Word: lunghai
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...Honan famine of 1943 was one of the worst in modern history. But it sounded as if it would make a story. So, at the end of February 1943, I flew to North China with my friend Harrison Forman of the London Times, and won permission to travel the Lunghai railway from Paochi through Sian to the gap through which the Yellow River flowed and the railway ran. The Japanese, on the far side of the river, habitually shelled this gap by day. The station at the break, where we spent the evening, stank of urine, stank of shit, stank...
...conqueror of Manchuria, was advancing into Hunan province on two fronts, apparently driving for the Nationalist strongpoint at Changsha. Four of Lin's divisions captured the Yangtze port of Ichang, 200 miles north of Changsha. In Shensi province, the Nationalist defenders abandoned Paochi, the western terminus of the Lunghai railroad, but counterattacked east and west of the town. Another big battle was shaping up in western Kiangsi province, directly above Canton...
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...
...palm of his hand. Twelve miles eastward his old comrade, Lieut. General Huang Po-tao, was encircled in an area 3½ miles in diameter around the rail town of Nienchuang. In eleven days of fighting Huang had lost 40,000 troops. From his position north of the Lunghai railway, General Li was punching east to relieve Huang. In a parallel position south of the railway, Lieut. General Chiu Ching-chuan's Second Army Group was also pushing east...
When the sun had dropped below the horizon and a white ground mist had crawled slowly up the valley floor along the black line of the Lunghai railroad, Li telephoned an order to his artillery commanders. Within a few minutes two spots in the valley blazed with the flash of cannon fire; tracers from the 37-mm. guns on Li's tanks cut red streaks through the blackness as they arched in a slow trajectory like monstrous lighted clay pigeons. Less frequently the huge muzzle flash of 105-mm. guns ballooned from the plain, hung for an instant, then...