4 Across the Great Grasslands
Safely across the Tatu, the Reds struck off into the comparative freedom of western Szechuan, where the blockhouse system had not been completed, and where the initiative rested largely in their own hands. But hardships between battles were not over. Another 2, 000 miles of marching, studded by seven great mountain ranges, still lay ahead of them.
North of the Tatu River the Reds climbed 16, 000 feet over the Great Snowy Mountain, and in the rarefied air of its crest looked to the west and saw a sea of snow peaks——Tibet. It was already June, and in the lowlands very warm, but as they crossed the Ta Hsueh Shan many of those poorly clad, thin-blooded southerners, unused to the high altitudes, perished from exposure. Harder yet to ascend was the desolate Paotung Kang Mountain, up which they literally built their own road, felling long bamboos and laying them down for a track through a tortuous treacle of waist-deep mud. "On this peak, "Mao Tse-tung told me, "one army corps lost two-thirds of its transport animals. Hundreds fell down and never got up."
They climbed on. The Chung Lai range next, and more lost men and animals. Then they straddled the lovely Dream Pen Mountain, and after it the Big Drum, and these also took their toll of life. Finally, on July 20, 1935, they entered the rich Moukung area, in northwest Szechuan, and connected with the Fourth Front Army and the soviet regions of the Sung-pan. Here they paused for a long rest, took assessment of their losses, and re-formed their ranks.
The First, Third, Fifth, Eighth, and Ninth Army corps, which had begun the journey in Kiangsi nine months earlier with about 90, 000 armed men, could now muster beneath their hammer-and-sickle banners about 45, 000. Not all had been lost, strayed, or captured. Behind the line of march in Hunan, Kweichow, and Yunnan the Red Army had, as part of its tactics of defense, left small cadres of regular troops to organize partisan groups among the peasantry, and create disturbances and diversionist activity on the enemy's flanks. Hundreds of captured rifles had been distributed along the route, and stretching clear from Kiangsi to Szechuan were new zones of trouble for the Kuomintang forces. Ho Lung still held his little soviet area, in northern Hunan, and had been joined there by the army of Hsiao K'eh. The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly toward that region. Nanking was not to dislodge Ho Lung for a whole year, and then only after he had been ordered by Red Army headquarters to move into Szechuan, an operation which he would complete——via Tibet——against amazing obstacles.
The journey of the Kiangsi Reds thus far had provided them with much food for reflection. They had won many new friends and made many bitter enemies. Along their route they had provisioned themselves by "confiscating"the supplies of the rich——the landlords, officials, bureaucrats, and big gentry. Finance Commissioner Lin Tsu-han told me that such seizures were systematically carried out according to soviet laws, and that only the confiscation department of the finance commission was empowered to distribute the goods that were taken. It husbanded the army's resources, was informed by radio of all confiscations made, and assigned quantities of provisions for each section of the marchers, who often made a solid serpentine of fifty miles or more curling over the hills.
There were big "surpluses"——more than the Reds could carry——and these were distributed among the local poor. In Yunnan the Reds seized thousands of hams from rich packers there, and peasants came from miles around to receive their free portions——a new incident in the history of the ham industry, said Mao Tse-tung. Tons of salt were likewise distributed. In Kweichow many duck farms were seized from the landlords and officials and the Reds ate duck until, in the words of Wu Liang-p'ing, they were "simply disgusted with duck."From Kiangsi they had carried Nanking notes, and silver dollars and bullion from their state bank, and in poor districts in their path they used this money to pay for their needs. Land deeds were destroyed, taxes abolished, and the poor peasantry armed.
Except for their experiences in western Szechuan, the Reds told me they were welcomed everywhere by the mass of the peasantry. Their Robin Hood policies were noised ahead of them, and often the "oppressed peasantry"sent groups to urge them to detour and "liberate"their districts. They had little conception of the Red Army's political program, of course; they only knew that it was "a poor man's army, "said Wu Liang-p'ing. That was enough. Mao Tse-tung told me laughingly of one such delegation which arrived to welcome "Su Wei-ai Hsien-sheng"——Mr. Soviet！[*] These rustics were no more ignorant, however, than the Fukien militarist Lu Hsing-pang, who once posted a notice throughout his fiefdom offering a reward for the "capture, dead or alive, of Su Wei-ai."Lu announced that this fellow had been doing a lot of damage everywhere, and must be exterminated.
In Maoerhkai and Moukung the southern armies rested for three weeks, while the revolutionary military council, and representatives of the Party and the Soviet Government, discussed plans for the future. It may be recalled that the Fourth Front Red Army, which had made its base in Szechuan as early as 1933, had originally been formed in the Honan-Hupeh-Anhui soviet districts. Its march across Honan to Szechuan had been led by Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien and Chang Kuo-t'ao, two veteran Reds, of whom something more is said later on. Remarkable successes——and tragic excesses——had marked their campaigns in Szechuan, the whole northern half of which had once been under their sway. At the time of its junction in Moukung with the southern Bolsheviks, Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien's army numbered about 50, 000 men, so that the combined Red force concentrated in western Szechuan in July, 1935, was nearly 100, 000.
Here the two armies divided, part of the southerners continuing northward while the rest remained with the Fourth Front Army in Szechuan. There was disagreement abut the correct course to pursue. Chang Kuo-t'ao and Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien favored remaining in Szechuan and attempting to reassert Communist influence south of the Yangtze. Mao Tse-tung, Chu Teh, and the majority of the Politburo were determined to continue into the Northwest. The period of indecision was ended by two factors. First was an enveloping movement by Chiang Kai-shek's troops, moving into Szechuan from the east and from the north, which succeeded in driving a wedge between two sections of the Red Army. Second was the rapid rise of one of the hurried rivers of Szechuan, which then physically divided the forces, and which suddenly became impassable. There were other factors of intraparty struggle involved which need not be discussed here.[1]
In August, with the First Army Corps as vanguard, the main forces from Kiangsi continued the northward march, leaving Chu Teh and Li Hsien-nient[**] with Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien and Chang Kuo-t'ao. The Fourth Front Army was to remain here and in Tibet for another year, and be joined by Ho Lung's Second Front Army, [*] before making a sensational march into Kansu. Leading the Red cavalcade that in August, 1935, moved toward the Great Grasslands, on the border of Szechuan and Tibet, were Commanders Lin Piao, P'eng Teh-huai, Tso Ch'uan, [**] Ch'en Keng, ** Chou En-lai, and Mao Tse-tung, most of the officials from the Kiangsi Central Government, and a majority of the members of the Central Committee of the Party. They began this last phase of the march with about 30, 000 men.
The most dangerous and exciting travel lay before them, for the route they chose led through wild country inhabited by the independent Mantzu tribesmen and the nomadic Hsifan, a warring people of eastern Tibet. Passing into the Mantzu and Tibetan territories, the Reds for the first time faced a populace united in its hostility to them, and their sufferings on this part of the trek exceeded anything of the past. They had money but could buy no food. They had guns but their enemies were invisible. As they marched into the thick forests and jungles and across the headwaters of a dozen great rivers, the tribesmen withdrew from the vicinity of the march. They stripped their houses bare, carried off all edibles, drove their cattle and fowl to the plateaus, and simply disinhabited the whole area.
A few hundred yards on either side of the road, however, it was quite unsafe. Many a Red who ventured to forage for a sheep never returned. The mountaineers hid in the thick bush and sniped at the marching "invaders."They climbed the mountains, and when the Reds filed through the deep, narrow, rock passes, where sometimes only one or two could move abreast, the Mantzu rolled huge boulders down to crush them and their animals. Here were no chances to explain "Red policy toward national minorities, "no opportunities for friendly alliance. The Mantzu Queen had an implacable traditional hatred for Chinese of any variety, and recognized no distinctions between Red and White. She threatened to boil alive anyone who helped the travelers.
Unable to get food except by capturing it, the Reds were obliged to make war for a few cattle. Mao told me that they had a saying then, "To buy one sheep costs the life of one man."From the Mantzu fields they harvested green Tibetan wheat, and vegetables such as beets and turnips——the latter of an enormous size that would "feed fifteen men, "according to Mao Tse-tung. [‡] On such meager supplies they equipped themselves to cross the Great Grasslands. "This is our only foreign debt, "Mao said to me humorously, "and some day we must pay the Mantzu and the Tibetans for the provisions we were obliged to take from them."Only by capturing tribesmen could they find guides through the country. But of these guides they made friends, and after the Mantzu frontier was crossed many continued the journey. Some of them were now students in the Communist Party school in Shensi, and might one day return to their land to tell the people the difference between "Red"and "White"Chinese.
In the Grasslands there was no human habitation for ten days. Almost perpetual rain falls over this swampland, and it was possible to cross its center only by a maze of narrow footholds known to the native mountaineers who led the Reds. More animals were lost, and more men. Many foundered in the weird sea of wet grass and dropped from sight into the depth of the swamp, beyond reach of their comrades. There was no firewood; they were obliged to eat their wheat green and vegetables raw. There were no trees for shelter, and the lightly equipped Reds carried no tents. At night they huddled under bushes tied together, which gave but scant protection against the rain. But from this trial, too, they emerged triumphant——more so, at least, than the White troops, who pursued them, lost their way, and turned back with only a fraction of their number intact.
The Red Army now reached the Kansu border. Several battles still lay ahead, the loss of any one of which might have meant decisive defeat. More Nanking, Tungpei, and Moslem troops had been mobilized in southern Kansu to stop their march, but they managed to break through all these blockades, and in the process annexed hundreds of horses from the Moslem cavalry which people had confidently predicted would finish them once and for all. Footsore, weary, and at the limit of human endurance, they finally entered northern Shensi, just below the Great Wall. On October 20, 1935, a year after its departure from Kiangsi, the vanguard of the First Front Army connected with the Twenty-fifth, Twenty-sixth, and Twenty-seventh Red armies, which had already established a small base of soviet power in Shensi in 1933. Numbering fewer than 20, 000 survivors now, they sat down to realize the significance of their achievement.[2]
The statistical recapitulation[*] of the Long March is impressive. It shows that there was an average of almost a skirmish a day, somewhere on the line, while altogether fifteen whole days were devoted to major pitched battles. Out of a total of 368 days en route, 235 were consumed in marches by day, and 18 in marches by night. Of the 100 days of halts——many of which were devoted to skirmishes——56 days were spent in northwestern Szechuan, leaving only 44 days of rest over a distance of about 5, 000 miles, or an average of one halt for every 114 miles of marching. The mean daily stage covered was 71 li, or nearly 24 miles——a phenomenal pace for a great army and its transport to average over some of the most hazardous terrain on earth.
According to data furnished to me by Commander Tso Ch'uan, the Reds crossed eighteen mountain ranges, five of which were perennially snow-capped, and they crossed twenty-four rivers. They passed through twelve different provinces, occupied sixty-two cities and towns, and broke through enveloping armies of ten different provincial warlords, besides defeating, eluding, or outmaneuvering the various forces of Central Government troops sent against them. They crossed six different aboriginal districts, and penetrated areas through which no Chinese army had gone for scores of years.
However one might feel about the Reds and what they represented politically (and there was plenty of room for argument), it was impossible to deny recognition of their Long March——the Ch'ang Cheng, as they called it——as one of the great exploits of military history. In Asia only the Mongols had surpassed it, and in the past three centuries there had been no similar armed migration of a nation with the exception, perhaps, of the amazing Flight of the Torgut, of which Sven Hedin told in his Jehol, City of Emperors. Hannibal's march over the Alps looked like a holiday excursion beside it. A more interesting comparison was Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, when the Grand Army was utterly broken and demoralized.
While the Red Army's March to the Northwest was unquestionably a strategic retreat, forced upon it by regionally decisive defeats, the army finally reached its objective with its nucleus still intact, and its morale and political will evidently as strong as ever. The Communists rationalized, and apparently believed, that they were advancing toward an anti-Japanese front, and this was a psychological factor of great importance. It helped them turn what might have been a demoralized retreat into a spirited march of victory. History has subsequently shown that they were right in emphasizing what was undoubtedly the second fundamental reason for their migration：an advance to a region which they correctly foresaw was to play a determining role in the immediate destinies of China, Japan, and Soviet Russia. This skillful propagandive maneuver must be noted as a piece of brilliant political strategy. It was to a large extent responsible for the successful conclusion of the heroic trek.
In one sense this mass migration was the biggest armed propaganda tour in history. The Reds passed through provinces populated by more than 200, 000, 000 people. Between battles and skirmishes, in every town occupied, they called mass meetings, gave theatrical performances, heavily "taxed"the rich, freed many "slaves"(some of whom joined the Red Army), preached "liberty, equality, democracy, "confiscated the property of the "traitors"(officials, big landlords, and tax collectors) and distributed their goods among the poor. Millions of the poor had now seen the Red Army and heard it speak, and were no longer afraid of it. The Reds explained the aims of agrarian revolution and their anti-Japanese policy. They armed thousands of peasants and left cadres behind to train Red partisans who kept Nanking's troops busy. Many thous-sands dropped out on the long and heartbreaking march, but thousands of others——farmers, apprentices, slaves, deserters from the Kuomintang ranks, workers, all the disinherited——joined in and filled the ranks.
Some day someone will write the full epic of this exciting expedition. Meanwhile, as epilogue, I offer a free translation of a classical poem about this 6, 000-mile excursion written by Chairman Mao Tse-tung——a rebel who could write verse as well as lead a crusade：The Red Army, never fearing the challenging Long March, Looked lightly on the many peaks and rivers. Wu Liang's Range rose, lowered, rippled, And green-tiered were the rounded steps of Wu Meng. Warm-beating the Gold Sand River's waves against the rocks, And cold the iron-chain spans of Tatu's bridge. A thousand joyous li of freshening snow on Min Shan, And then, the last pass vanquished, Three Armies smiled！[3]
[*]Su, the first Chinese character used in transliterating the word "soviet, "is a common family name, and wei-ai, suffixed to it, might easily seem like a given name.
[**]See BN.
[*]Jen Pi-shih was Ho Lung's political commissar.
[**]See BN.
[‡]Vegetable crops in the rarefied air of the Tibetan highlands attain five to ten times "normal"size during the brief growing season.
[*]An Account of the Long March……