Swift Disaster

It was a week of stunning, swift disaster in China. Nearly a million Communist troops along a 400-mile front poured across the broad Yangtze, Nationalist China's last great defensive barrier, and swept government positions aside like puny earthworks in a raging tide. The Communists moved in with impressive speed. In four days they took Nanking, cut off Shanghai, and captured half a dozen strategic Nationalist cities. They were driving hard for the rest of free China not yet engulfed in the Red flood.

In a joint order of the day, Communist Boss Mao Tse-tung and Communist Cornmander in Chief Chu-teh said: "Advance boldly, resolutely, thoroughly; cleanly and completely annihilate all. . . in China who dare to resist."

There was almost no resistance. Communist guns--753 and 1053--opened up from the north shore seven hours before the deadline set by the ultimatum for unconditional surrender. At 11 p.m., an hour ahead of schedule, shock troops jammed onto river craft and struck across in a vast envelopment on both sides of Nanking. One field army under General Chen Keng took Tikang, 80 miles southwest and upriver from the Nationalist capital. Other forces under General Chen Yi poured across 35 and 65 miles east and downriver from Nanking, snatched the river port of Chinkiang and the river fort at Kiangyin, whose big guns were silent.

The exultant Communist radio described the scene of the crossing: "The river rang with silvery notes of bugles and martial music . . . Boats by the thousands shuttled between the northern and southern banks . . . As 1,000 guns belched fire and smoke, the Yangtze waters were lit up in a lurid glare."

To the Sea. The only snag in the initial Communist timetable (a 24-hour delay) was caused by two British ships caught in the Communist crossing east of Nanking (see below).

To escape the Communists' well-executed envelopment, Nationalist troops began to evacuate Nanking. Three days after the Red offensive had begun, they streamed out of the capital, weary and disorganized, along the dry brown roads leading through fields of green vegetables and yellow rape, southward and eastward toward the coastal cities of Shanghai and Hangchow and the rugged mountains of Fukien and Kiangsi.

With Nanking in their clutch, the Reds struck and took east & west. Hankow, key to the middle Yangtze and the Pittsburgh of China, seemed ready to go the way of Nanking; a crack Red army from Manchuria, under General Lin Piao, was advancing hard from the north. In China's northwest, long-beleaguered Taiyuan, site of the biggest Nationalist arsenal below the Great Wall, fell before another Communist blow.

The most important Communist move was a rapid eastward thrust toward the coast, to cut the Shanghai-Canton railroad and encircle Shanghai itself. Another Red force, farther north, was thrusting toward Hangchow, 121 miles from Shanghai. The capture of Shanghai itself seemed near. Its main defense was a pathetic wooden fence, 35 miles long, fashioned from 10-foot stakes (originally UNRRA lumber). In the Shanghai-Hangchow area, 350,000 Nationalist troops were being pressed in a pocket against the sea.

To the End. As their center in the Yangtze buckled and crashed around them, Nationalist leaders put aside their differences. At Hangchow, retired President Chiang Kai-shek met in urgent conference with Acting President Li Tsung-jen,

Premier Ho Ying-chin and other commanders from central and lower China. Their reported decision: to join hands for resistance to the end.

At most they could hope to delay and fall back, into the vast reaches of south China and onto the island of Formosa for a test stand. But barring a miracle, they had no prospect of stopping the Red tide.

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