Edgar Snow's
Account of "The
Long March" A
Nation Emigrates
Having successfully broken through the first line of fortifications, the
Red Army set out on its epochal year-long trek to the west and to the north,
a varicolored and many-storied expedition describable here only in briefest
outline. The Communists told me that they were writing a collective account
of the Long March, with contributions from dozens who made it, which already
totaled about 300,000 words. Adventure, exploration, discovery, human courage
and cowardice, ecstasy and triumph, suffering, sacrifice, and loyalty,
and then through it all, like a flame, an undimmed ardor and undying hope
and amazing revolutionary optimism of those thousands of youths who would
not admit defeat by man or nature or God or death — all this and more seemed
embodied in the history of an odyssey unequaled in modem times.
The Reds themselves generally spoke of it as the "25,000-li March," and
with all its twists, turns and countermarches, from the farthest point
in Fukien to the end of the road in far northwest Shensi,
some sections of the marchers undoubtedly did that much or more. An accurate
stage-by-stage itinerary prepared by the First Army Corps [1] showed
that its route covered a total of 18,088 li, or 6,000 miles — about
twice the width of the American continent — and this figure was
perhaps the average march of the main forces. The journey took them across
some of the world's most difficult trails, unfit for wheeled traffic,
and across the high snow mountains and the great rivers of Asia. It was
one long battle from beginning to end.
Four main lines of defense works, supported by strings of concrete machine-gun
nests and blockhouses, surrounded the Soviet districts in Southwest China,
and the Reds had to shatter those before they could reach the unblockaded
areas to the west. The first line, in Kiangsi, was broken on
October 21, 1934; the second, in Hunan, was occupied on November 3; and
a week later the third, also in Hunan, fell to the Reds after bloody
fighting. The Kwangsi and Hunan troops gave up the fourth and
last line on November 29, and the Reds swung northward into Hunan, to
begin trekking in a straight line for Szechuan, where they
planned to enter the Soviet districts and combine with the Fourth Front
Army there, under Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien. Between the dates mentioned above,
nine battles were fought. In all, a combination of 110 regiments had
been mobilized in their path by Nanking and by the provincial warlords
Ch'en Ch'i-tang, Ho Chien, and Pai Chung-hsi.
During the march through Kiangsi, Kwangtung, Kwangsi, and Hunan, the
Reds suffered very heavy losses. Their numbers were reduced by about
one-third by the time they reached the border of Kweichow province. This
was due, first, to the impediment of a vast amount of transport, 5,000
men being engaged in that task alone. The vanguard was very much retarded,
and in many cases the enemy was given time to prepare elaborate obstructions
in the line of march. Second, from Kiangsi an undeviating northwesterly
route was maintained, which enabled Nanking to anticipate most of the
Red Army's movements.
Serious losses as a result of these errors caused the Reds to adopt
new tactics in Kweichow. Instead of an arrowlike advance, they began
a series of distracting maneuvers, so that it became more and more difficult
for Nanking planes to identify the day-by-day objective of the main forces.
Two columns, and sometimes as many as four columns, engaged in a baffling
series of maneuvers on the flanks of the central column, and the vanguard
developed a pincerlike front. Only the barest and lightest essentials
of equipment were retained, and night marches for the greatly reduced
transport corps — a daily target for the air bombing — became routine.
Anticipating an attempt to cross the Yangtze River into Szechuan, Chiang-Kai-shek
withdrew thousands of troops from Hupeh, Anhui, and Kiangsi and shipped
them hurriedly westward, to cut off ( from the north) the Red Army's
route of advance. All crossings were heavily fortified; all ferries were
drawn to the north bank of the river; all roads were blocked; great areas
were denuded of grain. Other thousands of Nanking troops poured into
Kweichow to reinforce the opium-soaked provincials of warlord Wang Chia-lieh,
whose army in the end was practically immobilized by the Reds. Still
others were dispatched to the Yunnan border, to set up obstacles there.
In Kweichow, therefore, the Reds found a reception committee of a couple
of hundred thousand troops, and obstructions thrown up everywhere in
their path. This necessitated two great countermarches across the province,
and a wide circular movement around the capital.
Maneuvers in Kweichow occupied the Reds for four months, during which
they destroyed five enemy divisions, captured the headquarters of Governor
Wang and occupied his foreign-style palace in Tsunyi, recruited about
20,000 men, and visited most of the villages and towns of the province,
calling mass meetings and organizing Communist cadres among the youth.
Their losses were negligible, but they still faced the problem of crossing
the Yangtze. By his swift concentration on the Kweichow-Szechuan border,
Chiang Kai-shek had skillfully blocked the short, direct roads that led
to the great river. He now placed his main hope of exterminating the
Reds on the prevention of this crossing at any point, hoping to push
them far to the southwest, or into the wastelands of Tibet. To his various
commanders and the provincial warlords he telegraphed: "The fate
of the nation and the party depends on bottling up the Reds south of
the Yangtze."
Suddenly, early in May, 1935, the Reds turned southward and entered
Yunnan, where China's frontier meets Burma and Indochina. A spectacular
march in four days brought them within ten miles of the capital, Yunnanfu,
and warlord Lung Yun (Dragon Cloud) frantically mobilized all available
troops for defense. Chiang's reinforcements meanwhile moved in from Kweichow
in hot pursuit. Chiang himself and Mme. Chiang, who had been staying
in Yunnanfu, hastily repaired down the French railway toward Indochina.
A big squadron of Nanking bombers kept up their daily egg-laying over
the Reds, but on they came. Presently the panic ended. It was discovered
that their drive on Yunnanfu had been only a diversion carried out by
a few troops. The main Red forces were moving westward, obviously with
the intention of crossing the river at Lengkai, one of the few navigable
points of the Upper Yangtze.
Through the wild mountainous country of Yunnan, the Yangtze River flows
deeply and swiftly between immense gorges, great peaks in places rising
in defiles of a mile or more, with steep walls of rock lifting almost
perpendicularly on either side. The few crossings had all been occupied
long ago by government troops. Chiang was well pleased. He now ordered
all boats drawn to the north bank of the river and burned. Then he started
his own troops, and Lung Yun's, in an enveloping movement around the
Red Army, hoping to finish it off forever on the banks of this historic
and treacherous stream.
Seemingly unaware of their fate, the Reds continued to march rapidly
westward in three columns toward Lengkai. The boats had been burned there,
and Nanking pilots reported that a Red vanguard had begun building a
bamboo bridge. Chiang became more confident; this bridge-building would
take weeks. But one evening, quite unobtrusively, a Red battalion suddenly
reversed its direction. On a phenomenal forced march it covered eighty-five
miles in one night and day, and in late afternoon descended upon the
only other possible ferry crossing in the vicinity, at Chou P'ing Fort.
Dressed in captured Nanking uniforms, the battalion entered the town
at dusk without arousing comment, and quietly disarmed the garrison.
Boats had been withdrawn to the north bank — but they had not
been destroyed. (Why spoil boats, when the Reds were hundreds of li distant,
and not coming there anyway? So the government troops may have reasoned.)
But how to get one over to the south bank? After dark the Reds escorted
a village official to the river and forced him to call out to the guards
on the opposite side that some government troops had arrived and wanted
a boat. Unsuspectingly one was sent across. Into it piled a detachment
of these "Nanking" soldiers, who soon disembarked on the north
shore — in Szechuan at last. Calmly entering the garrison, they surprised
guards who were peacefully playing mah-jong and whose stacked weapons
the Reds took over without any struggle.
Meanwhile the main forces of the Red Army had executed a wide countermarch,
and by noon of the next day the vanguard reached the fort. Crossing was
now a simple matter. Six big boats worked constantly for nine days. The
entire army was transported into Szechuan without a life lost. Having
concluded the operation, the Reds promptly destroyed the vessels and
lay down to sleep. When Chiang's forces reached the river, two days later,
the rear guard of their enemy called cheerily to them from the north
bank to come on over, the swimming was fine. The government troops were
obliged to make a detour of over 200 li to the nearest crossing,
and the Reds thus shook them from their trail. Infuriated, the Generalissimo
now flew to Szechuan, where he mobilized new forces in the path of the
oncoming horde, hoping to cut them off at one more strategic river — the
great Tatu.
The Heroes of Tatu
The crossing of the Tatu River was the most critical single incident
of the Long March. Had the Red Army failed there, quite possibly it
would have been exterminated. The historic precedent for such a fate
already existed. On the banks of the remote Tatu the heroes of the
Three Kingdoms and many warriors since then had met defeat, and in
these same gorges the last of the T'ai-p'ing rebels, an army of 100,000
led by Prince Shih Ta-k'ai, was in the nineteenth century surrounded
and completely destroyed by the Manchu forces under the famous Tseng
Kuo-fan. To warlords Liu Hsiang and Liu Wen-hui, his allies in Szechuan,
and to his own generals in command of the government pursuit, Generalissimo
Chiang now wired an exhortation to repeat the history of the T'ai-p'ing.
But the Reds also knew about Shih Ta-k'ai, and that the main cause of
his defeat had been a costly delay. Arriving at the banks of the Tatu,
Prince Shih had paused for three days to honor the birth of his son — an
imperial prince. Those days of rest had given his enemy the chance to concentrate
against him, and to make the swift marches in his rear that blocked his line of
retreat. Realizing his mistake too late, Prince Shih had tried to break the enemy
encirclement, but it was impossible to maneuver in the narrow terrain of the defiles,
and he was erased from the map.
The Reds determined not to repeat his error. Moving rapidly northward
from the Gold Sand River (as the Yangtze there is known) into Szechuan,
they soon entered the tribal country of warlike aborigines, the "White" and "Black" Lolos
of Independent Lololand. Never conquered, never absorbed by the Chinese
who dwelt all around them, the turbulent Lolos had for centuries occupied
that densely forested and mountainous spur of Szechuan whose borders
are marked by the great southward arc described by the Yangtze just east
of Tibet. Chiang Kai-shek could well have confidently counted on a long
delay and weakening of the Reds here which would enable him to concentrate
north of the Tatu. The Lolos' hatred of the Chinese was traditional,
and rarely had any Chinese army crossed their borders without heavy losses
or extermination.
But the Reds had already safely passed through the tribal districts
of the Miao and the Shan peoples, aborigines of Kweichow and Yunnan,
and had won their friendship and even enlisted some tribesmen in their
army. Now they sent envoys ahead to parley with the Lolos. On the way
they captured several towns on the borders of independent Lololand, where
they found a number of Lolo chieftains who had been imprisoned as hostages
by provincial Chinese warlords. Freed and sent back to their people,
these men naturally praised the Reds.
In the vanguard of the Red Army was Commander Liu Po-ch'eng, [2] who
had once been an officer in a warlord army of Szechuan. Liu knew the
tribal people, and their inner feuds and discontent. Especially he knew
their hatred of Chinese, and he could speak something of the Lolo tongue.
Assigned the task of negotiating a friendly alliance, he entered their
territory and went into conference with the chieftains. The Lolos, he
said, opposed warlords Liu Hsiang and Liu Wen-hui and the Kuomintang;
so did the Reds. The Lolos wanted to preserve their independence; Red
policies favored autonomy for all the national minorities of China. The
Lolos hated the Chinese because they had been oppressed by them; but
there were "White" Chinese
and "Red" Chinese, just as there were "White" Lolos
and "Black" Lolos, and it was the White Chinese who had always
slain and oppressed the Lolos. Should not the Red Chinese and the Black
Lolos unite against their common enemies, the White Chinese? The Lolos
listened interestedly. Slyly they asked for arms and bullets to guard
their independence and help Red Chinese fight the Whites. To their astonishment,
the Reds gave them both.
And so it happened that not only a speedy but a politically useful passage
was accomplished. Hundreds of Lolos enlisted with the "Red" Chinese
to march to the Tatu River to fight the common enemy. Some of those Lolos
were to trek clear to the Northwest. Liu Po-ch'eng drank the blood of
a newly killed chicken before the high chieftain of the Lolos, who drank
also, and they swore blood brotherhood in the tribal manner. By this
vow the Reds declared that whosoever should violate the terms of their
alliance would be even as weak and cowardly as the fowl.
Thus a vanguard division of the First Army Corps, led by Lin Piao, reached
the Tatu Ho. On the last day of the march they emerged from the forests
of Lololand (in the thick foliage of which Nanking pilots had completely
lost track of them), to descend suddenly on the river town of An Jen
Ch'ang, just as unheralded as they had come into Chou P'ing Fort. Guided
over narrow mountain trails by the Lolos, the vanguard crept quietly
up to the little town and from the heights looked down to the river bank,
and saw with amazement and delight one of the three ferryboats made fast
on the south bank of the river! Once more an act of fate had befriended
them.
How had it happened? On the opposite shore there was only one regiment
of the troops of General Liu Wen-hui, the co-dictator of Szechuan province.
Other Szechuan troops, as well as reinforcements from Nanking, were leisurely
proceeding toward the Tatu, but the single regiment meanwhile must have
seemed enough. A squad should have been ample, with all boats moored
to the north. But the commander of that regiment was a native of the
district; he knew the country the Reds must pass through, and how long
it would take them to penetrate to the river. They would be many days
yet, he could have told his men. And his wife, one learned, had been
a native of An Jen Ch'ang, so he must cross to the south bank to visit
his relatives and his friends and to feast with them. Thus it happened
that the Reds, taking the town by surprise, captured the commander, his
boat, and their passage to the north.
Sixteen men from each of five companies volunteered to cross in the
first boat and bring back the others, while on the south bank the Reds
set up machine guns on the mountainsides and over the river spread a
screen of protective fire concentrated on the enemy's exposed positions.
It was May. Floods poured down the mountains, and the river was swift
and even wider than the Yangtze. Starting far upstream, the ferry took
two hours to cross and land just opposite the town. From the south bank
the villagers of An Jen Ch'ang watched breathlessly. They would be wiped
out! But wait. They saw the voyagers land almost beneath the guns of
the enemy. Now, surely, they would be finished. And yet . . . from the
south bank the Red machine guns barked on. The onlookers saw the little
party climb ashore, hurriedly take cover, then slowly work their way
up a steep cliff overhanging the enemy's positions. There they set up
their own light machine guns and sent a downpour of lead and hand grenades
into the enemy redoubts along the river.
Suddenly the White troops ceased firing, broke from their redoubts,
and fled to a second and then a third line of defense. A great murmur
went up from the south bank and shouts of "Hao!" drifted across
the river to the little band who had captured the ferry landing. Meanwhile
the first boat returned, towing two others, and on the second trip each
carried eighty men. The enemy had fled. That day and night, and the next,
and the next, those three ferries of An Jen Ch'ang worked back and forth
until at last nearly a division had been transferred to the northern
bank
But the river flowed faster and faster. The crossing became more and
more difficult. On the third day it took four hours to shift a boatload
of men from shore to shore. At this rate it would be weeks before the
whole army and its animals and supplies could be moved. Long before the
operation was completed they would be encircled. The First Army Corps
had now crowded into An Jen Ch'ang, and behind were the flanking columns,
and the transport and rear guard. Chiang Kai-shek's airplanes had found
the spot, and heavily bombed it. Enemy troops were racing up from the
southeast; others approached from the north. A hurried military conference
was summoned by Lin Piao. Chu Teh, Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, and P'eng
Teh-huai had by now reached the river. They took a decision and began
to carry it out at once.
Some 400 li to the west of An Jen Ch'ang, where the gorges rise very
high and the river flows narrow, deep, and swift, there was an iron-chain
suspension bridge called the Liu Ting Chiao — the Bridge Fixed
by Liu. [3] It was the last possible crossing of the Tatu east of Tibet.
Toward this the barefoot Reds now set out along a trail that wound through
the gorges, at times climbing several thousand feet, again dropping low
to the level of the swollen stream itself and wallowing through waist-deep
mud. If they captured the Liu Ting Chiao the whole army could enter central
Szechuan. If they failed they would have to retrace their steps through
Lololand, re-enter Yunnan, and fight their way westward toward Likiang
on the Tibetan border — a detour of more than a thousand li, which few
might hope to survive.
As their main forces pushed westward along the southern bank, the Red
division already on the northern bank moved also. Sometimes the gorges
between them closed so narrowly that the two lines of Reds could shout
to each other across the stream; sometimes that gulf between them measured
their fear that the Tatu might separate them forever, and they stepped
more swiftly. As they wound in long dragon Ales along the cliffs at night
their 10,000 torches sent arrows of light slanting down the dark face
of the imprisoning river. Day and night these vanguards moved at double-quick,
pausing only for brief ten-minute rests and meals, when the soldiers
listened to lectures by their weary political workers, who over and over
again explained the importance of this one action, exhorting each to
give his last breath, his last urgent strength, for victory in the test
ahead of them. There could be no slackening of pace, no halfheartedness,
no fatigue. "Victory was life," said P'eng Teh-huai; "defeat
was certain death."
On the second day the vanguard on the right bank fell behind. Szechuan
troops had set up positions in the road, and skirmishes took place. Those
on the southern bank pressed on more grimly. Presently new troops appeared
on the opposite bank, and through their field glasses the Reds saw that
they were White reinforcements, hurrying to the Bridge Fixed by Liu.
For a whole day these troops raced each other along the stream, but gradually
the Red vanguard, the pick of all the Red Army, pulled away from the
enemy's tired soldiers, whose rests were longer and more frequent, whose
energy seemed more spent, and who were perhaps none too anxious to die
for a bridge.
The Bridge Fixed by Liu was built centuries ago, and in the manner of
all bridges of the deep rivers of western China. Sixteen heavy iron chains,
with a span of some 100 yards or more, were stretched across the river,
their ends imbedded on each side under great piles of cemented rock,
beneath the stone bridgeheads. Thick boards lashed over the chains made
the road of the bridge, but upon their arrival the Reds found that half
this wooden flooring had been removed, and before them only the bare
iron chains swung to a point midway in the stream. At the northern bridgehead
an enemy machine-gun nest faced them, and behind it were positions held
by a regiment of White troops. The bridge should, of course, have been
destroyed, but the Szechuanese were sentimental about their few bridges;
it was not easy to rebuild them, and they were costly. Of Liu Ting it
was said that "the wealth of the eighteen provinces contributed
to build it." And who would have thought the Reds would insanely
try to cross on the chains alone? But that was what they did.
No time was to be lost. The bridge must be captured before enemy reinforcements
arrived. Once more volunteers were called for. One by one Red soldiers
stepped forward to risk their lives, and, of those who offered themselves,
thirty were chosen. Hand grenades and Mausers were strapped to their
backs, and soon they were swinging out above the boiling river, moving
hand over hand, clinging to the iron chains. Red machine guns barked
at enemy redoubts and spattered the bridgehead with bullets. The enemy
replied with machine-gunning of his own, and snipers shot at the Reds
tossing high above the water, working slowly toward them. The first warrior
was hit, and dropped into the current below; a second fell, and then
a third. But as others drew nearer the center, the bridge flooring somewhat
protected these dare-to-dies, and most of the enemy bullets glanced off,
or ended in the cliffs on the opposite bank.
Probably never before had the Szechuanese seen fighters like these — men
for whom soldiering was not just a rice bowl, and youths ready to commit
suicide to win. Were they human beings or madmen or gods? Was their own
morale affected? Did they perhaps not shoot to kill? Did some of them
secretly pray that these men would succeed in their attempt? At last
one Red crawled up over the bridge flooring, uncapped a grenade, and
tossed it with perfect aim into the enemy redoubt. Nationalist officers
ordered the rest of the planking torn up. It was already too late. More
Reds were crawling into sight. Paraffin was thrown on the planking, and
it began to bum. By then about twenty Reds were moving forward on their
hands and knees, tossing grenade after grenade into the enemy machine-gun
nest.
Suddenly, on the southern shore, their comrades began to shout with
joy. "Long live the Red Army! Long live the Revolution! Long live
the heroes of Tatu Ho!" For the enemy was withdrawing in pell-mell
flight. Running full speed over the remaining planks of the bridge, through
the flames licking toward them, the assailants nimbly hopped into the
enemy's redoubt and turned the abandoned machine gun against the shore.
More Reds now swarmed over the chains, and arrived to help put out the
fire and replace the boards. And soon afterwards the Red division that
had crossed at An Jen Ch'ang came into sight, opening a flank attack
on the remaining enemy positions, so that in a little while the White
troops were wholly in flight — either in flight, that is, or with the
Reds, for about a hundred Szechuan soldiers here threw down their rifles
and turned to join their pursuers. In an hour or two the whole army was
joyously tramping and singing its way across the River Tatu into Szechuan.
Far overhead angrily and impotently roared the planes of Chiang Kai-shek,
and the Reds cried out in delirious challenge to them.
For their distinguished bravery the heroes of An fen Ch'ang and Liu
Ting Chiao were awarded the Gold Star, highest decoration in the Red
Army of China.
[1] An Account of the Long March,
First Army Corps (Yu Wang Pao, August, 1936).
[2] See BN.
[3] Literally the bridge "made fast" by Liu.
From Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (New York:
Grove Press, 1968). (Originally published 1938).
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