Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (39 page)

Once the chance to push the Japanese back into the sea had passed, the next best option was to seek to stop them at Huangpu River. It was a significant natural barrier, but its defensive potential was not exploited to the utmost, and there were no fortifications prepared beforehand along its
banks. In addition, in a fateful Chinese oversight, large numbers of civilian vessels of all sizes and forms were left on the south bank of the river, giving the Japanese an easy means of transport to the other side. Faced with the constant stream north of the better equipped and more experienced Japanese soldiers, in several instances the Chinese defenders simply gave up and retreated without a fight.
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Reacting to the menace in the south, the Chinese commanders committed the same mistake that they had made in several earlier crisis situations. They picked troops newly arrived in Shanghai and threw them directly into battle, regardless of the fact that they were exhausted after a long trek from a different part of China and had little idea about the local conditions, leaving them no chance of reaching anything like maximum efficiency. The 107th and 108th Divisions, that made up the 67th Army, had just reached the Shanghai area from Henan province in central China, when they were ordered on November 8 to move south. They were to hold the strategic city of Songjiang until November 11 at least, they were told.
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The Chinese commanders might have had no other choice but to send the 67th, but the results could have been easily predicted. Although the two divisions fought hard to keep Songjiang, they were no serious match for the Japanese, and as early as November 9, they were withdrawing from the almost surrounded city. While making a river crossing during the retreat, the army commander Wu Keren was assassinated by a group of plainclothes men. The hitmen—whether they were Japanese soldiers or local traitors who had been paid off to do the job was never determined—made him the only general to lose his life in the entire Shanghai cam-paign.
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Following this blow, the 67th Army ceased to be an efficient fighting force and in the end simply fled the battlefield. As was the case with many other lower-quality units in the Chinese military, the rank and file had never been encouraged to seize the initiative themselves, and the corps did not survive losing its commanding officer.
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Amid the chaos and confusion of the landing zone, many Chinese officers came to the conclusion that the battle of Shanghai was lost and they concentrated on salvaging whatever equipment could be saved before it was too late. Three artillery batteries posted along the north shore of Hangzhou Bay tried to put up a fight on the morning of November 5, but after a few hours of non-stop firing it seemed that they had made no difference
whatsoever. Artillery officers in Pudong, hoping to preserve the artillery for later in the war, applied for permission to pull it out of the danger zone. Permission was granted, and late at night on the day of the landing, 32 trucks arrived near Hangzhou Bay and evacuated the three batteries along with their manpower, leaving behind only 200 mules and horses.
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As the Chinese front along Hangzhou Bay crumbled, even a retreat could be considered a small triumph.

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Chiang Kai-shek was in a state approaching nervous breakdown when the full extent of the Japanese landing at Hangzhou Bay became clear to him. On the evening of November 5, he had more than 20 telephone conversations with Gu Zhutong, each time speaking in a more panicky voice. “Is there a fight?” he asked. “The artillery is bombarding us heavily,” Gu Zhutong replied. “There are airplanes, warships.”
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Late the same evening, Chiang conferred with Chen Cheng and appeared to accept the latter’s view that the time had come to abandon the positions south of Suzhou Creek. Nevertheless, political considerations prevented him from announcing his decision to his commanders right away. He wanted the Brussels Conference to get underway, and did not wish the participants to consider China a lost cause. Some generals also believed that he hoped to carry on the struggle until November 13, so he could at least win a minor propaganda victory by saying that China held out for a full three months.
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Despite this variety of motives, on the evening of November 8, the commanders of the Third War Zone agreed that the only realistic option left was a general withdrawal to a defensive line at Suzhou, further west of Shanghai. Chiang was insistent that this move was something more honorable than a mere rout. “This is a strategic retreat, and the enemy should know that we are not pulling out because we have no fight left in us,” he wrote in his diary on the day the decision was made.
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Not only the Japanese view, but also the views of the powers meeting in Brussels were a concern. On the other hand, in the critical last days of the battle, he also repeatedly emphasized in his diary the need to preserve China’s ability to wage war in the long term. He came around to that conclusion in a much belated fashion, after having worn out all his best divisions in and around Shanghai.

Privately, Chiang was despairing at the turn the battle had taken and agonizing over mistakes committed by the Chinese. With slightly paranoid anger, he blamed his officers for the impending defeat and, with growing frequency, demanded courts-martial against acts of delinquency, real and imagined. He blamed the lack of preparedness of the Chinese defense at Hangzhou Bay on Zhang Fakui. “This is all because of negligence on Zhang Fakui’s part in the defense of the area. It’s such a pity!” he wrote in his diary.
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In a sign that Chiang was becoming increasingly unhinged, his threats to put senior officers in front of a firing squad became even more frequent than before. At one point during the last feverish days before Shanghai fell, Chiang called Zhang Fakui, demanding to talk to Sun Yuanliang, the commander of the 88th Division. Sun Yuanliang was nowhere to be found, and a search was launched. Eventually, he was tracked down at the Paramount, one of the ballrooms in the International Settlement which continued their business despite the hostilities. Chiang Kai-shek was livid: “Damn Fool! Shoot him!” Zhang Fakui was used to this kind of spur-of-the-moment death sentence, and he did not carry it out. He was never asked to account for this, and Sun Yuanliang, too, soon found himself back in Chiang’s good graces.
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Shortly afterwards, on the night between November 8 and 9, Chiang issued a fateful order to the head of the Shanghai police Cai Jianjun. He was to stay in Nanshi, the southern Chinese part of the city, and fight while the rest of the army moved west. The command, passed on by Zhang Fakui, sounded suspiciously like a suicide mission. When Cai refused, Chiang’s reply was brief and resolute: “Shoot him.” Again, Zhang Fakui deliberately failed to implement the order, and in the end Cai survived the battle.
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In both cases, the officers threatened with execution were considered protégés of Chiang’s, which added to his sense of betrayal when they disappointed him. At the same time, the close personal ties probably also made it easier for him to forgive them once his fury had run its course.
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While eager to assign blame to everyone around him at a time when the catastrophe in Shanghai was still unfolding, Chiang was later able to view the defeat with greater equanimity, even in public forums. In a speech delivered a year after the fall of Shanghai, he frankly described the failure to predict the landing in Hangzhou Bay as a mistake that had caused huge
losses for China, and he ultimately accused himself of negligence. “It’s a responsibility that I, as supreme leader, should take upon myself! I truly ask forgiveness of the motherland!”
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Some Chinese soldiers in the area north of Hangzhou Bay barricaded themselves in isolated villages and tried to resist the invasion force. But for the majority of soldiers in the Japanese 6th Division, the opponent was like an army of ghosts, an elusive enemy of shadowy figures far in the distance that were constantly withdrawing ahead of them. They rarely stopped to fight, and never attained any tangible form. That said, in one particular location the two sides clashed in spectacular fashion, resulting in one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Shanghai campaign. That place was She-shan, a couple of lonely hills reaching a height of up to 320 feet in the middle of an otherwise flat and featureless landscape. Possession of the twin hills was essential for the control of the area west of Shanghai, as the main road between the two major cities of Songjiang and Qingpu went right between them.

Two buildings gave the hills a special character. One was a French Catholic church known as the Sheshan Basilica. Built from dark red bricks, it towered over the lush greenery covering the hill, and looked older than it actually was, having been recently rebuilt and reopened only in 1935. The other building was a modern observatory, set up by western missionaries. In different ways, both were examples of two of the main influences exercised by the West on China over the preceding century—religion and science. Be that as it may, what happened on the slopes and in the valleys of the hills on the night between November 9 and 10 was a repeat of an age-old confrontation between two ancient Asian civilizations.

A company moving in advance of the 6th Japanese Division arrived near the Sheshan hills at dusk on November 9. They saw a long column of vehicles heading west along the road. It was the Chinese Army on the run. After the convoy had passed, the company hastily set up a roadblock at a bridge over a narrow creek. One platoon was placed at the head of the bridge, with the other two spreading out on either side to beat back the Chinese if they attempted to evade the roadblock by fording the creek. After waiting for a short period, soldiers from an outpost placed down
the road returned reporting a column of at least 300 Chinese infantrymen moving west, heading for the bridge. Soon afterwards, Chinese scouts appeared but the Japanese managed to intercept them before they had time to return and warn the main force about the danger ahead.
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At 7:30 p.m., well after dark, the Japanese spotted the first Chinese appearing in the distance. With bated breath, they waited until the column was just 50 yards away, and then they opened fire. The first rows of Chinese fell like pins. Those who were not hit moved forward, some stepping on top of those already killed or injured. The usual slaughter ensued. After several minutes of incessant firing, the Japanese machine gun malfunctioned. The Chinese grasped the opportunity and rushed without hesitation towards the bridge. With shaking hands, the Japanese machine gun crew struggled to get the weapon working. It was a race against time, and the Japanese won it by a few seconds. Just before the first Chinese reached the bridge, the machine gun fired again, chopping up the closest enemy soldiers at nearly point-blank range.

The Japanese company commander ordered mortar crews to fire at the Chinese column pressing towards the bridge. The shells exploded in and around the dense, gray mass of men, causing numerous casualties. Shortly afterwards, the machine gun ran out of ammunition. This time the Chinese managed to get to the bridge, and a fierce bayonet fight commenced. At the same time, about 100 Chinese infantrymen attempted to circumvent the roadblock, wading across the river at some distance from the bridge. They walked right into one of the two Japanese platoons posted on the flanks. The Japanese bayoneted every single Chinese soldier and pushed them back into the water. Still, the Chinese kept coming. The Japanese company commander, watching the struggle at some distance, felt that it was only a matter of time before his soldiers would buckle under the strain. For a brief moment, it appeared that the battle was hanging in the balance. Then the Chinese seemed to lose vigor, and suddenly, as if by command, they retired back into the night. The Japanese remained in control of the bridge, at least for the time being.

As the evening progressed, more soldiers from the Japanese 6th Division arrived below the hills, including the commander, Tani Hisao. The headquarters company was waiting in the dark at the side of a road when a burst of machine gun fire forced everyone to fall flat on the ground. The
Chinese were back, but rather than opting for the road and suicide, they had filtered through the surrounding countryside, and were firing from positions on the periphery of the Japanese position. As bullets flew from all directions, a Japanese war correspondent crawled over to the division’s chief of staff and asked: “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” “Oh, that’s nothing,” the officer replied. “This kind of thing often happens in battle. If you want to catch the tiger, you have to enter the tiger’s den, eh? There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
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Possession of the two hills was crucial, especially after dawn when the valley would be bathed in daylight, and anyone with control of the highest points would have an overwhelming tactical advantage. A group of Japanese soldiers advanced up the slope of the hill crowned by the French church and the observatory. Salvoes rang through the darkness, but no one knew who was firing. When they reached the top, the Japanese were greeted by a French priest standing at the gate of the church. The officers talked to him in their halting English, while troops fanned out to clear the hill of Chinese soldiers. They tried to explain what they were doing and that they would leave soon. “I know exactly what’s going on,” the priest said, interrupting them. “I was a captain in the Great War.”
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Once the hill had been secured, the Japanese soldiers escorted their division commander to a building on its slopes, hoping to keep him out of danger. A company was posted in positions at the top of the hill to keep it in Japanese hands. “No smoking, no talking. Be quiet when you walk,” officers warned the privates. Despite the extreme danger, many of the soldiers gave in to exhaustion. They had been marching for days, catching just a few hours of sleep here and there, and unsurprisingly dozed off. The company commander, a giant who towered over his men, went from position to position, brusquely prodding the soldiers with his sheathed sword.
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