My story 6 –1949(2)

My story 6 –1949(2)

I have kept a diary since the 5^th grade. The earlier part was left in home and lost. From June 14, 1949, despite my being tossed around in Taiwan without a steady residence, and drifted all over the oceans to England and to the US, I have kept all my personal chronicles. Thus from June 14^th, 1949 onwards, I have records of events in my life with definite date and exact feeling or thought at the moment.

On June 15, 1949, when we were still in Reijin, we were issued two uniforms, two pair of shoes, three towels, and strangely, one umbrella. We received umbrellas because there were no hats for us. We were ordered to return one uniform and a pair of shoes a week later, so we were left no clothes to change. Three days later, the academy with about five hundred cadets left town. The county authorities organized a big farewell party to see us off. Firecrackers exploded. Relatives of departing cadets crowded the streets to have a last look of their beloved sons, brothers, and in some cases, husbands.  I saw people with tears running down their cheeks, yet no one seemed want to stop the procession.  We walked southward on the sides of a highway. The final destination was said to be Taiwan; the immediate one was Hui-Chang (會昌), the neighboring county about 30 miles south. The marching scene looked comical, with so many umbrellas of different designs and colors snaking along the sides of the highway. Even from a high up place you could not see the beginning and the end. I was excited because I had always dreamed of going beyond the mountains in front of my junior high. The river near campus also carried my imagination to bigger rivers, and eventually to the ocean. My dream was about to come true.

We strolled along, talking, laughing, frolicking, and made 20 miles the first day. Compared with my walking alone for 30 miles from my high school in a eastern neighboring county to home, the first day’s march was a piece of cake. We arrived at Hui-Chang the next day and set up camps in some villages not far from the county seat.  We were told to stay for a while because a large area of northeast Guangdong Province, which we had to pass through, was infested by Communist guerrillas.  We were unarmed and untrained. The 18th Nationalist Army under General Hu Lian’s command was pushing through southward, but they had just regrouped after their defeat from the battle I mentioned before, and had not yet forged into a solid fighting force. The progress of opening a passable corridor was slow. However, the local guerrillas also were loosely organized, because they were either opportunistic bandits or dissatisfied soldiers deserted from the Nationalist army. We stayed in Hui-chang a little more than one month. The academy used the time to start basic training. Weapons were issued. I was given a vintage rifle made in Ching dynasty, heavy and long. After shooting 5 or 6 rounds, the barrel became so hot as to render it useless. Every day we had to stand at attention under the summer sun, sometimes for hours, to listen to the speeches of the officers who mostly just chastised us. Our heads were shaved, we still had no hats, and umbrellas were forbidden. Many fainted. That started the first wave of desertion. One of my best friends, YN, was with them.

After two weeks, the local harvest season came. The matured rice crop had to be cut, gathered, threshed, dried, and stored in time. Normally, seasonal harvesting laborers migrated from south to north, following the maturing of the rice crops. But that year, because of the upheaval, they did not come and we were ordered to help. I rather work in the field because at least it beat boot camp by not standing motionless under the hot sun with no protection from it, listening to the officers’ nonsense. But to the city boys the field job was torture. That started a second wave of desertion. I almost joined them because the farm work reminded me the familiar scene back home and it made me desperately homesick. In high school, I could go home whenever I felt missed it.  The situation then was different; I was expected to go anywhere but home. So I made utmost effort fighting against the homing urge and stayed.

One night, while everybody was soundly sleeping after an exhausting day, loud noises from our neighboring company about one mile away startled us. Among the noises were gunshots. Alarmed, we all jumped up quickly, put on our uniforms, and grabbed our weapons. But the company commander and other officers blocked the door, ordered us to go back to our beds and stay quiet. After about half an hour noises subsided. Next day I learned about something called “barrack disturbance”. It is a collective psychological phenomenon under situations of extreme stress, usually occurring the night before going to battle or under the harshest training conditions of boot camp. It was not necessarily noisy, they told us. Sometimes the whole unit, including the officers, may rise quickly and silently, assemble all their equipment, and stand at attention until day break. That was the only occurrence in my military life. I have never even heard people talk about it again. The reason might be that later army training was not as strenuous.

One thing in military life that disgusted me was the insults directed at us. Our squad leader regarded us as “animals”. The platoon leader thought of us as “low-lives”. The company commander always thought of us as new conscripts, never to improve.  The regimental commander called us “students”. The deputy superintendent (the superintendent was General Hu Lian himself, nominally) praised us as “our future hope” or “elite in our anticommunist movement”. Our status seemed to improve in step with the officer’s rank, but still we had to deal with the low ranking officers every day.

On August 5, 1949, we marched again, passing villages and towns so small they were not marked even on a detailed map. But those names rang a bell on me. Then I realized that I was tracing the footsteps of my grandparents and parents trotting 19 years ago. I had heard them talk about these places in my childhood. The realization made me sad. We were escaping the same kind of man-made calamity by the same route. They eventually returned, but I did not know if I ever could.

August 9th, 1949 brought us to the first city of Guangdong Province, Ping-yuan ﹝平遠﹞. It was the 7th day of the seventh lunar month, a day celebrated by women and girls. Back home, after a good dinner, my mother would set up a table in the courtyard with some homemade cookies. She, with neighbors and my sister, would try to thread a needle under the twilight of new noon. I was usually the only male to join them. I missed them so much.

The area occupied by the guerrillas was devastated. We saw very few people.  Once in a while there were a few, but they were indifferent or even hostile. Bandits turned Communist sympathizers used the opportunity to rob, in the name of “land reform”. There were big signs on the walls like, “Welcome, Red Army, to the South”, (歡迎大軍南下) etc. We saw a body lying on the roadside. Nobody seemed to care. We just passed by and marched on. That reminded me a Chinese idiom: “in turbulent times human life was as worthless as a straw.” ( 亂世人命如草芥)

On August 12th, 1949, we arrived at a big city, Mei-Xian, ﹝梅縣﹞, the capital of Hakka people. It was the second largest city I had ever seen, next only to Nanchang. We passed streets where no businesses were open.  My feet blistered.  They hurt. The heavy rifle that I carried on my shoulder was nearly as long as my body. The butt knocked my right heel in every step so it became sore and swollen. As we were about 150 miles from our home county, we heard the news that she was “liberated”. If the red army had pursued us, they would have caught up us in no time. Luckily they diverted direction to Canton and we were spared.

Before stopping for the night in a small village, we went to a stream to wash ourselves. Coming out of the water, we were shocked to find leeches attached on our bodies, some had dozens of them. As a farm boy, I knew how to deal with the problem. I yelled to them not to pull them off, because that would only tear them in half. I advised them to slap on them hard and they would drop off. It worked, but the blood rivulets on our bodies looked horrible and the wounds continued to bleed for a long while.

Further walk proved to be laborious and painful. In addition to a rifle, we carried a bullet belt around our waist, a canteen by the shoulder, a back pack with our personal belongs, and rice in snake-shaped bags around our neck.  I struggled in every step trying to keep up, fearing the fate of being left behind. Only afterwards did I learn that a medical rescue unit was following us to pick up the sick and wounded. Eventually, my platoon leader, noticing my suffering, exchanged my heavy rifle for his shorter and lighter carbine. I felt much better and had been indebted to him ever since.  Later in Taiwan, he entered National Normal University to be graduated to become a middle school teacher in central Taiwan, married, had kids, and lived a quiet, happy life thereafter.

The area we were passing was dangerous. The guerrillas did not really go away, they just pulled back to a safe distance, watching, availing any opportunity to attack. There were troops assigned to protect us and we constantly heard gun and machine gun shots dotted with canon fire. The slogans such as “Capture Hu-Lian alive” ( 活捉胡璉 )painted on walls were still fresh and wet.  During that period we slept with all equipment on so in an emergency we were able to jump up and run. Meals were half-cooked rice only, nothing else.

August 18 brought us to a place called “the boiling valley” ﹝湯坑﹞. My whole body was boiling from fever. At the same time I also felt chills. I needed to lie down to rest and recover but had to go on. Luckily there was less than ten miles from our destination. In the afternoon we arrived at a town called “mountain lake” ﹝山湖﹞, where our headquarters  commandeered 5 motor boats. They carried us to a big city and a well known seaport,  Swatow ﹝汕頭﹞, and we walked 4 miles to a small town, An-Bu﹝庵埠 ﹞. Swatow happened to be my wife’s native place.  Her father,  after his success in business in Singapore, with a couple of million dollars, returned with his family to his native place like most successful overseas Chinese normally would do. An old Chinese proverb goes: “A tree may grow a thousand feet tall, but its leaves will return to its roots.” ﹝樹高千丈，葉落歸根。﹞In three years, the situation abruptly changed and being rich became a crime to be persecuted. My wife’s family escaped through an underground channel one year after the Communist occupation. She remembers everybody was on a deserted beach, keeping silent, waiting for a small boat to ferry them to a ship anchoring far out in the sea. During our stay, I visited Swatou several times, might have watch the same movie in the same theater, often passing the park where my wife’s residence had been. She was seven years old then. Of course I had no way of knowing that she was nearby.

Some people from our native county caught up with us and joined the academy. They fled because the new government had started a “Movement of Repressing counter revolution.” People were rounded up and executed. They feared their lives. I was told that my elementary school teacher was among the executed. It was ironic because he owned no land, lived in a shack, and was never married. He was a real proletariat. He collected some children to teach.  Even in my young mind I could feel his resentment against the well-offs in the village. I remember one incident. In China’s olden times, pupils practiced hand writing by tracing red characters written by the teacher. I still remember a poem he composed specially for me:

The poor should not worry and the rich should not over proud,

Wealth and poverty are not permanent,

People take turns to manage the money,

Just like trees and grass will bud as spring comes.

貧莫愁來富莫誇，

不見長貧永富家，

錢財輪流眾人管，

草木逢春要生芽。

Although he hated the riches, he still had to rely on them for livelihood because only the well offs could afford to send their children to his class. Nevertheless, pupils were pulled out one after the other by the need of their families for working in the field. After one year his class diminished to such degree that he had to quit.  Then he was pressured by making a living and took a position as the agency of local government. He was offered a meager salary but he paid a high price of being hated by the villagers. Among other duties, one was going after the persons who owned taxes, informing the authorities the whereabouts of escaped convicts, and helping the government to conscript. The new government regarded him as a “running dog” of the old overthrown government, so he had to die. That was a tragedy.  

Among the people who rejoined us, a few of them were the deserters in Hui-Chang. To my disappointment, my best friend RN was not one of them. RN deserted mainly because of being hard to part with his beloved wife. Under the liquidation movement of class struggle, his family property was confiscated and he was sent to an elementary school in a remote village to teach. His wife divorced him to remarry to a person with good element. He died young in 1970s of despise and poverty.

On the night of September 21, I dreamed of home, and there was blood all over. Since then I had nightmares of Communists chasing me until I came to the US, then the dream was replaced by not finding a parking space.

I missed home and my family terribly, worrying about their fate. In my diary during this period I often composed prose reminiscing how beautiful were the fields, river, and hills beyond, how joyful the home life was. I looked over the horizon into the white clouds, and thought of my home and missed my folks. My heart ached.

We were a ragged army at arrival. The wooden buttons in our uniforms cracked and fell off, exposing our chests and stomachs, sometimes also our backs. Sleeves were missing. Shoes

Broke off, showing our toes. Some completely separated from the soles so we had to tie them together. However, in about a week we were issued new uniforms of better quality as well as new shoes. Our weapons also were replaced by better ones.  The rifle was shorter and could shoot five rounds in succession. Food improved. We were happier. The supply was levied on local government because central government had disintegrated and its logistical operations were non-existent. My mother-in-law told me years later that they disliked us. She still remembered our commander, Hu Lian, by name and did not like him either. Because his troops not only occupied the family’s vacant properties, but they also made lots of demands on the local business.

Boot camp started all over again. In about a month we were trained into a somewhat solid fighting unit. We practiced target shooting. On my first try I hit circle 11, which was next to the bulls-eye. Our squad continued to excel in this important military skill. Later in Taiwan we won the championship for it. With our newly acquired fighting skills, I, as well as some of my close friends, was determined to fight to death if the Communist should come before we could make it to Taiwan. However, news came that we were admitted. We cleaned up the place, returned things we borrowed from the local people. On September 29, 1949, we boarded a cargo vessel named: “The Morning Sea”. ﹝海辰輪﹞Next day the ship set off.

That was the first time I saw ocean. Its vastness stunned me. A Chinese saying goes: “A dragon will eventually return home in the ocean.” ﹝蛟龍終須歸大海﹞Ever since childhood, my imagination had followed the stream in front of my home to the imaginary big rivers into the ocean. As I leaned on the side rails of the ship gazing out at the horizon, I started wondering “what should I do now?”

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