Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (8 page)

————————

The moment of battle had arrived too soon for the Chinese Army. It had not had time to transform itself into a first-class fighting force of 60 modern divisions, which was Chiang Kai-shek’s dream and could probably have been achieved if peace had lasted longer. Even so, Alexander von Falken-hausen was confident that his highly motivated, thoroughly trained and
expensively equipped Chinese soldiers could perform well in the struggle with the Japanese that was getting underway. The key question, Falken-hausen thought, was whether the Chinese were prepared to abandon their dated practices and follow German instructions. Most importantly, they were to seek an
Entscheidungsschlacht
—the decisive battle of Prussian doctrine that could eliminate their adversary in one fell stroke.

“If the Chinese Army follows the advice of the German advisors, it is capable of driving the Japanese over the Great Wall,” the self-assured officer told a British diplomat. Perhaps drawing implicit comparisons with the way a series of victorious wars in the 1860s and 1870s had helped unite the German nation and forge it into the greatest power in continental Europe,
¹⁶
Falkenhausen considered the upcoming cataclysm a welcome opportunity to bring the Chinese people together after years of internal strife. “War on a national scale,” he said, “is a necessary experience for China and will unify her.”
¹⁷

The German general’s optimism had rubbed off on Chiang Kai-shek, who had internalized the German way of war and insisted on a strong stand against the Japanese in the early stage of the battle of Shanghai. During the night between August 13 and 14, he finally sent orders to Zhang Zhizhong, the commander of the left wing, to launch the all-out attack on the Japanese positions that the field commanders had been craving for. Zhang was to throw all troops at his disposal into one bold effort to knock out the Japanese once and for all, the way the Germans recommended. The plan had one weakness. The assault was to concentrate on the marine headquarters and the rest of the Hongkou salient, while avoiding battle with the Japanese inside the formal borders of the International Settlement. This was meant as a sop to international public opinion, and was sound politics. However, militarily it approached suicide and significantly raised the risks of the entire operation. The Hongkou area was the most heavily fortified position of the entire front. The marine headquarters was at the center of a dense network of heavy machine gun positions protected by barbed wire, concrete emplacements and walls of sandbags.

After preparations that lasted most of the day on August 14, Zhang’s forces launched their attack late in the afternoon. Intense fighting took place in the few hours left before sunset, and it was evident almost immediately that the 88th Infantry Division had run into resistance that was
even tougher than expected. In addition to the direct fire from the entrenched Japanese, the attackers were bombarded by the Third Fleet’s powerful artillery, which was awe-inspiring even when it used only a fraction of its total strength of 700 pieces.
¹⁸
As during the Great War, artillery was the queen of the battlefield. The Chinese infantry, by contrast, lacked proper training in the use of heavy weaponry against fortified enemy positions.
¹⁹
Their heavier guns, which could have made a difference, were held too far in the rear, and all too easily missed their targets as inexperienced crews followed the flawed coordinates of observers not placed near enough to the targets.
²⁰
In addition, some of the Japanese positions had such thick defensive walls that it was questionable whether even the most powerful weaponry on the Chinese side, 150mm howitzers, could do more than just dent them.
²¹

Such tactics led to extraordinarily heavy losses on the Chinese side, even in senior ranks. Towards 5:00 p.m. Major General Huang Meixing, the 41-year-old commander of the 88th Infantry Division’s 264th Brigade, was leading an attack in the vicinity of the marine headquarters. His divisional commander Sun Yuanliang tried to contact him on the field phone, but was forced to wait. When he finally got through to Huang, he cracked a rare joke. “It took so long I thought you were dead,” he said. Just minutes afterwards, as if fate wanted to punish Sun Yuanliang for this bit of black humor, Huang Meixing’s command post was hit by an artillery grenade, killing him instantly.
²²
Shock spread through the ranks as the news became known, recalled Wu Ganliao, a machine gunner in the 88th Division. “Brigade commander Huang was a fair-minded person, and he showed real affection for his troops. It was sad news.”
²³

Huang was by no means an exceptional case. Chinese officers died in large numbers from day one. One regiment lost seven company commanders in the same short attack.
²⁴
There were several explanations for the high incidence of death among the senior ranks. One was an ethos among some officers to lead from the front in an attempt to instill courage into their men. However, even leading from the rear could be highly risky in urban combat, where the opposing sides were often just yards removed from each other and where the maze-like surroundings provided by multi-story buildings and narrow alleys could lead to a highly fluid situation, so that the enemy was just as likely to be behind as in front. In addition, soldiers on
both sides deliberately targeted enemy officers, perhaps more so than in other conflicts, because stiff leadership hierarchies placed a premium on being able to decapitate the opposing unit.

First and foremost, however, the massive fatality rates among officers and, to an even larger extent, the rank and file were the result of Chinese forces employing frontal attacks against a well-armed entrenched enemy. The men who, as a result, were dying by the hundreds were China’s elite soldiers, the product of years of effort to build up a modern military. They formed the nation’s best hope of being able to resist Japan in a protracted war. Nevertheless, on the very first day of battle, they were being squandered at an alarming, unsustainable rate. After just a few hours of offensive operations with very little gain to show for them, Chiang Kai-shek decided to cut his losses. “Do not carry out attacks this evening,” he commanded Zhang Zhizhong in a telegram. “Await further orders.”
²⁵

————————

In the weeks preceding the outbreak of war in Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek had received a parade of leaders from the provinces who were anxious to join in the upcoming fight. After years of civil strife a new sense of unity was tying them together for the first time. “Lead us against the Japanese, and we pledge our troops and loyalty for the duration of the war,” was the message they all conveyed.
²⁶
As a sign of his sincerity to the provincials, Chiang decided to appoint one of his longest-standing rivals—a man who years earlier would happily have seen him killed—to the position of overall commander in the Shanghai area.

His name was Feng Yuxiang, but to foreigners, he was better known as the Christian General. He had risen to prominence as a warlord in China’s tumultuous north and become famous for his missionary zeal after converting to Christianity. He was reported to have carried out mass baptisms of his soldiers with fire hoses and ordered them to march to the tunes of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”
²⁷
This was all very well for Chiang Kai-shek, himself a converted Christian, but he was more concerned about the 54-year-old Feng Yuxiang’s advocacy of a lenient line towards the Com-munists. Besides, he could hardly forget that Feng Yuxiang had participated in an open rebellion against his rule early in the decade. Even so, he was prepared to shelve these differences for the time being.

Tall and bulky and perennially cheerful, Feng Yuxiang did not hesitate when offered the command. “As long as it serves the purpose of fighting Japan,” Feng told Chiang, “I’ll say yes, no matter what it is.” His appointment was announced as the first shots were fired in Shanghai.
²⁸
Feng was about a decade older than his direct subordinates, which was an advantage, Chiang thought. He wanted someone possessed and prudent who could counterbalance the fiery tempers at the next level down the chain of command. “The frontline commanders are too young. They’ve got a lot of courage, but they lack experience,” Chiang said.
²⁹

Feng moved his command post to a temple outside Suzhou in the middle of August. Almost immediately afterwards, he went to see Zhang Zhizhong, who had set up his command right by the Suzhou city wall. At that time, Zhang had just begun to realize how tough the Japanese resistance in Shanghai really was. His staff was beginning to pick up disconcerting signs of his illness, sensing that sickness and exhaustion meant he was physically struggling to stay upright and lead the battle.
³⁰
Perhaps a feeling of being overwhelmed was why he failed to undertake basic tasks such as providing adequate protection from air attack.

Feng, by contrast, had an infantryman’s healthy respect of aircraft and had noticed how his own motorcade had seemed to attract the attention of enemy airplanes. “You better move,” he told Zhang Zhizhong’s chief of staff. “Otherwise you’ll get bombed.” Shortly after his visit, Feng left for Shanghai in a car. He had not even got two miles before a swarm of Japanese planes appeared over his head, flying in the direction of Suzhou. Seconds later he saw clouds rise over Zhang Zhizhong’s command post. Zhang survived the bombing, but he had received a lesson. “The Japanese knew right from the start where Zhang’s headquarters was,” Feng said.
³¹

————————

For Sascha Spunt, the scion of the wealthy cotton-trading merchant dynasty, Friday, August 13 was an exciting day, but it had nothing to do with the war. He was getting married. After a civil ceremony at the French Consulate, the family had an informal luncheon at their luxurious home near the Bund. When a friend of the family was about to raise his glass for a toast, he was interrupted by the muffled boom of guns in the distance, then the sharper sound of the naval artillery just outside on the river.
“Nobody can say this wedding isn’t getting started with a bang,” the friend said.
³²

Expatriates picnicking in the Yangshupu area when the fighting started greeted the new turn of events with similar sangfroid. They were spectators and saw the fighting with the amused aloofness of onlookers forced to witness a drunken bar brawl. As shells from the naval artillery started flying over their heads, they agreed the time had come to withdraw south to the International Settlement. However, their mood remained excellent. It was the kind of adventure that had brought the thrill-seekers to Asia in the first place. One of them called it “the most exciting three hours since my own war days.”
³³

Just north of Suzhou Creek, a group of political scientists from American universities were watching the evolving battle from the roof of their hotel, the Astor House. They were on a study tour of Asia and had avoided Beijing because of the fighting there. Now they found themselves in the middle of the action, noticing how the fires in Zhabei colored the sky an unnatural, but strangely beautiful, hue of red. They were due to leave on a ship for Japan on Sunday, two days later, but had started wondering if the rapidly evolving events might upset their plans. “We were a little concerned, but not seriously concerned at that point,” said William Verhage, a 37-year-old professor from Minnesota State Teachers College.
³⁴

For the foreigners of Shanghai, visitors and residents alike, the war was a rather violent diversion, but nothing truly dangerous, or so they thought. For the Chinese, life was falling apart. As the fighting intensified around the Japanese district, thousands of refugees fled through the streets, heading for Suzhou Creek and the Garden Bridge, which was the only link to the International Settlement that remained open. It was a mad and merciless stampede where the weak had little chance. “My feet were slipping . . . in blood and flesh,” recalled Rhodes Farmer, a journalist for the
North China Daily News,
who found himself in a sea of people struggling to leave Hongkou. “Half a dozen times I knew I was walking on the bodies of children or old people sucked under by the torrent, trampled flat by countless feet.”

Near the creek, the mass of sweating and panting humanity was almost beyond control, as it funneled towards the bridge, which was a mere 55 feet wide. Two Japanese sentries were nearly overwhelmed by the crowds and reacted the way they had been taught—with immediate, reflexive bru
tality. One of them bayoneted an old man and threw the lifeless body into the filthy creek below. This did not deter any of the other refugees, who kept pushing towards the bridge and what they believed to be the safety of the International Settlement.
³⁵
They could not know it, but they were moving in the wrong direction, towards the most horrific slaughter of innocent civilians of the entire Shanghai campaign.

————————

A typhoon swept over Shanghai on Saturday, August 14. It was terrible weather for flying, but the Chinese Air Force nevertheless sent off its young pilots, 40 altogether, none of whom had been tried in battle. The lack of coordination between Chinese army and air force officers caused the attacks to have only marginal tactical value for the troops on the ground. While a few planes bombed the marine headquarters at Hongkou Park, causing no losses whatsoever to the Japanese soldiers holed up inside,
³⁶
most targeted the Japanese vessels in the Huangpu River, and especially the flagship, the
Izumo.

A total of six sorties took place over Shanghai during the day, concentrated in the morning and the late afternoon, with a long uneventful lull in between.
³⁷
The same scene was played out in each raid. Chinese aircraft would appear over the dark gray horizon and follow the Huangpu River north towards the Japanese fleet, which was anchored near Huangpu’s confluence with Suzhou Creek in a spot easily recognizable from the air. The Japanese vessels in turn would let loose their cannon and fill the air with a dense carpet of exploding shells, never allowing the planes to come close enough to drop their bombs with any degree of precision. “It was their first taste of Archie,” said a foreign spectator, who had been an aviator in the Great War, using pilot slang for anti-aircraft artillery. “When the shells began to burst round them they got the wind up and dropped their eggs as quickly as possible.”
³⁸