gap between the two heaving chains of unconnected pontoons seemed to yawn wider than before.
22
Crouching on the wildly seesawing end caisson at the head of the eastern span, Chiao watched anxiously as two new bamboo sections were poled toward the black stretch of swirling water that still separated the two outstretched arms of the bridge. Each bucking raft was crewed by a pole man and three other engineers, and the stone-filled baskets of woven bamboo that had beer quickly made on Chiao’s orders lay at their feet, ready to be thrown into the water the moment the caissons were in place. Chiao was holding his right hand aloft, restraining his men until the right moment, and the engineers responsible for the improvised anchors watched closely for his signal.
The current tugged and snatched at the rafts, twisting and spinning them in circles as they edged into the breach between the bridge ends, but Chiao controlled them without panic, directing a co
nstant flow of calm orders to the men manning the poles. When the sections were a few yards short of their goals, he pulled down his arm abruptly and the engineers heaved the basket anchors into the swirling waters. Chiao held his breath while their ropes snaked swiftly over the sides. Then they snapped taut as the pinewood spikes jutting through the baskets dug into the sandy riverbed and the pontoons swung obediently into line. Gangs of waiting engineers carrying doors, sleepers, and crossbeams swarmed forward at once and began working feverishly to link up the new sections.
Three more rafts began to advance toward the linked pontoons and Chiao moved to a new position to direct them. The enemy artillery barrage that had waxed and waned during the past four or five hours intensified again suddenly, and long bursts of heavy machine- gun fire raked the water. Crouching lower, Chiao glanced at his watch with the aid of his flashlight and saw that it was almost a quarter to three. Little more than fifteen minutes remained before the deadline set by the Military Commission ran out, and five further pontoons were still needed to complete the bridge. The rafts lay ready on the beach and Chiao wondered why the group of engineers manning them had not yet launched the sections onto the river.
Straining his eyes, he peered beyond the rafts into the rain-lashed darkness that cloaked the eastern shore, trying to calculate the likely line of march of the approaching Red Army divisions. To his surprise he was able to see several glittering necklets of fast-moving light shimmering through the rain: spread across the face of the mountains that rose black and invisible above the river plain, the desperately outnumbered troops were obviously throwing caution to the winds. Despite the danger from the enemy artillery toward which they were advancing, whole regiments were holding blazing torches aloft to light their way, sacrificing the advantage of concealment to their urgent need for all-out speed.
Anthony Grey Page 23
