Word: mukden
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Central Government troops were marching into the vast, rich region. With them was TIME Correspondent William Gray, the first American newsman to enter Manchuria. His report: It is a strange warfare that has taken China's Thirteenth and Fifty-Second Armies into southwest Manchuria on the road to Mukden. Thus far it is largely rifle warfare, and the front moves rapidly. You do not see shell holes or blasted buildings or wrecked vehicles or hospitals or bloating corpses. Only rarely are there wounded...
...front, somewhere ahead. Quick-eyed, shrewd little Lieut. General Tu Liming, commander of the Manchurian expedition, finds the Communists neither well-trained nor well-disciplined. Of the battle at Shankaikwan, which breached the Great Wall, he says: "It was only a skirmish." General Tu expects to reach Mukden (190 miles from Suichung) within two weeks. By week's end, his troops lunged 60 miles forward to Chinhsien, a key rail junction, where the Communists had tried to dig in. General Tu is almost certainly overconfident; he expects to have all Manchuria under control by Christmas...
Logistics & Morale. The problem of recapturing Manchuria from the Communists, to whom the Russians consistently resign control by the handy process of an early withdrawal before the National forces can arrive, seems largely one of communications and supply until Mukden is reached...
Rice and flour have been coming to General Tu's armies from Shanghai through the port of Chinwangtao. Supplies started moving north this week beyond the Great Wall over the Peiping-Mukden railroad, which so far has suffered relatively minor damage. At Mukden there will be more rice and flour, unless the Russians or Communists have cleared them out. If heavy fighting develops, ammunition supplies will be another problem: ammunition must still come up from the south...
...Japanese rifles, Japanese ammunition lifted from the stockpiles while the Russian guards conveniently looked the other way. Russians are stripping factories of their best machinery and generally throwing their weight around. A fortnight ago a French consular agent and a young American O.S.S. officer were bounced out of Mukden - for no other reason than that the Russians did not want them around. "Our neighbors," murmured a Peiping man, "do not appear to be governed by the established rules of civility...