Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (30 page)

In the first days of October, while the battle of Shanghai was being decided in the fields west of the city, the municipal area and the immediate suburbs continued to see heavy fighting. The Japanese also launched several attacks against the semi-rural Jiangwan sector on October 2 and 3, mostly in an attempt to divert the attention of the Chinese artillery, which at the time was posing a significant danger to the Japanese column preparing to attack across Wusong Creek. All the assaults were beaten back, at high cost to the attackers, due to a combination of Japanese arrogance and Chinese professionalism.

The Japanese had underestimated the Chinese and had prepared the operation with a minimum of secrecy, allowing the divisions about to be attacked, the 87th and 36th, to gather detailed intelligence about their
plans. Equally devastating to the Japanese, they had assembled the attack force too close to the frontline, without preparing a robust defensive perimeter, giving the Chinese the opportunity to launch preemptive strikes against them. To the German advisors on the scene, the successful intelligence work was testimony to the fact that Nanjing divisions, which they themselves had trained, remained superior to almost any other units in the Chinese Army.
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In Zhabei district, a more urbanized area, visiting foreigners were astonished to witness the thoroughness of the Chinese fortifications. “Every street was a defense line and every house a pocket fort,” wrote an impressed correspondent after visiting the area. “Thousands of holes had been knocked through walls, linking the labyrinth of lanes into a vast system of defense in depth. Every intersection had been made into a miniature fortress of steel and concrete. Even the stubs of bomb-battered walls had been slotted at ground level for machine guns and rifles.” The city looked deserted at first sight, but sentries were posted at all important locations, ready to rouse the troops resting fully equipped inside the larger ruins. “No wonder the Japanese Army was months behind its boasts,” the foreign correspondent commented.
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The artillery on the east side of the Huangpu River remained active in October, but it was constrained by the certainty that any attack it launched would be met almost immediately by a strong Japanese response. Under these limitations, Sun Shengzhi, the commander of an artillery regiment in Pudong, was ordered to launch a barrage across the river on the Gongda airfield, which was becoming increasingly active and provided close air support for troops fighting in the Shanghai area. For the attack to have any effect, careful preparation was called for, and Sun Shengzhi carried out reconnaissance and planning in cooperation with Gustav Boegel, a German lieutenant attached to the Pudong artillery as an advisor.

On the eve of the attack, Chinese soldiers rolled a battery of eight Bofors guns to a predetermined position 300 yards from the riverbank. They were all in position by midnight. Hours of waiting followed until shortly before dawn, when the airfield turned on its lights. From then until the first plane took off, there was a window of about 50 minutes, reconnaissance had shown. It took a couple of shells to register the target, and then all eight guns fired in rapid succession, using up their shell supply
within just minutes. Their mission accomplished, the crews hastily packed up and retreated before the rising sun would expose them to a lethal barrage from the naval guns in the middle of the river. Later intelligence reports suggested that five Japanese planes had been destroyed and seven damaged in the attack.
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Another, even more successful, attack followed. By mid-October, the German-trained 88th Infantry Division took advantage of a lull in the fighting to prepare for one of the most ambitious attacks in municipal Shanghai since late August. It was a strike meant to cut off Sichuan North Road, a major supply line from the Japanese-controlled docks to the Japanese units in the north of the city. The assault would again use the tactics developed by the German
Stosstruppen
in the latter years of the Great War. For
Stosstruppen,
the main means of weakening the enemy line was infiltration rather than massive frontal attack, and mobility was prioritized over firepower.

The attack took place on October 18. After a brief bombardment by artillery and mortars, the lightly equipped Chinese soldiers moved at great speed down streets near the North Railway Station and managed to take the dazed Japanese defenders by complete surprise, occupying a segment of Sichuan North Road. As a result, the supply chain using the road was interrupted for several days afterwards. The German advisors saw the attack as a fresh departure from a Chinese way of war that was too heavily dependent on large-unit operations and unimaginative wrestling over strongholds. In the international press it was seen in conjunction with the attacks carried out by the Pudong batteries and erroneously interpreted as a precursor of a major Chinese offensive.
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In the fall of 1937, Shanghai was on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. The battle was the most dramatic manifestation yet of Japan’s aggressive imperialist ambitions and the public wanted to know more. At the same time, convenience entered the picture. This was not a distant battlefield, reached by aventurous reporters at overwhelming personal hazard, but one of the great cities of the world. Foreign correspondents were already present in great numbers, or could easily sail in from places like Tokyo and Manila. They could report on the progress of the war at the same
time as they enjoyed the relative luxury of Shanghai’s five-star hotels, which continued to operate as before despite the war on their doorsteps.

Journalists and photographers enjoyed an unprecedented freedom of movement. In the early stages of the battle, when fighting was confined to the municipal area, they could easily cover both sides of the story within a single day. First thing in the morning they could visit the Japanese positions, take a detour and then arrive at the Chinese side of the front. Once they had what they needed they could return to the neutral territory of the International Settlement and file their stories without having to worry about being censored by anyone.
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Later, as the war moved to the outskirts of Shanghai, the Japanese restricted coverage by foreign journalists, but access was as uninhibited as ever on the Chinese side. The services of a modern transportation system made the urban battlefront even more accessible to inquisitive correspondents. When the battle was reaching its climax, Erik Nystrom, a Swedish correspondent, used a press conference to ask the Shanghai mayor where the front was. “The end of our line is just west of the railway, beyond Jess-field Park,” the mayor said. “Umm, I tank I yust take the Yessfield buss out to the front tomorrow,” the Swede said, seeing no reason to waste money on expensive transportation.
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The Chinese and, despite the restrictions they imposed, the Japanese both understood the value of propaganda and tried their best to project their respective views to the world public. They both held daily press conferences, helpfully spaced out so correspondents who were covering the story on their own did not have to miss out on anything. Even so, most foreign journalists had a clear preference for the Chinese. This partly came down to the fact that they were mostly members of China’s foreign press corps, and, as is often the case with correspondents, had gradually come to sympathize or even identify with the country they were reporting from. At a more fundamental human level, it was also a reflection of the pity they felt for the young Chinese republic as it was being victimized by naked Japanese aggression.

This made for a tense atmosphere at the daily news conferences carried out by the Japanese military, despite a generous offering of drinks ranging from coffee and tea to beer and whiskey. One army representative, and one from the navy, would deliver the day’s briefing in Japanese, with the trans
lator “Bob” Horiguchi providing a perfect rendering in idiomatic American English. After that it would be time for questions at which time the anglophone correspondents and especially the Americans, perhaps emboldened by the free flow of liquor, would delight in asking impossible questions, setting off a to and fro of scathing remarks.
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As the novelty of the battle rubbed off, reporters working for local media found that their audience in the International Settlement lost some of their interest in the fighting over hamlets in the countryside near Shanghai and wanted to be entertained with the usual journalism fare of true crime and celebrity scandals. This required a certain degree of versatility. Carroll Alcott, an American journalist with years of experience in Asia, remembered witnessing a major battle between Chinese and Japanese soldiers, followed by a walk through streets littered with gore after an air attack. He ended the day covering a court case against a gang of jewelry thieves led by a dubious character known as Hatchet-Face Rosie.
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However, for the vast majority of reporters present in Shanghai, it was the epic battle that mattered. Journalistic careers were founded in the rubble of the city and the trenches of the suburbs. Eyewitness accounts straight from the frontline were at a premium. Descriptions of how a journalist himself had narrowly escaped death to bring his story to the readers were likely to reach a wider audience. Yet, despite the stiff competition for scoops, the journalists seemed to live charmed lives. No one from the neutral media lost his or her life while reporting from the frontline for the entire first three months of battle. This was a remarkable record that was to stay unchanged until the very last day of hostilities in the city.
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Kuse Hisao’s company, part of the Japanese Army’s 9th Infantry Division, was roused before dawn and started the march to the frontline at 6:00 a.m. on October 13. The mood was dejected as the column trudged down muddy paths, softened by days of incessant rain. The soldiers passed a spot where, so they muttered to each other, an entire Japanese battalion had been wiped out in a night attack. Their own mission could end up equally as deadly. There were to take part in yet another attack on the town of Chenjiahang, located just north of Wusong Creek. It was an important and heavily defended stronghold that obstructed the southward advance
of the Japanese Army. The Chinese would hold onto the village fanatically, like they did any other fortified village. It would become bloody.
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When Kuse Hisao’s unit had almost reached the front, the soldiers were told to rest. Chenjiahang was somewhere in the distance, behind tall cotton fields. The order to attack came at 1:00 p.m. The Japanese artillery started exactly at the arranged minute. The Chinese artillery answered in kind, but with much greater force. It was an unpleasant surprise for the Japanese to be so heavily outgunned, but the assault went ahead nonetheless. Wave after wave of attackers marched off obediently, disappearing into the cotton fields. The plants offered some cover, but not enough. The Chinese defenders fired from invisible positions, especially aiming at the machine gunners, who were always the first to be targeted because of their firepower. One was shot through the thigh, while another received a wound to the face.

The Chinese fire grew so dense that it was almost impossible for the Japanese to move. Kuse Hisao’s platoon slowly crawled forward across the field, through the sticky mud created by the downpour of the recent days. Over the noise of weapons being fired, the wailing of the injured could be heard, but it gradually became weaker. Kuse Hisao was relieved when he reached a small creek, rolling down the slope in the hope of gaining cover from the fire there. However, his relief turned to horror when he discovered the water was filled with Japanese and Chinese corpses in various stages of decomposition.

The attack on Chenjiahang had bogged down, and Kuse Hisao and his platoon spent the night in the dreary company of the dead soldiers. The following day the order arrived for two neighboring platoons to renew the attack. Kuse Hisao’s platoon was kept in reserve, but the day’s battle was no more successful than the previous day’s, and when it was almost dark, they too were ordered to advance. Like the previous day, they moved by crawling across the field. They passed the bodies of several soldiers from the two other platoons, who had been killed and lay in pools of blood. Eventually, they reached another creek. Barbed wire was rolled out along the bank, and engineers were busy removing it, keeping as low as they could. On the other side, behind a bamboo grove, they were told, was Chenjiahang.

The sun had already set, and Kuse Hisao was crouching in the dark, waiting for orders about what to do next. Suddenly, a huge white flame lit
up the night. The engineers had brought a flamethrower, the most dreaded weapon of the Japanese Army, and had crossed the creek. The bamboo grove on the other side was ablaze. “Attack!” someone shouted. They jumped into the waist-deep water, waded across, and grabbed branches of bamboo trees to haul themselves onto the other bank. Quickly scaling the slope, they found themselves in a maze of Chinese trenches, which were apparently deserted. They took a quick break, triumphant and relieved at the same time. They had occupied a corner of Chenjiahang, without even firing a shot.

It was a brief pause, interrupted when Kuse Hisao heard lowered voices. They were not speaking Japanese. A split second later, a German-style stick hand grenade was lobbed into his trench. The next thing Kuse Hisao remembered was gradually emerging from a daze, with a humming sound in his ears. He felt a sharp pain in his eyes, and he was unable to open them. He was grateful to be alive but he expected the trench to be overrun and that he would be killed any moment. However, the Chinese attack did not come. Kuse Hisao spent the night, helpless and blinded, until dawn finally broke and friendly hands carried him back to the rear.
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Few would have been able to place Chenjiahang on a map before the war, but for several weeks, beginning in early October, the Chinese and the Japanese fought bitterly over its increasingly devastated streets. Along with Yanghang, Chenjiahang was considered one of the two key points that the Japanese absolutely needed to control in order to be able to move south towards Dachang. They would do anything to take Chenjiahang, and the Chinese would do anything to keep it. The see-saw battle over the town continued even long after Japanese troops had managed to break through the Wusong Creek barrier elsewhere along the front.
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