Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (38 page)

It appeared to Newiger and other German advisors that the Chinese high command, including Gu Zhutong, had already moved mentally to the next stage—full-scale retreat from the Shanghai area. The Germans agreed that this might be the only feasible option left for the Chinese, but what they failed to understand, in Newiger’s view, was that a retreat was a military operation like any other, and needed to be carefully planned. Most importantly, the flanks had to be secured to make for an orderly withdrawal, rather than a mad stampede for the rear. For this exact reason, even
if a consensus was gradually emerging to abandon Shanghai, it was still necessary to defend the southern flank. That meant moving aggressively against the force that had landed at Hangzhou Bay. The Germans thought it was simple logic. But no one was listening.
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Newiger had long had his doubts about the efficiency of decision making at the top level in the Chinese Army, but he had finally lost whatever illusions he might still have had. Fear of espionage caused the senior commanders to change positions two to three times a day, resulting in constant interruptions in the kind of meticulous staff work needed to make an army operate properly. Repeated Japanese air attacks further complicated life at the headquarters. The location of the air-raid shelters reserved for the senior officers was known only to a tiny group of people—another symptom of the pervasive fear of spies and assassins. However, the consequence was that the key officers were often nowhere to be found, hidden away in secret bunkers, when their presence was needed the most. By contrast, neither Newiger nor his fellow advisor on the Third War Zone staff, Lieutenant Klaus von Schmeling, was offered any particular protection against air attack. On the contrary, they were assigned quarters in a building with no basement. Perhaps it was a not-too-subtle indication of the Germans’ rapidly declining status.
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Despite this, what bothered Newiger the most was the fundamental apathy that he felt had set in at the headquarters. In the end, he could keep quiet no longer and approached Chiang Kai-shek himself. He found that by now, not even the supreme commander seemed eager to act at the moment of crisis. That was the last straw. Newiger asked to be pulled from the Third War Zone and allowed to return to Nanjing. “I left with a sad feeling of missed opportunities and in the realization that the events had been larger than the people in charge,” he wrote in brief memoirs prepared for his German subordinates after returning home.
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“Duty is heavier than a mountain, death is lighter than a feather.” Sone Kazuo, the young officer who had been goaded by his men into decapitating a prisoner, remembered the old saying well. It had been part of the ethical code guiding the soldiers and sailors of the Japanese Empire for more than 50 years, and every recruit for several generations had been supposed
to make it his own personal philosophy. As for himself, he felt no connection to those words as he stood 50 yards north of Suzhou Creek, watching another unit getting ready to cross. The officer commanding the unit was the aggressive type that many privates disliked intensely—prepared to defend Japan’s honor, and promote his own career, to the last man. As he stood there toasting with cold sake, his bombastic words sounded ominous in all their perverted ambition. “Your lives have all been entrusted to me,” he said, as he lifted his glass, facing the expressionless soldiers who were about to make a dash across the creek. “It is my hope that we can die together for this glorious cause.”
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Sone Kazuo should perhaps have felt detached. After all, he was not going to the creek at that moment. It was no good. He knew that any time he might be among the unlucky ones sent across the 150 feet of heavily defended water. He tried to come to terms with the fact that he could soon be killed, but it was not easy. He was only 22 years old and felt far too young to die. Too many thoughts, and too little to do. The lack of activity made the wait even worse, not just for Sone Kazuo, but for everyone around him. Some were visibly nervous and could think of nothing to busy themselves with that could take their minds off the imminent attack. Others wrote letters home. The format they followed was roughly the same: “Dear Mom and Dad. Everything is quiet here. Please don’t worry.” Sone Kazuo couldn’t help thinking that some of the letters would arrive at the same time as the telegram informing the parents that their son had died for the emperor.

Finally, the dreaded order arrived. It was the turn of Sone Kazuo’s company to attack across the river. It was evening when they were told, and they had a few hours to get ready before the early morning attack. It was the equivalent of being ordered “over the top” on the Western Front during the Great War. As part of the army’s ritual, Sone Kazuo drank a cup of wine with the rest of his unit. He was not used to alcohol and felt a burning sense in his throat. He had mixed feelings. On one hand, he did not want the danger. On the other hand, a voice inside him told him to just forget everything and get it over with.

Before dawn on the next day, they moved to the riverbank. A line of engineers appeared, wearing only helmets and loin cloths. They had the worst deal of anyone. They had to step out into the river, braving enemy
fire, and hold up the planks that the attacking soldiers were to run across in order to get to the other side. “Hey engineers, make it easy for us, will you?” the infantrymen said as they passed. They got no replies from the grim-faced, half-naked men. The engineers were protected by the darkness as they stepped into the cold water, and they avoided becoming the targets of enemy fire. As dawn broke, their man-held bridge stretched all the way to the other side.

The infantry started crossing in single file, and they immediately attracted fire from Chinese defenders on the other side, who had a better view of what was happening. Some of the soldiers were hit and fell into the water. From a distance, it almost looked as if they had simply tripped by accident. Much sooner than he would have liked, it was Sone Kazuo’s turn to run onto the primitive bridge and into the murderous fire. He saw machine gun bullets hit the surface of the water nearby, whipping up small geysers of white foam. He instinctively felt like stopping but he told himself that if he did not keep moving forward he would be an even easier target.

Suddenly, he felt a violent blow to his belly, like a punch. He lost his balance, as if an invisible hand had pushed him into the water. He tried to wade back to the part of the gangway where he had stumbled, but he was dragged back to the bank by medics. As they looked him over on dry land, they could not immediately detect any injury. Investigating a bit further, someone found a bullet stuck in his uniform. It had bounced off a piece of metal and failed to penetrate him. That was his lucky ticket out, at least for the day. He was sufficiently bruised that he was not thrown back into the attack. Anyway, it did not really matter anymore. The battle around Suzhou Creek was coming to an end. The fate of Shanghai was being sealed. All along the front Japanese soldiers were encouraged when they saw a huge balloon hovering under the sky with a banner showing that help had arrived: “One million Japanese soldiers have landed at Hangzhou Bay.”
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One million soldiers was an absurd exaggeration, meant to boost the morale of the Japanese soldiers and intimidate their Chinese adversaries. In reality, of course, the landing force was far smaller. Just as important, after the initial surprise at the light and scattered resistance, the Japanese
troops at Hangzhou Bay faced considerable logistical challenges. Disembarkation was a more prolonged affair than planned, partly due to the fog that had been the ally of the Japanese on the first day, but had now turned against them. Once the materiel was eventually unloaded on the shore, it was often stuck there. Due to a lack of good roads, guns and other heavy equipment could not be easily transported inland and were not immediately available to assist the troops in battle.

Thus, when the 6th Infantry Division, the 10th Army’s spearhead, made its way north through a maze of paddy fields, it looked like an army transported from the 19th century into the 20th. In front of the headquarters company was the divisional commander, Tani Hisao, short and bespectacled, astride his warhorse. He was followed by his senior staff officers, who were also mounted. Behind them came long rows of soldiers, the bayonets of their long Arisaka rifles gleaming in the pale autumn sun, like a steel forest on the move. It was an army of conquest almost Napoleonic in its lack of modern technology, stripped down to the bare essentials to facilitate movement in the difficult terrain.

Since times immemorial, the locals had used the waterways that cut through the land for all major traffic. For the men of the 6th Division, they posed not means of transportation but rather obstacles, and in many cases they had to double back after suddenly encountering another impassable body of water, hidden behind tall unharvested rice fields. On different occasions, they had somewhat better luck, finding primitive bridges made by the farmers. Usually they were so narrow that they allowed crossing in single file only. The horses were not used to the delicate balancing act, and some slid whinnying and kicking into the water. In the end, the soldiers had to unload the equipment from the animals’ backs and carry it across the streams themselves.
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Still, all things considered, it was almost like a peacetime maneuver. Enemy resistance was weak and sporadic, and despite the natural obstacles they chanced upon along the way, the divisions made brisk progress. By the evening of November 5, less than 24 hours after the first unit had landed, they had already moved three miles inland. Before noon the following day, they stood at a ferry port on the Huangpu River, as a group of more than 100 soldiers forced their way to the other side, clearing the path for a the continued attack towards Songjiang. Meanwhile, the left flank of
the Japanese landing force was engaged for the first time in more severe fighting, but still managed to make headway. The Japanese momentum seemed unstoppable.
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In their desperation, the Chinese resorted to another throwback to the age of Napoleon: scorched earth tactics, such as they used up north in Zhabei. To the extent that time allowed, they burned every building and every field, destroyed the harvest, killed the animals and poisoned the wells. Nothing was to be left to the victors. It was a method that made sense against an enemy that traveled light and expected to live off the land. What most military men ignored was that the ones who had to ultimately pay the price were the locals who saw their homes, family property for generations, reduced to ashes. After sunset, when the Japanese made camp for the night, they saw dozens of small fires all along the horizon.
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From early in the day on November 7, General Tani Hisao’s column picked up even more speed, as the terrain became less unpredictable with fewer creeks to slow down the advance. The Japanese could see from their maps that they were getting close to Jinshan, the seat of the county they had invaded. As they approached a hilltop, they heard the sound of rifles and machine guns. It appeared that a Japanese unit was engaged in a firefight. Tani Hisao spurred on his horse and galloped up the hill, where he was met by soldiers of one of the division’s brigades, which had moved ahead of the rest of the landing force. Tani jumped off his horse and swiftly shook hands with the brigade commander. “I can see you’re really busy,” the general said.

From the hilltop, Tani Hisao was able to immediately get a view of the situation as it had evolved. Below was the town of Jinshan. Large parts of it were engulfed in black smoke. The Japanese vanguard was advancing west through the streets, driving the Chinese ahead of them at a distance of 300 to 400 yards. As they retreated, the Chinese set fire to as many buildings as they could in the brief time they had left. The battle lasted a few hours, ending when the Japanese were in control. Further advances that day were out of the question. The Chinese had set up strong positions near a bridge just west of the town and dominated the only route of advance from there. Besides, the troops needed rest.

It was a town half consumed by flames that the 6th Division moved into, but the members of Tani Hisao’s staff were lucky. They found a single
intact building, and quarters for the night. The prospect of a hot meal and a night under a roof—much-coveted comforts for soldiers in the field—raised the mood of everyone, from general down. But as they were sitting down to eat, a loud cry echoed through the narrow streets: “Fire! Fire!” It was arson. The headquarters company had to quickly evacuate and move to the eastern part of Jinshan. The division had only been in China for three days, but it had already got its first taste of the constant lingering uncertainty that had been the lot of armies of occupation since ancient times.
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Once the Chinese command had been persuaded that the invasion at Hangzhou Bay was not an act of deception, but marked the main Japanese effort, it sent all available forces to the south to contain the rapidly multiplying threat. The problem was that they had almost no troops to spare. The 62nd Infantry Division, which had only just left the bay area for Pudong, received orders to return at maximum speed. It was an obvious choice, since it was well acquainted with the landing zone after having manned the coastal defenses for months. However, the drawback was that once it had departed from Pudong, the district was left with virtually no regular troops to resist the Japanese encroaching from the north and west.
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The Chinese commanders dispatched a total of seven divisions and one independent brigade to the landing area.
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On paper, it was a force roughly twice as big as the Japanese opponent, but in reality it was far inferior. Some of the units had been through lengthy periods of battle and were no longer at full combat strength. They were sent south with no time to prepare, and in many cases, morale was taking a beating from the constant flow of bad news from the front. Further undermining the Chinese response, the divisions ordered towards Hangzhou Bay were forced to use exactly the same poor road network that slowed down the Japanese, and therefore they mostly arrived in the combat zone too late to have much of an impact.
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