Word: kaoliang
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Along a battered railway in North Shansi, where the year's last tasseled kaoliang still stands unreaped, the biggest, bloodiest battle in a year of China's civil war has just ended. A Government army, rolling to the relief of Tatung, effected a junction with a column from the long-besieged city...
...battle had begun in early August, when the kaoliang was still green and Communists encircled the strategic coal and railroad center. For 45 days Tatung held out against assault, until the column from Suiyuan broke the siege ring. Some 50,000 fighting men died or suffered wounds...
From the dense fields of kaoliang lining each side of the highway came a spatter of small-arms fire. With a combat-developed reflex motion, the marines sprang from their vehicles, took cover in a ditch and fired back. Mortar shells and machine-gun bullets flushed the ambushers-Chinese riflemen, some clad in loincloths, some in the bluish uniforms of Chinese Communists...
Sometimes the unfinished dikes break, and Todd and his engineers rush in thousands of coolies for emergency repairs. Recently they plugged a break by pouring in the only material handy, 130,000,000 Ibs. of kaoliang (sorghum), sacrificing today's food for the hope of tomorrow's. A few days later bandits dynamited a stone quarry and kidnaped ten workers; the bandits had been hired by a contractor whose theory was : why spoil a good thing by finishing...
...loud explosion lit the tracks and started a spat of rifle fire. Shadowy figures ran crouching through the tall kaoliang grass and the southbound express whistled in the distance. The Japanese blamed the Chinese and said the blast had torn up 31 inches of track. Nevertheless, the train passed over the spot at full speed without mishap...