Chapter 7: The Xiang River Stained Red

With over two hundred men equipped with sixty mules and horses, the ratio was comparable to that of a Type A Japanese division during the War of Resistance, which had achieved full pack-animal mobility. After all, a Japanese Type A division in combat was equipped with fewer than eight thousand horses, maintaining a personnel-to-horse ratio of roughly three to one. One advantage of such mobility was the ability to maintain the unit’s field marching speed while carrying as much heavy equipment as possible.

Once the battlefield was cleared, Factory Manager Huang and his team returned. Long Wencheng took a look and found quite a substantial amount of equipment. They had brought only the most essential machine tools; other items could be purchased or manufactured after the Long March concluded. These were compact machine tools, yet the variety was reasonably complete, including lathes, milling machines, and grinders—enough to manufacture firearms with simple structures.

"I never imagined our Red Army possessed such treasures," Long Wencheng remarked with some surprise.

Huang Kecheng sighed. "It’s a pity. If the counter-encirclement campaign hadn't failed, a batch of equipment we secretly purchased from Shanghai would have been delivered here as well. With those, I could have even machined Hanyang rifles." As he spoke, he wore an expression of absolute confidence. Looking at Huang Kecheng’s thinning hair, Long Wencheng did not doubt his professional expertise for a second.

After taking a headcount, Long Wencheng integrated the two platoons tasked with protecting Huang Kecheng into the combat sequence, temporarily placing them under the command of First Battalion Commander Qi Delong. Qi’s battalion had suffered heavy losses; the original force of over three hundred was now reduced to fewer than thirty, a situation even more dire than that of Third Battalion Commander Tian Lixin. Qi had a twig clamped between his teeth, holding it with his fingers from time to time; his yellowed teeth and stained nails marked him as a lifelong smoker. It wasn't that there were no cigarettes, but Qi was trying to quit, and when the craving struck, he would bite down on the twig to keep it in check.

"Commander, these boys aren't half bad. If you're giving them to me, I won't be polite about taking them!" Qi said in his thick Henan accent, which added a touch of rustic simplicity to his character.

Yang Gang opened his mouth to speak, but the movement aggravated the scars on his face. Stifled by pain, he swallowed his words and gestured toward Long Wencheng instead. It took Long Wencheng a long moment to understand what he meant.

"Commander, my assault team needs reinforcements too. Leave the two submachine guns for me."

Qi Delong said nothing; having gained such a windfall, he obeyed Long Wencheng’s arrangement and allowed two submachine guns to be transferred to the assault team led by Yang Gang.

Two hours later, the column set out again, moving steadily westward. They were just over thirty kilometers from the Fenghuazui ferry crossing on the Xiang River; at their current pace, they would reach it by tomorrow. By now, Long Wencheng’s 18th Regiment had been reinforced to over two hundred and eighty men, plus twenty craftsmen from the arsenal. With Battalion Commander Qi Delong acting as the vanguard, the column continued its march.

Along the way, they gathered more Red Army soldiers who had become separated from the main force. Upon inquiry, they learned that many were from the 8th and 9th Army Corps, with some from the 3rd Army Corps and the Central Column. They had been fighting the Guangxi and Hunan armies near Yongming. After receiving orders to retreat, they found themselves surrounded on three sides by Nationalist forces, forcing them to fight as they withdrew, leading many to lose contact with their units. Some had even prepared to wage guerrilla warfare in the Wuling Mountains. Although they encountered several Nationalist detachments, these were merely small scouting parties that posed no real threat.

By the next morning, the vanguard had reached the banks of the Xiang River. The size of the force had grown, with combatants increasing from two hundred and eighty to over four hundred. The 18th Regiment had effectively expanded from two companies into a reinforced battalion. As for firepower, it far exceeded that of a standard Red Army main-force regiment.

It was around nine o'clock when they arrived at a ridge on the east bank of the Xiang River. First Battalion Commander Qi Delong looked grim, his eyes red and swollen. When Long Wencheng asked him what was wrong, he opened his mouth but could not speak. After a long time, he said in a choked voice, "Commander, you... you should see for yourself." With that, he began to wipe away tears.

Long Wencheng took a deep breath and climbed to the top of the hill. Raising his binoculars, he caught sight of the scene on the Xiang River beneath the December winter sun. In an instant, his tears began to flow uncontrollably, and the blood in his veins burned with fury.

The surface of the Xiang River was choked with the bodies of Red Army soldiers, as if the river itself were being dammed by them. The banks were even worse, piled high with corpses and severed limbs; the broken remains were scattered like fallen winter leaves. The murky river water was stained a dark, bruised red—the blood of the Red Army soldiers.

Among the many bodies, one could still see wounded men struggling to crawl forward, only to collapse and expire after moving just a few paces. Nationalist soldiers walked among the dead, occasionally raising their rifles to bayonet each body they passed. Just then, Long Wencheng clearly saw a blood-soaked Red Army soldier crawl up from beneath the pile of corpses, clutching a satchel charge, and tackle two Nationalist soldiers to the ground.

"BOOM!"

An explosion rocked the air as he and the Nationalist soldiers perished together. Nearby, several Nationalist bandits were dragging a female soldier who had lost an arm toward a patch of woods. The woman struggled desperately, screaming, until she managed to grab a bayonet from a bandit’s belt and slash his arm. The bandits roared in anger, pulled their bolts, and fired; the bullets tore through her body, the spray of blood shimmering with a ghastly, vivid red under the winter sun.

These were the remnants of the 8th and 9th Army Corps attempting to cross the river. According to Long Wencheng’s memory, the 8th Army Corps had suffered over seventy percent casualties, while the 9th Army Corps, which had numbered over eleven thousand before the bloody battle at the Xiang River, had fewer than a thousand men make it across. The remaining ten thousand soldiers had fallen on the east bank, a casualty rate exceeding ninety percent.

Long Wencheng’s body trembled slightly. The knuckles of his hand gripping the binoculars turned white, and the veins on the back of his hand bulged. His chest heaved violently, as if a volcano were about to erupt from within.