The Long March

She must have been overjoyed to be one of only fifteen girls chosen out of the 100 at the hospital, and of thousands more who never got that far.

‘Why so few women? Why me? I have asked that question millions of times,’ Wang said. I waited for her to answer herself.

‘Perhaps they thought we would be a burden. But I was healthy and strong,’ she finally said, though still uncertainly. The truth may be different. All the top leaders of the Party and the Army had their wives with them on the Long March. They wanted an equal number of other women to come along. Wang was a Party member; she had always delivered whatever was expected of her, and more; and she was known for firing two pistols simultaneously, hitting the bull's-eye with both. What she did not know at the time was that the Red Army was about to abandon Jiangxi and set up a new base elsewhere.

At 5 o'clock sharp on the afternoon of 16 October, the bugle sounded, as the sky turned pink in the setting sun. Wang marched out of Ruijin with the General Health Unit. Now it was clear: the Central Column was essentially the government on the move, more than 10,000 people, including many Party officials from all levels of the Jiangxi Soviet administration. She wore the dark blue jacket she had received that day, with matching trousers tucked inside her socks, and a pair of new sandals. The pack on her back held a light quilt, one more pair of sandals, seven kilos of grain, and an enamel washbasin dangling on a strap. A hat made of double-layered bamboo covered the pack and would be useful in the autumn rain. Now she felt like a real soldier, ready for battle, except that she had no rifle; but there were six stretchers in her care – the 1st Army insisted that all injured officers above brigadier level be taken on the March. She had seen many battles, but this was something different. Taking the wounded to the front? She knew not to ask too many questions.

TWO Turtle-shell Power

SOLDIER HUANG was adding frantically to the defences of his foxhole – putting stones on the two layers of logs, and more pine branches on the stones. Everything was wet, the trees were dripping, and the mud stuck to his shoes. As he looked out nervously, he could see one of the Nationalist blockhouses, or ‘turtle-shells’ as they called them, 600 metres away. It was a solid brick building like a round granary with gun slits, stronger-looking than anything he had seen in the villages. They had been preparing themselves for a week and he wondered when the fighting would start. But he did not want to dwell on it, so he tried humming one of the songs he had learned in the last few days:

Comrades! Ready with your guns!

Charge with one heart,

Struggle and fight to kill!

Comrades! Fight for freedom!

Fight for the Soviets!

He struggled to remember the next line. A faint light on the horizon was visible through the rain, which had been falling steadily ever since they had reached the front. As dawn broke, he could hear birds singing. Suddenly, they went quiet and a heavy growling noise took over. He leapt into his foxhole. A few seconds later the sky was black with planes, like huge flocks of crows, and the crump of bombing began. The din became deafening. One bomb dropped close by and his foxhole collapsed, leaving just his head free. He dug himself out, and glanced round: two-thirds of the foxholes his company had built were flattened, and the trench was destroyed.

The captain ordered the men to take position. Huang put his rifle down and lay next to it in the wet soil of what was left of the trench. Looking to left and right, he could see quite a few men missing – the bombing had taken its toll. And then the artillery began. The ground shook and flowers of earth blossomed and fell on him, almost burying him. Within ten minutes a quarter of the company was dead or wounded.

When the shelling stopped, Soldier Huang was still kneeling on the sodden ground. A man rushed to pull him up, shouting that the infantry would soon advance on them. He only had five bullets. The captain shouted, ‘Don't fire until they are three metres away.’ Huang could see their white cap badges and the sun flashing on their weapons. They fired and he missed his target. A few fell, but within seconds the enemy was on them.

It was bayonet to bayonet, kill or be killed. He accounted for two of them. He was barely thinking, too numb even to feel fear, and screaming like a madman to release the panic bottled up in his chest. Before long, the Nationalists retreated, and the captain ordered his men to do likewise. As they staggered away, their feet fighting with the clay earth, the shelling began again. This was the daily pattern.

At dusk, everything fell quiet. There were piles of bodies within 70 metres of their trench, enough to form a human barricade. He shuddered to see an officer walking around, finishing off those who were still groaning from their wounds. He was told it was to stop them from surrendering and giving information to the enemy. Once they had buried the dead, they gathered around the mess-tent. He had little appetite although he had eaten nothing the whole day. The cook had prepared food for over 100 but there were only thirty left in his company. After the meal, they retreated five kilometres in the dark, to dig another trench. This was Soldier Huang's first battle and he was only 14. The Guangchang battle in April 1934 lasted eighteen days and the Red Army lost 6,000 men, with 20,000 wounded. It was the heaviest blow the Red Army had suffered up till then, and it was the turning point in Chiang's campaign.

I found Huang through the pensioners' office of the Ruijin county government, which, in the Communist tradition, had excellent records of the Long March survivors and anyone they wanted to keep tabs on. ‘I'm not sure how much he can tell you,’ the clerk said slowly after he had finished the newspaper he was reading. ‘He is only a peasant. You should really talk to old Wu. He used to be the Prime Minister's bodyguard. He knows things, but he is in hospital. Last year we still had a dozen. Now there are only eight left.’ Two lived in the mountains with the nearest road five miles away, three were in hospital, and one was away visiting relatives. ‘Why don't you start with old Huang? If he is no use, come back to me.’

I should have felt discouraged but I did not. I knew what he thought: it was only worth talking to the heroes and the big decision-makers; but their stories are already in our history books, told and retold until they have become symbols, the eternal refrain. Perhaps for him, Huang was not enough of a committed revolutionary, but his ordinary life as a foot soldier on the March was just what I was missing. With luck it would tell me the unadorned truth about what the rank and file really experienced.

I took a rickshaw – there were no taxis – and set off for Huang's village on the outskirts of Ruijin. We went past the farmers’ market, through the houses of the old quarter with their tiled roofs and curling eaves, and over the sandstone bridge across the Mian River, swathed in mist. There was a grace and tranquillity to the scene. Suddenly we turned a corner and the illusion was dispelled – we were in a huge square of incongruous pink concrete houses and shops, with a fountain in the middle – a giant steel ball on a tower. The rickshaw driver turned proudly towards me, ‘This is our new town centre. Our Party secretary got a promotion for building it.’

I was relieved to leave the theme-park square behind and go back to the green countryside with its endless paddy-fields. It was next to one of them that I found Huang's village. All its 1,000 people shared the name of Huang, and the clan's ancestor shrine stood prominently in the middle. I was directed to find him there, listening with a huge crowd, not to the village head relaying the latest Party instructions, but to an eager salesman preaching the benefits of Heart K, which was supposed to give you more blood. Huang was a convert, taking two ampoules every day. ‘I want to live as long as possible,’ he told me, waving the small box of magic potions he had just bought. He did not look as though he needed them. He was short, hard and lean, with a piercing gaze. He walked upright, faster than I could easily follow. On the way to his house, he introduced me to his cousins, nieces, nephews, grand-nephews, great-grand-nieces, three brothers and two sisters-in-law. It was still a closely knit clan.

Huang's house was in the middle of an open courtyard, with his eldest son occupying the house in the front, his youngest brother at the back, and his two nephews from his third brother on the left and right. The house was bare apart from a bed with a mosquito net, a table with a small black-and-white TV, a few benches, and the stove. He had few visitors and spent his day listening to local operas. ‘I can't see properly because of the snow-blindness I suffered on the Long March,’ he explained as he turned on the set. ‘Her voice is so sweet. But is the actress as ugly as my wife said?’ he asked, with a mischievous smile. His wife was right: she was so ugly I was glad he could not see her properly.

‘I'll keep the treat to myself then,’ Huang said with a good laugh, and switched off the TV. He suggested we sit outside instead to enjoy the autumn sun. He handed me a stool, and a sweet, while popping one in his toothless mouth. ‘I cannot complain, really. This is a good life,’ he said, sucking on the sweet noisily. Looking at Huang, I thought of the Chinese saying: ‘A wife, children, a patch of land and a warm bed make a happy peasant.’ Huang seemed to be its living proof, but the pensioners’ office had told me he joined the Red Army when he was only 14. He must have been very enthusiastic.

‘They kidnapped me,’ he said, raising his voice.

‘Kidnapped?’ It was the first time I had heard the word in this connection.

‘Thunder will strike me if I tell you one false word,’ Huang said. ‘At first they only wanted the strong and handsome ones. The Red Army deserved the best. Then they took the old, the sick, and even a couple of opium addicts. And then it was children. The Party secretary in our village forced everyone with a dick to sign up, whether they were 15 or 50. The Nationalists did not force children to join, but the Red Army did.’ Huang shook his head.

He was the oldest of five boys and two girls. He was 14 in 1934, three years short of the minimum age for enlisting. A woman activist visited his family every day, working on her mother. ‘My boys still wet their beds, and they're shorter than a rifle. How can they fight a war?’ his mother pleaded. ‘Oh, my sister, don't worry. They can be orderlies, or learn the bugle. There are plenty of things to do in the army. They get fed, and clothed too. It takes the burden off you.’

His mother was not convinced – so many men had gone to the front and never come back. And as the Chinese say, a good man is not destined for the army, just like good iron is not for nails. She sent Huang to hide in the mountains with his uncle and twenty other men from the village, but three days later she called him back. The village had a quota of 300 recruits, and the Party secretary would be thrown in jail if he could not meet his target. He had arrested Huang's father and would not release him until either he signed up, or one of his sons did. After a sleepless night, Huang's mother decided to opt for her eldest son – the family had so many mouths to feed and could not do without the father. She packed his favourite rice cakes with ham and a padded jacket that belonged to his father. ‘Take good care of yourself. Quick like a rat and alert like a fox,’ were her last words to Huang.

He had only a week's training, on a winnowing ground. He practised shooting with a stick – every single rifle was needed for the front. Holding the wooden stick, the instructor told them to aim a bit above the target, and he could not understand why. ‘Think of your pee. It's the same idea.’ He got it, but still wasted three of his five precious bullets in the first battle. And he nearly killed himself when he pulled the pin out of his grenade, and stood there watching it fizz as if it were a firecracker. Luckily, the man standing next to him saw it, grabbed it from his hand and threw it out of the trench. It exploded seconds later.

Huang was lucky to survive his first battle. The lack of training accounted for up to 50% of the casualties suffered by the Red Army. The problem was so serious that Liu Buocheng, the Chief of Staff of the Red Army and the Commandant of its academy, felt compelled to address it in a series of articles in Revolution and War. An orderly was sent from his academy to execute a prisoner, but he misfired and shot himself. ‘As a veteran soldier, he was unable to fire accurately at a tied-up enemy! … In battle the White soldiers suffer fewer casualties than the Red Army. Why? Maybe we have braved more enemy fire, but we are also to blame: many of our soldiers do not know how to shoot accurately or use a bayonet.’1

If he had to fight, Huang wished he had more bullets. It would give him a better chance of coming through. He had only five for each assault, with three grenades. The bullets were produced in the Red Army's own workshop in a disused temple. Local craftsmen and a few engineers captured from the Nationalists recycled used shells or melted down old copper coins and wire, moulded them into shape, filed them down by hand, and then filled the cartridge with home-made explosives. Huang had trouble loading them into his rifle; when he managed to pull the trigger, it took a minute for them to explode, and even then they did not go far. Often they just tumbled out of the barrel and landed at his feet. Liu Shaoqi, the Commissar of the 3rd Corps and later President of China, called on the arsenal to do a better job. ‘The bullets were so useless. Over 30,000 of them were duds. The rifles were repaired but they went wrong again after firing a single shot.’2

Huang could also have done with a better rifle, although he knew many soldiers did not even have one or, worse, a whole platoon shared one. His was a locally made hunting gun, quite temperamental. The trigger got stuck so often that he used the bayonet more. Still, it was dearer than his life, at least in the eyes of his captain. One night they were retreating in a downpour. He slipped and fell into a puddle. Hearing the splash, the captain immediately asked, ‘Is your rifle OK?’ Huang felt really angry. Was the rifle more important than his life? He wanted to smash it, but he knew he would be court-martialled if he did.

He kept asking his captain when he could get a proper rifle. ‘Next time we have a victory,’ he said, ‘you grab whatever you like. That is how we always did it before. You know what we call Chiang Kaishek? Our head of supply.’ The captain began to reminisce about the old days. He remembered what Mao had said right before Chiang's First Campaign: ‘Comrades! With enemy guns we will arm ourselves. With captured enemy artillery we will defend the Soviets! We will destroy them with their own weapons, and if they will only keep up the war against us long enough, we will build up an army of a million workers and peasants! We will strip them of their last rifle, their last bullet.’3

The Red Army lured Chiang's troops deep into their base, where the villagers had been evacuated with all their belongings. ‘We needed porters, but none was available; we searched for guides, but none could be found; we sent our own scouts, but they could collect no information. We were groping in the dark.’4 Such was the despair of one Nationalist general in the campaign. Chiang's front-line commander, General Zhang Huizang, was keen to prove himself and pushed the furthest, cutting himself off from the flank divisions. He was ambushed by the Red Army on New Year's Eve; he and 15,000 of his men were captured, and the spoils were enormous: 12,000 rifles, light and heavy machine guns, trench mortars, field telephones, a radio set with its operators, and sacks of rice, flour, ham and bacon, as well as the funds Zhang carried for the entire campaign. There was enough medicine for the Red Army hospital for months. The spoils were carried back to the Red Army bases by horses and seven camels, also taken from the Nationalists. Three weeks later Chiang called off the First Campaign.

The Red Army continued to supply itself with the most up-to-date weapons from Chiang's defeats – 20,000 rifles in the Second Campaign; and more equipment of every kind in the Third and Fourth. In 1933 and 1934 alone, Chiang spent nearly 60 million silver dollars importing state-of-the-art rifles, artillery and planes from America and Europe, but most of these ended up in the hands of the Communists.

All the stories of success in previous campaigns were beginning to trouble Huang, as they had been stuck in trenches for weeks, with bombs falling, shells whistling overhead and bodies piling up. He wondered whether the captain made them up to get rid of the gloom, or they were fighting a new enemy altogether. The Nationalists were just like turtles: they put their heads out of their blockhouses to see if they were safe; as soon as they sensed danger, they retreated. Even when they were under attack, they stayed put and waited for reinforcements.

The captain said these were Chiang's new tactics. ‘He has learned his lesson. Instead of chasing us and falling into our traps, he is trapping us. Think of a spider's web. He is trying to catch us with this net of turtle-shells, but we'll smash them and break through.’ Huang did not think this could be done. ‘We were ordered to launch short, swift attacks on the blockhouses as soon as they were put up.’ He gesticulated with both arms as if he were pointing at his target. ‘They were near, only a few hundred metres. I could even hear the men talking. But every time we attacked, the artillery fire from the turtle-shells drove us back, leaving the fields strewn with bodies. Our covering fire was too feeble.’

The blockhouse strategy was the key. ‘The only task for troops engaged in the elimination campaign is to build blockhouses,’ Chiang Kaishek told his officers. ‘We build our bases each step of the way, and protect ourselves with blockhouses everywhere. It looks defensive but is offensive,’ Chiang wrote in his diary. ‘When the enemy comes, we defend; when they retreat, we advance … We will exhaust them and then wipe them out.’5 He turned Mao's guerrilla warfare on its head, forcing the Red Army to confront his troops in conventional trench warfare. It was a protracted war which he knew they could not win – they simply did not have the resources and manpower to compete. ‘The Reds’ areas are only 250 square kilometres. If we can push on one kilometre every day, we can finish them off within a year,’ Chiang concluded confidently.6

Chiang insisted that every battalion build at least one blockhouse a week. Initially it was one every five kilometres, but when the Red Army broke through, he demanded that the distance between the blockhouses should be no more than one kilometre. ‘Anyone who breaks the rule will be court-martialled without mercy,’ he warned. Half way through the Fifth Campaign, 5,873 blockhouses had been built; by the end of 1934, there were 14,000. To link them up, Chiang ordered an extensive network of roads to be built. From barely 500 kilometres of highway in a province of 110,000 square kilometres in 1928, Jiangxi became one of the best-served places in China, with 8,000 kilometres of roads and another 1,000 kilometres under construction, and three major airports.7 The trouble was that cars were a rare commodity in the provinces in the 1930s, and the vast network of roads did not link up with the Xian and Gan Rivers, the main transport arteries of Jiangxi. This did not bother Chiang: the important thing was that all roads led to Ruijin.

One day, something came along the road which neither Huang nor his captain had ever seen – tanks. ‘These giant machines crawled towards us like scorpions, with guns firing.’ Huang remembered it vividly. ‘When we saw one coming, we were so shocked we did not know what to do. We took to our heels and fled, and those who didn't became mincemeat.’ All the same, orders arrived from headquarters every day, telling them to hold on unswervingly so that they could eliminate the enemy with disciplined fire and powerful counter-attacks. ‘It was senseless, like throwing an egg at a stone.’ Old Huang threw up his hands. ‘We were worth nothing, pushed forward again and again just to die in waves. Then they built more turtle-shells on our bodies, advancing as we fell back.’

I had seen some remains of the blockhouses on the bus ride to Ruijin, perched on the hills. I was surprised that they had not been knocked down by peasants to build houses or pigsties. ‘There used to be quite a lot,’ said Huang. ‘They were really well built. You have to blow them up with dynamite – not something the Red Army had then or we have now. I don't know. Should we keep them? They are like graveyards. Every time I pass them, I feel as if a lizard is pissing on my spine.’

Was he not frightened then? He was only 14.

‘Frightened? I was scared to death. I wet my pants every day,’ Huang said without hesitation. He regretted he had not run away during the training week or on the way to the front. An older man from his village slipped away when he asked permission to relieve himself in the woods. From then on, they all had to do it in public, but people continued to run away. Of the 800 who trained with him, barely a third made it to the front.

Then it became harder to leave. There was one person in every platoon whose job it was to look out for ‘softies’, and it was old Liu in his. A strong man who was never short of a joke, Liu was almost like a father to him, always asking how he was. Once, when he was on night duty, Liu sat down with him and asked if he missed his parents, and Huang burst into tears. ‘Has anyone offered to take a message home for you?’ Liu asked casually while holding his hand. He blurted out that Uncle Huang, a distant relative in another company, mentioned it in passing a few days back. ‘Good boy.’ Liu patted him on the head and left. He never saw Uncle Huang again. He thought he was killed in the bombing until one day someone said to him, ‘Trouble comes from the mouth.’ Then he understood.

Huang was dying to go home – only fear of being caught stopped him. He was certain they would catch him if he returned home, and after disgracing him and his family they would send him back again. He did not know where the others had gone and they were not telling him. ‘They flew away like birds, you could not stop them,’ Huang sighed. ‘Sometimes, a few were caught and shot in front of everyone, but they just kept disappearing in droves.’

Party archives and documents from the period confirm Huang's story. In November and December 1933, out of at least 60,000 troops, there were 28,000 deserters in the Jiangxi Soviet – Ruijin alone had 4,300.8 The political commissar of the 5th Corps wrote in his diary that in September 1934 his 13th Division lost 1,800, or one-third of its men, due to desertion and illness.9 Even worse were the militias, who had been forced to help the soldiers dig trenches, move ammunition and carry the wounded to the rear. An urgent memo sent to all the county governments in August 1934 showed the scale of the problem:

Three-quarters of the militia mobilized for the recent battles in the whole Soviet region ran away within the first few days, leaving barely a quarter. It wasn't just ordinary members, but cadres and party officials … This has clearly weakened the Army's capacity and disrupted its operations. It is tantamount to helping the enemy. It cannot be tolerated.10

‘You know I never wanted to be a soldier,’ Huang said several times when we took the stools inside – it was almost twelve o'clock and he was going to take his long lunchtime siesta. ‘Y o u have to do night duty. It is much better to be a peasant, rising with the sun and resting with the sunset. And it is even better to sleep in the middle of the day. It's nobody's business what I do.’

On the way back to Ruijin, I thought a lot about Soldier Huang and what he had said. He spoke plainly, simply and honestly, with no self-glorification and no apology. He was too much the peasant through and through, open about his weaknesses, wavering and doubts, quite impervious to the propaganda that has permeated our lives. He came across as a real person, unlike all the characters in the Long March books, who are perfect, but less believable. After all, Huang was only 14 when he started out, just a boy. In that deadly first battle, in the test of fire and blood at such a young age, he did not cry out for his mother and father, he did not run away. He held on to his gun, and did so to the very end of the Long March. Whatever fears and doubts he might have had, they were only natural. He was human after all, and a fighter.