Word: huang
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After returning to Suchow, we boarded a Chinese air force C46 on a mission to air-drop ammunition and hospital supplies to General Huang Po-tao. Nienchuang, Huang's headquarters, nestles close to the smashed Lunghai railway. The village has a heart-shaped double wall and a double moat. The southern section of the town was burning and all nearby villages were heaps of wrecked houses.Trenches webbed out from Nienchuang like some scabrous disease infecting the good earth. All around the village, crumpled parachutes from previous drops sprinkled the brown countryside. As the C46 captain dropped...
...left flank, to the north, were four Communist columns under Red General Chen Yi. Chiu's right flank to the south was menaced by another eight columns of Chen's troops. Ahead, Li and Chiu faced three strong Communist defense lines between them and the beleaguered General Huang. "This is the bitterest fighting I have ever experienced," said General Li. "I have orders from the Generalissimo to advance at any cost. Communists we have captured say they have been told to fight to the death to hold the line." In eight days Li had advanced ten miles...
...moment in a low voice and returned to the table. In the candlelight the lines on his youthful face-he is 44 - had sagged. He stared at his rice bowl, then explained quietly that he had just had word of a radio message from his friend General Huang. "The trap is closing," said Li. "He must have help soon. We must reach him in two days...
...meal's end the general escorted us to our hut, apologizing again for the rough quarters. Through the bright moonlight Chinese air force planes droned continuously overhead, some with bombs which dropped with a heavy concussion, some with supplies to be parachuted to encircled General Huang. Artillery, which was dug in behind the village, kept up an intermittent fire-first came the muzzle blast, then the scream of the shell overhead, then a distant crunch as the shell exploded...
...after we landed at Nanking came the melancholy news that Huang Po-tao's moated walls had been pierced. The Communists claimed that his army was segmented and being chewed up piecemeal. If true, this left the Nationalists in a serious position. Both Li and Chiu had seriously overextended their lines in the effort to save Huang, and left themselves wide open to pincer attack. The next move was up to the Communists...