Through the Great Wall

The Russians were withdrawing from Manchuria, the focal point of China's civil war (see INTERNATIONAL), Chinese Communists were taking over in their wake.

Meanwhile, U.S.-trained Central Government troops were marching into the vast, rich region. With them was TIME Correspondent William Gray, the first American newsman to enter Manchuria. His report: It is a strange warfare that has taken China's Thirteenth and Fifty-Second Armies into southwest Manchuria on the road to Mukden. Thus far it is largely rifle warfare, and the front moves rapidly. You do not see shell holes or blasted buildings or wrecked vehicles or hospitals or bloating corpses. Only rarely are there wounded.

National Government troops in pastel green uniforms shop for meat and vegetables on the streets of Suichung, some 30 miles northeast of the famed Chang Chen (The Great Wall). A Cantonese soldier, who looks everlastingly cold in Manchuria's November weather, carries a bunch of celery under his arm. Another plods across a field where white sheep graze on sparse brown stubble, with a pair of unwrapped pigs' feet dangling in one hand.

Yet there is a front, somewhere ahead. Quick-eyed, shrewd little Lieut. General Tu Liming, commander of the Manchurian expedition, finds the Communists neither well-trained nor well-disciplined. Of the battle at Shankaikwan, which breached the Great Wall, he says: "It was only a skirmish." General Tu expects to reach Mukden (190 miles from Suichung) within two weeks. By week's end, his troops lunged 60 miles forward to Chinhsien, a key rail junction, where the Communists had tried to dig in. General Tu is almost certainly overconfident; he expects to have all Manchuria under control by Christmas.

Logistics & Morale. The problem of recapturing Manchuria from the Communists, to whom the Russians consistently resign control by the handy process of an early withdrawal before the National forces can arrive, seems largely one of communications and supply until Mukden is reached.

Rice and flour have been coming to General Tu's armies from Shanghai through the port of Chinwangtao. Supplies started moving north this week beyond the Great Wall over the Peiping-Mukden railroad, which so far has suffered relatively minor damage. At Mukden there will be more rice and flour, unless the Russians or Communists have cleared them out. If heavy fighting develops, ammunition supplies will be another problem: ammunition must still come up from the south.

But aboard General Tu's train an air of confidence prevails. You gain an impression that here is a well-organized army, with excellent staff work, proceeding in a businesslike way.

The morale of General Tu's troops seems good, though they are southerners in the cold north and strangers to the people.

Myth v. Fact. The Russians may be stripping Manchuria's factories, but there is no evidence of it in Suichung. This southwestern outpost of Jap and Russian occupation has only one factory--a mercury refinery erected years ago.

I visited that plant with General Tu's English-speaking chief political adviser, a plump Manchurian youth who works at Suichung's railroad station, and a sober, young geologist named Gao, who is the son-in-law of Tu's counselor on Russian affairs. Mr. Gao understands and speaks some English and I asked him what he had found here. He threw up his arms and cried lugubriously: "All is destroyed!"

This, it developed, was a rather remarkable misstatement. The furnaces were intact. Somebody had stabled a horse in the building recently. Otherwise, it was spick & span. But the most thorough proof of Russian disinterest came in the storehouse where we found 16 big, new Japanese electrical transformers in their original rope wrappings.

By the end of our tour young Mr. Gao was feeling reasonably happy.

The Russians in Suichung seized some Japanese petroleum and food, and shipped it north by railroad. Otherwise, except as individuals, the Russians took nothing. As individuals, they were exceedingly attracted to wrist watches and leather shoes. A Chinese friend told me:

"Sometimes the Russians would pay for watches and shoes with Manchukuo puppet money, and later they used Russian occupation money printed at Chinhsien; sometimes they got them free. The Chinese were afraid of them--when they could not understand their talk and the Russians wanted a thing, the Chinese would give it to them so that the Russians would go away."

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