Читать книгу The Long March - Sun Shuyun - Страница 8

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.

What I did not understand was, if Huang could see it was pointless for him and his comrades to be stuck in the trenches, how could the commanders of the Red Army have failed to recognize this? Why did they insist on trench warfare instead of Mao's proven guerrilla tactics? Did it not occur to them to adopt another strategy, or was Braun, the Red Army's Comintern adviser, simply too dogmatic, regardless of the situation on the ground?

I was glad I had someone to ask these questions. I met up with another Huang, a young academic who had been examining the Red Army in Jiangxi. I had read his published articles on the Fifth Campaign and was impressed. As a distinguished Chinese historian said, far too many of his colleagues had made the study of history more like propaganda than academic research. Their task for the past fifty years has been to praise the glorious achievements of the Party, eulogize Mao, and write the history of the Communist Party from his works. They have not always been like that – but sometimes they were not appreciated, and some were suppressed or tortured. After a while, they became so cautious they lost their independence of mind. Now things are changing slowly and a young generation of historians has broken away from the old restraints and is studying history as it should be – and Huang is one of them. He was in Ruijin for field research. I told him about Soldier Huang and he told me it was merely a coincidence they were both Huangs. ‘In Jiangxi, there are many Huang families. Perhaps he and I had one ancestor 500 years ago.’

We decided to have a quick bowl of noodles and then go to Shazhou Village over the lunch hour. It was just outside Ruijin and was the seat of the Party and Headquarters of the Red Army immediately before the Long March. Set in a lush landscape of green hills and ancient trees, it looked timeless except for a couple of souvenir shops selling Red Music, portraits of Mao, Mao stamps, three dozen books on Mao's talents in military affairs, poetry, leadership, interpersonal relations and calligraphy, and a DVD about his life; there were also beautiful girls in Red Army uniforms offering their services as guides.

In the centre of the village stood the imposing old clan shrine, and next to it was a long row of what had once been the lofty mansions of rich clan members. The placards outside announced their erstwhile occupants: the Politbureau, the National Executive Committee, various government departments, and the residences of all the senior leaders, including Mao's at the head of the village, sheltered by a huge camphor tree.

The village was crammed with people, like a country fair. Ruijin has always been regarded as the holy place of the Chinese Revolution. Lately, Party officials have got into the habit of combining tourism with visiting revolutionary sites. Ruijin was a popular choice: to see where the Long March started, to sit under the tree where the senior leaders had debated issues of life and death, to bathe in the eulogies of the masses for the Party, at least in revolutionary songs – the good fortune of so many historical figures of the Chinese Communist Party might rub off on the visitors, whose goal was to climb higher within the Party themselves.

With a group of officials from Beijing, Young Huang and I squeezed into Mao's bedroom, bare and basic, with a bed and a mosquito net, a desk and a chair. Over the desk was a photo of Mao, which the guide said was the only picture of him taken in Ruijin, something I found hard to believe. Mao was gaunt, slightly blank and expressionless. ‘What do you notice?’ the guide asked. ‘It does not look like Mao,’ a plump man replied. ‘Why not?’ ‘I'm not sure, perhaps he does not look his usual confident self.’ ‘You are right,’ she smiled condescendingly. ‘You are very observant. May you go high in your position.’ The man beamed, and the guide continued, ‘When he was in Ruijin, he was out of favour. They had pushed Mao aside and allowed the young and arrogant German called Otto Braun to command the Red Army. Braun was blessed by the Comintern, so he had supreme power; but he was hopeless. That was why the Red Army failed in the Fifth Campaign and had to leave Jiangxi.’

Braun was not popular with the Chinese. A true Bavarian with deep blue eyes and an air of solemnity, he did not speak a word of Chinese, and had little knowledge of China. He drank coffee, not tea; he ate bread rather than rice, even though he had to make it himself; he preferred sausages to stir-fries. However, he did have military experience. He fought in World War I, and then joined the German Communist Party. Arrested and imprisoned in 1920, he escaped to the Soviet Union eight years later and studied at the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow. But he angered Mao by dismissing his ideas at their first meeting. How could this ignorant, despotic barbarian tell him how to lead his people? Mao was furious. They disagreed on just about everything, except for their love of nicotine and women. It was not just Mao who was unhappy. Liu Buocheng, the Chief of Staff, was also trained in the Frunze Academy, and was a much more experienced commander. He irritated his young boss when he dared to disagree. ‘You seem to be no better than an ordinary staff officer,’ Braun told him. ‘You wasted your time in the Soviet Union.’¹¹

However, the Chinese treated Braun with reverence; they even called him Tai Shanghung, ‘the supreme emperor’. After all, he was Stalin's envoy, and Moscow's support was paramount for the Chinese Communists – ideologically, politically, financially and militarily. Zhou Enlai, the powerful mandarin of the Communist Party, faced the delicate task of finding a woman robust enough to please Braun. In the end, he came up with a peasant girl, who obliged because she was told it was her ‘revolutionary duty’. So sitting in the house specially built for him, nicknamed the Lone House, with the help of a translator and two packs of cigarettes a day specially brought in from the Nationalist-controlled areas, Braun read the telegrams from the field, and then drew up battle plans for the Red Army. His master plan combined defence and attack: trenches arranged as bulwarks against the blockhouses, and troop detachments behind and on the wings to engage the enemy in ‘short, sharp blows’.

I was curious to know what happened to Braun's Lone House. The guide told me it was torn down long ago. ‘It was not worth keeping, the trouble he brought us. Had he not come, had Mao been in control, the Red Army would not have had to go on the Long March!’ she said in annoyance. Then she took the crowd to another holy spot, the well which Mao helped the villagers to dig, a story we all know from our primary school textbooks. They all wanted to pay their respects, to drink the water, and be as lucky as Mao.

Watching the crowd disperse, Young Huang had a look of disdain on his face. ‘How can they be so irresponsible and ignorant?’ he said angrily. ‘All this superstitious crap. This is the 21st century! And all the blame on Braun. It wasn't his fault really, although he did make a lot of mistakes. He was only 34. He must have thought he was another Napoleon. He gave orders and expected to be obeyed. He even told them where to put the cannons, using maps that weren't any good, and he lost his temper when they corrected him. But as things stood, there was little he could have done to turn the tide. He was not to blame for the Red Army's failures. He did not insist on trench warfare as people are always told, but guerrilla tactics and mobile attacks couldn't work any more. We were trapped, like flies in a spider's web.’

‘The Red Army was stuck in the trenches for a long time.’ I told him Soldier Huang's story. I had questioned him in detail about his experiences in the trenches. The story I knew was that the Red Army won the first four campaigns because of Mao and his guidance, and lost the fifth because of Braun and had to go on the Long March. It seemed logical, and it had gone virtually unchallenged. I accepted it. It occurred to me that subconsciously I was trying to prove the received wisdom.

Huang and I came out of Mao's bedroom and sat down under the huge camphor tree in the courtyard. He drew my attention to the situation that Chiang had to face at the time. Chiang was the head of the Nationalist government, but he did not control the country. Much of it was in the hands of warlords who hated him as much as the Communists did. Each warlord occupied a territory where they levied taxes on peasants’ harvests, even twenty years ahead; they were the largest growers and traffickers of opium, which they sold to raise their armies. In their eyes, Chiang was just another warlord like them who had tried to unify the country with the help of the Communists in 1927, but started killing them too when he realized they were going to challenge him. They pledged loyalty to him when he promised them millions of silver dollars a month, but changed their allegiance whenever it suited them.

The warlords’ internecine wars, their lack of any moral values and ideals except for keeping their power and territory, and the damage they inflicted on the nation, were among the curses of 20th-century China. I had learned all about them in school, but usually we did not associate them with the rise and expansion of Communism. While Chiang was battling it out with them – the biggest battle lasting five months, costing 200 million silver dollars and displacing 2 million people from their homes – the Communists were free to grow and grow. The Red Army in the Jiangxi Soviet expanded its territory, at its peak controlling twenty-one counties with over 3 million people, and built itself up from a guerrilla force of 9,000 men to 100,000. They even created a state within a state. Mao was grateful for the intervention of the warlords and admitted that this was uniquely helpful for the Chinese Revolution. They had a powerful impact on the energy and resources Chiang could put into his campaigns against the Jiangxi Soviet. He had to call off one of his campaigns when the warlords of Guangdong and Guangxi mutinied, almost forcing him out of office.

If Chiang had enough headaches domestically, the Japanese gave him more. Japan had set its eyes on China as if it was its due, an integral part of its imperial ambitions. On 18 September 1931 Japan took China's three north-eastern provinces. A month later, Chiang had to abort his Third Campaign, and his Fourth Campaign eighteen months later, when the Japanese threatened to march on Beiping, today's Beijing. Chiang chose to appease the Japanese – for the time being at least. He knew the country was not ready for a war, but more importantly, he regarded the Japanese as a disease of the skin, and the Communists as one of the heart. ‘If there is no peace within, how can we resist the enemy from outside?’ he appealed to the nation. To the outrage of all Chinese, he allowed Japan a free hand to run China north of the Great Wall. However necessary as a strategy, it set people against him; it would almost cost him his life, and finally it lost him China.

For the time being, though, with this decision Chiang could concentrate on his Fifth and final campaign against the Jiangxi Communists in earnest. He threw in his best troops, 200,000 of them. He assembled his 7,500 senior officers in Lushan Mountain in northern Jiangxi, telling them: ‘The only purpose of this training is for the elimination of the Red Bandits. They are our sole target, and all your preparation, tactical, strategic and operational, is to serve this need.’¹² He gave every officer a copy of handbooks on Eliminating the Red Bandits, Keys to Eliminating the Red Bandits, and The Principles of Training for the Army Engaged in the Elimination Campaign.

As Soldier Huang experienced it, the blockhouse strategy was the key to this campaign. Why then had Chiang not used it earlier? It would have saved him four years, and a lot of money and lives. ‘Blockhouses were not his idea. Chiang admitted himself there was nothing new about his strategy – a 19th-century Chinese general used the very same method to put down a peasant rebellion,’ Young Huang said. ‘But for the strategy to work, it needed time and security, neither of which Chiang had before. This time he did.

‘But contrary to the criticism heaped on Braun, he did not make the mistake of ordering the Red Army to sit in the trenches and wait for the enemy,’ Huang went on. I remembered how he had argued this so convincingly in his thought-provoking articles. The Comintern had in fact instructed the Red Army to play to its strength of mobile and guerrilla warfare.

From past experiences, the Red Army has achieved many victories in mobile warfare, but suffered considerably when it forced frontal attacks in areas where the enemy had built blockhouses … You should not engage in positional warfare, and should move behind the enemy …¹³

Braun agreed entirely: ‘As to positional warfare, whatever form it took, it was not suitable. We were all absolutely clear about it.’¹⁴ He tried to draw the enemy out of their turtle-shells and then launch short, sharp blows to wipe them out. But the trouble was that the enemy refused to come out unless they had full covering fire on the ground and from the air, often with three or four divisions together within 10 kilometres. This made it hard for the Red Army to concentrate enough men and deal them a fatal blow, hard though it tried. Even Chiang noticed this tendency: ‘When we fight the bandits now, they rarely confront us in positional warfare; they frequently attack us by guerrilla tactics.’¹⁵ The battle of Guangchang in April 1934 was an exception, when Soldier Huang and almost the entire Red Army were stuck in their trenches for a month up against the blockhouses. It was the first time this happened, but the battle was not Braun's idea, as he made very clear in his memoir:

The Party leadership considered it a strategically critical point because it barred the way into the heart of the Soviet area. The leadership also believed that unresisting surrender would be politically indefensible.¹⁶

Zhou Enlai agreed with Braun:

Every comrade must realize, the plan by the enemy to take Guangchang is different from the previous four campaigns. It is a strategic step in their penetration into the heart of the Soviet base; it is the key to their overall offensive. We must fight to defend Guangchang.¹⁷

I had talked to the veterans and the expert, and it was clear to them why they lost, but in seventy years, with so many books on the subject, the same argument is still used: if Mao did not lead it, the Revolution would fail. To support this theme, history had to be made to fit the theory. At least militarily, even Mao learned from mistakes, as his memoirs make clear. The Party was only twelve years old, the Red Army half that, the Soviets only three years. The guidance coming from the Comintern was often not based on Chinese reality. Naturally there were mistakes, but a scapegoat was found on whom all the blame for losing the Fifth Campaign was dumped.

Soon after the Guangchang battle, the Party made its decision to launch the Long March; it knew it could no longer defend the Jiangxi base – in fact it informed Moscow so in May 1934 – but some units had to hold the line so the preparations for the Long March could get under way. ‘When we moved house, it would take a few weeks. The Long March was a state on the move, with everything it might need,’ Young Huang said. ‘They had to replenish the troops, to find homes for the sick and wounded, to get together food, money and other supplies. Also where would they go? Nobody knew for sure. That was why they sent out the 6th Corps to blaze the trail, and the 7th Corps to divert the Nationalists’ attack.’

The decision to abandon the Jiangxi Soviet was made in the strictest secrecy. Only the top leaders and military commanders knew about it – Mao himself did not learn of it until August, two months before the departure. There were two fears: firstly that morale would disintegrate, and secondly that the Nationalists would find out. As late as 3 October, two weeks before the Long March, Zhang Wentian, the Chairman of the Soviet Government, continued to call on the people to fight to the end:

For the defence of our regime and of our lives, our children and babies, our land and grain, our cows, hogs, chickens and ducks, and for resistance against enemy slaughter, destruction, looting and rape, we should use our daggers, hunting guns, rifles and any sorts of old and new weapons to arm ourselves … Let our millions of worker and peasant masses become an unbreakable armed force to fight along with our invincible Red Army. We shall completely smash the enemy attack. We must win the final victory! Hold high the Soviet banner! Long live the Soviet regime.¹⁸

This is an ancient Chinese tactic known as the cicada trick: the cicada flies off after it sheds its skin in the autumn, and people are fooled by the skin, thinking it is still there.

But what did ordinary soldiers like Huang know? How far was he involved in the preparations and how much did he know about them? I was keen to find out. As if he knew I was coming, he was waiting for me in his courtyard in the afternoon, wearing a Red Army uniform, complete with octagonal cap. It suited him. ‘I thought you might like it. They gave them to us ten years ago to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Long March. You know I never had a complete uniform until I finished the March!’

When did he know he was going? I asked. ‘I didn't know. Had I known it was going to be that long, I'd have come home straight away, no matter what,’ he said without the slightest hesitation. Did he have any inkling that something was coming up? He took off his cap and scratched his head. ‘Now you ask me, I think it was when I saw new uniforms for the first time. I think the autumn harvest was already in by then.’

He and his company were pulled out of the trenches in late September 1934, and brought to Yudu, which was 60 kilometres from Ruijin. New recruits were brought in to replenish the depleted company – some were older than his father. And there were new uniforms and shoes for everyone. At last he would look like a soldier rather than a beggar. He put on the jacket – it was double layered and he felt so warm, like being by a fire. He never had one like it – it was not necessary in the south, even in winter. ‘Why do we have to carry this heavy stuff? Are we going somewhere cold?’ someone asked, but did not get an answer. Huang was more interested in finding a jacket and shoes that fitted him. Sadly, the jacket was like a coat, and the shoes like boats. They were made for adults. Seeing the tears forming in his eyes, the captain led him into another room. His mouth dropped when he saw the huge stockpile – he had never see so many bullets in his life. He felt as excited as on New Year's Day, when he was given firecrackers. ‘All yours, take as many as you like,’ the captain told him jokingly. He loaded himself up, but the captain took away all but one bandolier and a few grenades. ‘You won't get very far with more than that, my son!’

Soldier Huang had his rifle across his back, a pack with five kilos of rice, a bowl, the patched jacket that his mother had given him, and an extra pair of straw sandals that the captain had made specially for him. A pair of chopsticks were thrust into his puttees. ‘We are going somewhere, aren't we?’ he asked one of the older soldiers. ‘Perhaps we'll go behind the enemy lines, and take the big towns and cities. That's what we used to do after each campaign.’ As he spoke, all the soldiers started talking at once. ‘Now we'll have meat at last.’ Ah, we're going to see beautiful women.’ ‘We'll bring back enough money to feed ourselves through the winter.’ Excitement was in the air, the gloom of the trenches had lifted.

Early one evening, when the moon was big and round, Huang and his company marched along the broad and gentle Yudu River. People came out to say good-bye. Some girls, newly wedded, were standing on tiptoe, looking about anxiously to see their husbands as they passed through. When they spotted them, they cried out with joy, only to be teased by the raucous soldiers in the company. They blushed, ran back, and watched from further off. Others, perhaps organized by the local women's association, were more bold, walking along with the soldiers, and asking, ‘What's your name? Where are you from? Can you win a medal and become a hero?’ It was the men's turn to be shy and tongue-tied. The girls laughed and burst into song:

A model soldier,

That's what I want you to be.

I long for your good news day and night,

My Red Army brother,

Capture a few generals and make me happy!¹⁹

In the crowd, Huang spotted the mother from the family he had been billeted with, who had looked after him like a son. She ran towards him, and pushed two eggs into his hands. ‘Look after yourself, my son,’ she said, barely holding back her tears. Suddenly he felt the pain of what he had learned days before: her son joined the Red Army two years ago and she had not heard from him since. ‘Don't worry, mother. We'll be back soon.’