Word: suchow
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wobbled and fell in Greece. Along the nation's East Coast a wildcat strike of longshoremen exploded into a full-scale tie-up. Then last week came the news that the whole Nationalist government in China faced collapse, that Nationalist China was fighting for its life on the Suchow front...
...million men surged around Suchow in the greatest battle in China's history. A Communist victory would open the way to Nanking and probably seal the fate of the reeling Nationalist regime. A government victory might buy enough time for Chiang's harried forces to recover from their recent string of shattering defeats-and for effective aid to arrive from the West...
...Suchow, junction point of the south-north rail line from Nanking and the east-west Lunghai line to the coast, is a drab, unlovely city, protected by a rim of well-fortified, rocky hills. By week's end Communist General Chen Yi's mobile columns had swung around Suchow, cut all rail lines and brought the main airfield under artillery bombardment. Officers of Nationalist "Bandit Suppression Headquarters" hastily flew south to set up quarters nearer Nanking...
...generals' attention was focused on the area round Suchow, key to Nanking and the Yangtze Valley, now threatened by 185,000 Communist troops under General Chen Yi. As one minister put it: "Manchuria is a limb that has been amputated. The body can live, despite amputation. North China is another limb, and even that may be sacrificed. But Central China is the Nationalist heart-and if the heart is pierced the body dies...
...defend China's heart, the Gimo had disposed 400,000 troops in the flat, rich, water-laced plains around Suchow. At week's end, as his soldiers met the first shock of Chen Yi's armies, Chiang made one more effort to rally his people around him. At a Kuomintang meeting in Nanking, Chiang cried: "Our war against the Communist rebels is a national war, a continuation of the war of resistance against the Japanese . . . We must be ready for a struggle of eight years or more against the Communists . . . The government is determined to fight...