Word: changteh
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Tired Troops. Before the enemy stood the tired Chinese armies of round-faced, explosive General Hsueh Yueh. Once some of China's finest, these troops had been run through the meat grinder at Changteh last November; had still not recovered. They had had to pull out of Changsha after a stubborn, hopeless defense, to escape annihilation. This week the armies, beat out, short of food, retreated painfully on foot. Where they could stand and fight, no one seemed to know...
Episode at Changteh. Unmelting Chinese troops last week crept back through the blackened ruins of Changteh, harassing the bedraggled, bandy-legged Japanese in retreat toward their Yangtze River bases. The communiqués once again created an impression of another violent battle in a continuous, violent war. The impression was exaggerated: the battle of Changteh was violent enough, but it was an interlude in an essentially unviolent war. As in previous foraging expeditions, the Japs had pushed into the Tungting Lake rice bowl of central China. The Chinese 57th Division fought with hand grenades and bayonets until only 300 were...
...days later, the survivors returned with reinforcements to retake Changteh. The Japs seized or burned the rice stores, retreated when it was obvious that the Chinese lines would only bend, not break. Once again Chinese resistance and Jap half measures had disposed of a threat to U.S. air bases in central China, a threat which might have been serious if the Japs had chosen to bring enough strength against the ill-fed, ill-equipped Chinese...
There had been no bubonic plague in Changteh for ten generations, but within a week there were six cases. All died. Dr. Lim flew from Chungking to superintend the autopsies. They showed the marks of the "black death"-the black tongue and dark spots on the skin from which the plague got its name, the hugely swollen lymph glands of the groin and armpits. Careful laboratory tests confirmed the autopsy findings...
...Japanese had really begun the nightmare of bacterial warfare, their choice of bubonic plague was not smart. Changteh is little more than a hundred miles from Japanese lines, and the disease travels as fast today as when it ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages. If warm weather brought an epidemic to Changteh, the disease might sweep to the Japanese...