Word: kaifeng
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Center of Impact. Last week the focus of fighting was along the east-west Lunghai Railroad. There Communists had surged south to capture Kaifeng, and 90 miles of track. Nationalist armies counterattacked, and pushed the Communists off the railroad east of Kaifeng...
...strategic necessity. Through its two-way gate Nationalists could move to conquer and hold Northern China. Communists hoped to pour through it to conquer the Yangtze Valley. But if the A was the key to Peiping and the Yangtze, the keys to the A were Suchow and Kaifeng, where the Lunghai Railroad crossed the north-south lines. This was the meaning of last week's battles for Kaifeng...
...Honan Province, the twelfth longest river in the world ran sluggishly thick with yellowish silt from the loess lands of China's northwest. On its soggy banks last week coolies toiled with hand and basket, shovel and wheelbarrow, pitting their sweat-shiny muscles against the river. Near Kaifeng dikes were rising to replace those destroyed in 1938 by the Chinese when they scorched the earth in the path of the Jap invaders. Before the dikes were opened the river had flowed northeastward into the Pohai Gulf. Afterward, it turned southeastward and ran into the Yellow Sea. If the river...
Todd's fervor has joined Communists and Nationalists in an incredible alliance against the river. At the Kaifeng gap the two factions worked peaceably within a few miles of each other. In Communist-infested Shantung local leaders promised to mend 400 miles on each river bank and to resettle half a million people now living in the proposed river bed-a painfully arduous job of dismantling and moving 1,400 villages house-by-house. The Nationalists, for their part, agreed to pay coolies in the Communist area $1,000 a day from the Nanking treasury...
Todd last week was racing against time. If he cannot fill in the last 500 yards of the Kaifeng gap before the July floods, all his work may be wiped out. At any moment, the delicate accord between Nationalists and Communists might break. From the river last week, Todd could hear bugle calls and see the dust of marching columns as the Nationalists reinforced their Manchuria garrisons. He feared that one side or the other might attempt to blow up his dikes in order to pin the blame on the opposition. But if he won his race, millions would live...