CHINA: Limited Victory | TIME
China’s Nationalist commanders got what they had been hoping for—a big, positional battle with the Communists in Central China. They won, but the Reds got away in shape to fight again.
Two weeks ago, when wily Communist General Chen Yi seized the Honan capital city of Kaifeng, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek flew to the battlefront to direct the recapture of the city (TIME, July 5). But as Nationalist columns closed in, Chen evacuated Kaifeng and plunged southward through government territory toward the swift Yangtze River.
Last week pursuing Nationalists found Chen Yi waiting for them on a battlefield of his own choosing. Chen’s 100,000 Red troops were ranged along a 35-mile stretch of Honan basin land below the Lunghai railroad. The core of Chen’s force was made up of veterans of his slashing campaigns in Shantung province. These tough regulars were fleshed out with elements from the army of one-eyed Communist General Liu Po-cheng, and local Red guerrilla bands.
A Nationalist force of about equal strength moved in from the east and west, under the overall direction of Chiang’s chief of staff, General Ku Chu-tung. The Red commander struck first, and brilliantly. He picked off a Nationalist brigade, and decimated an entire Nationalist division, the newly formed 75th. Then the Reds looped a steel ring around four divisions of the crack Nationalist Fifth Army, guardian of Nanking. Crowed the Communist radio: “The Fifth Army is being cut into pockets and annihilated.”
Then the Red attack stalled. As they arrived, more & more Nationalist divisions were fed into the fight. Nationalist planes strafed and bombed the. encircling Communist lines. When repeated assaults failed, Chen Yi tried a last dodge. Loudspeakers in his trenches cried to the surrounded Fifth Army divisions: “Save yourselves needless sacrifice! Rise up and join the anti-Chiang united front!”
The propaganda bullets were as ineffective as the lead ones. The Red position worsened. After nine days’ fighting, Communist Chen Yi abandoned the field, slipped north to his old Shantung stamping ground, where he could return to harassing hit-run tactics.
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