Word: cantonment
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...South China's rice paddies, just harvested of their bumper crop. At Hengyang the Japanese had won the battle of Hunan. There they had paused for regrouping, to consolidate their supply lines and to rest their troops. Twice in a month they had feinted, first due south toward Canton, next southwest toward Kweilin, site of a major Fourteenth Air Force base. Both times they had halted, not yet certain they had the preponderant strength needed to finish...
About a thousand miles to the east, in China, the Japs stalled again in their drive down the Hankow-Canton railway from Hengyang and the twin drive toward Kweilin, where the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force base was threatened. The Japs' backing & filling, while increasing their already preponderant power, was puzzling. Of one thing observers were sure: it was now or never for the Japs. Within 60 days the Ledo-Burma supply route should be open. Thereafter, the Japs' last chance to cut China in half and wipe out U.S. A.A.F. bases near the China coast would be lost...
...Japs had taken stubborn Hengyang, key point on the Hankow-Canton railroad. Now, instead of continuing directly south toward Canton, they flung 120,000 troops southwest along the spur line toward Kweilin. An underprivileged Chinese Army, ill-nourished, ill-armed, ill-clad, stood before them, the Fourteenth's flyers hammered them desperately from above...
...China's war-within-a-war, a great battle had ended in Chinese defeat: after six weeks of siege, heroic Hengyang, on the Hankow-Canton railway, fell to the Japanese. The last word from Hengyang's starving, desperate Chinese garrison went on the radio just a few hours before the end. Said Hengyang's commander: "I am afraid this may be my last message...
...been lost at Hengyang. The Jap had been delayed and suffered costly losses. The Chinese and their flying American allies fought on to block a juncture between the enemy advancing from the north and the enemy stalled in the south 40 miles above Canton. The Chinese were convinced that the Japs would persist in their campaign to bring the entire railroad under their control, and thus cut China in two. They were equally convinced that the outside world did not appreciate the seriousness of the threat...