The Red Star Shines on the Chinese | Chapter Thirty-Six: The Life of the Soldiers of the Red Army

"Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China, Reliving the Red Story"

Title VIII: With the Red Army

Five: The life of a soldier in the Red Army

The red star shines on China – Edgar Snow

Finishing: People who don't shoot mountains

Abroad, Chinese soldiers have a poor reputation. Many people believe that their guns are mainly ornaments, and that the only battles they fight are fought with opium smoking guns; if there is a rifle exchange, it is agreed in advance and shot in the sky; the battle is decided by silver ocean, and the soldiers are paid with opium. For most of the military of the past, this statement is partly true, but now the well-equipped first-rate Chinese soldiers (both the Red and White Armies) are no longer a joke in a parody, which will soon be seen by the world. China's failure to repel the Japanese offensive is not the criterion for judging: with the exception of the later destructive resistance in Shanghai, there has been no serious resistance so far.

China still has a lot of comical militaries, but in recent years, a new type of Chinese warrior has emerged, and they will soon replace those old ones. Civil wars, especially class wars between the Red Army and the White Army, have always been costly, often fiercely and fiercely fought, with no room for forgiveness or compromise on either side. China's decade of civil strife, if nothing else, has established a core of combat force and military mind experienced in the use of modern technology and tactics, which will soon build a strong army that can no longer be seen as a silver wax gun.

The problem is never the talent itself. I knew in the Battle of Songhu in 1932 that Chinese could fight like anyone else. Leaving aside the technical limitations, the problem is entirely the inability of the High Command itself to train such a talent, to endow military discipline, political conviction and the will to win. The superiority of the Red Army is here – it is often the only party in battle who believes itself to fight for a certain purpose. The success of the Red Army in the educational work of army building enabled them to resist the great technical and numerical superiority of the enemy.

The Chinese peasants, who constituted the majority of the Red Army, were stoic and relentless and could not be defeated. This was already manifested in the Long March, and it was also manifested in the strict requirements of the daily life of the Red Army. There may be foreign armies who can eat the same kind of windy, rainy, rough food, poor shelter, long and hard life, but I have not seen it. I am familiar with the American, British, French, Japanese, Italian, and German armies, but I believe that only the best of the armies can eat the daily conditions of the Red Army soldiers.

The Red Army troops I saw in Ningxia and Gansu lived in cave dwellings, in the original stables of wealthy landlords, in barracks hastily built of mud and wood, in the grounds and houses discarded by former officials or garrisons. They slept on hard kangs without even grass mats, and each person had only a cotton blanket – yet the rooms were fairly clean and tidy, even though the floors, walls, and ceilings were painted with whitewashed dirt. They rarely had tables or desks, and piled bricks or stones to use as chairs, because most of the furniture was destroyed or transported before the enemy retreated.

Each company has its own cooker and logistics department. The Diet of the Red Army was extremely simple. Coffee, tea, cakes, all sorts of sweets or fresh vegetables, almost unheard of, and they don't want to. Canned coffee is more valuable than coffee; no one likes coffee, it tastes like medicine, but a good can can make a durable lunch box! Hot boiled water is almost the only drink, and drinking cold water is specifically forbidden.

When the Red soldiers were not in combat, they were busy all day and night, and in fact, in the northwest, as in the south, they were often inactive for a long time, because after the occupation of a new place, the Red Army had to rest for a month or two, form soviets or carry out other "consolidations", and send only a few people to the outposts. Except for regular "encirclement and suppression", the enemy is almost always on the defensive. But there was often a long gap between the Red Army and the enemy's respective offensives.

When Red Army soldiers are not fighting or on duty, they take one day off every week. They get up at five o'clock and go to bed at nine o'clock at night by blowing the "lights out." The daily schedule includes: one-hour morning exercises as soon as you wake up; breakfast; two hours of military training; two hours of political lessons and discussions; lunch; one-hour break; two-hour literacy classes; two-hour exercises; dinner; singing and group meetings; and "lights out."

Intense competitions in long jump, high jump, racing, wall climbing, coiled rope, jump rope, grenade throwing and shooting are encouraged. Looking at the Red Army jumping off walls, jumping poles and coiled ropes, it is not difficult to understand why Chinese newspapers have given them the nickname "apes" because of their quick movements and rapid climbing. From squad to regiment, awards are awarded in collective competitions in sports, military training, political literacy, literacy and public health. I saw these flags displayed there in the Lenin Room of the troops who had received such honors.

Every company and every regiment had a Lenin room, which was the center of all social and "cultural" life. The Lenin chambers of the regiment were the best of the barracks of the troops, but that does not mean much; what I saw was always very rudimentary, improvised, and which drew attention to the activities of the people in the room, not to the equipment in the room. They all hung statues of Marx and Lenin, which were painted by talented people in the regiment. Like some christian statues in China, these Marx and Lenin generally have a distinct Oriental appearance, eyes as thin as a line, a forehead tall, like the image of Confucius, or no forehead at all. The Soldiers of the Red Army gave Marx the nickname of Bearded Horse. They seemed to respect and love him. Muslim fighters in particular, Chinese like beards and can grow beards, it seems that they are the only ones.

Another feature of Lenin's room is that there is a corner of the room specially designed for the study of military tactics, and there are earthen models. Miniature towns, mountains, fortresses, rivers, lakes and bridges are all built in these corners, and while cadets are studying tactical problems, toy armies fight back and forth on these models. For example, in some places a repeat of the Sino-Japanese Songhu War can be seen, and in other places, the Battle of the Great Wall can be seen, but most of the models certainly show past wars between the Red Army and the Kuomintang. In addition, they were used to illustrate the geographical characteristics of the area where the army was stationed, to express the tactics of a hypothetical campaign, or simply to arouse the interest of Red Army soldiers in geography and political lessons that they attended as part of military training. In the Lenin room of a sanitary company, I saw clay sculptures of various parts of the human body illustrating the effects of certain diseases, human hygiene, and so on.

The other corner of the room is used to learn literacy, and here you can see each warrior's notebook hanging from a designated wooden nail on the wall. There are three literacy classes; one with less than a hundred literate; one with one hundred to three hundred literate; and one class with more than three hundred words that can read and write. The Red Army published its own textbooks for each class (using political propaganda as study material). In addition to political training, the political department of each company, battalion, regiment and army is responsible for mass education. They told me that only about twenty percent of the people in the First Legion were still in the "blind" class, which is Chinese term for the completely illiterate.

"The principle of Lenin's room," Pu Hua, the twenty-two-year-old director of the political department of the Second Division, told me, "is very simple. Their whole life and activities must be linked to the daily work and development of their soldiers. The activities must be carried out by the warriors themselves. Must be simple and easy to understand. Entertainment must be combined with practical education on the army's immediate tasks. ”

There are also posters in each room, and committees of warriors are responsible for publishing them regularly. This is at least much more timely than the "collection" of books in the lenin room in general, which consists mainly of standard Chinese Red Army textbooks and lecture notes, the history of the Russian Revolution, magazines smuggled in or seized from the White Areas, and Chinese Soviet publications such as Red China, The Work of the Party, Struggle, and so on.

The posters in Lenin's room give a fairly deep understanding of the problems of the soldiers and their development. I wrote down many posters in detail and translated them into English. A poster of September 1 in lenin's room of the Second Company of the Third Regiment of the Second Division of pre-Wangbao is representative. Its contents include: daily and weekly circulars of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth League; two crude manuscripts written by newly literate people, mainly revolutionary exhortations and slogans; radio news bulletins on the victory of the Red Army in southern Gansu; new songs to be learned; political news in the white areas; and perhaps most intriguingly the red and black columns for praise and criticism, respectively.

"Praise" is about praising individual or collective courage, selflessness, hard work, and other virtues. In the black bars, the comrades made harsh criticisms of each other and criticized their officers (by name), such as not wiping their rifles clean, learning sloppily, throwing away a grenade or a bayonet, smoking on duty, "political backwardness", "individualism", "reactionary habits", and so on. In one black bar, I saw a cooker being criticized for cooking millet "half-cooked"; in another black bar, a cooker exposed a man who "always complained" that his cooking was not good.

Many people heard that the Red Army loved British table tennis and found it interesting. This is indeed a little strange, but in the middle of each Lenin room there is a large ping-pong table, usually dual-purpose, and also used as a dining table. At dinner, Lenin's room became a canteen, but there were always four or five "communist bandits" with table tennis rackets, table tennis and ball sites around, urging the comrades to eat quickly; they were going to play table tennis. Every company has a table tennis player, and I'm simply not their opponent.

Some of the Lenin rooms had phonographs, which had been confiscated from the homes of former officials or from officers of the White Army. One night, they opened the American Victorola phonograph to entertain me, saying that it was a "gift" from General Gao Guizi, who was directing the Kuomintang troops to fight the Red Army in the Shaanxi-Sui border area. General Gao's records, except for two of which are French, are all Chinese. One of the French records featured The Marseillaise and Tipolare. The other is a French burlesque song. The record caused a stunned audience to laugh out loud, though they didn't understand a word.

The Red Army had many games of their own, and were constantly creating new games to come. There is a contest called "literacy cards", which helps illiterate people learn their basic Chinese characters. The other game is a bit like playing cards, but the high score cards say "Down with Japanese imperialism", "Down with the landlords", "Long live the revolution" and "Long live the Soviets"! The slogan written on the low score board varies according to political and military purposes. In addition, there are many collective games. The members of the Communist Youth League were in charge of the programs in lenin's room and led everyone to sing every day. Many of these songs are sung with the tune of Christian hymns!

All these activities made the soldiers very busy and very healthy. I have not seen the merchants of the camp or the prostitutes with the Red Army troops. Smoking opium is prohibited. Neither on my way with the Red Army nor in the barracks I visited saw opium smoke or smoking guns. Except for duty, the smoking of cigarettes was not prohibited, blood was anti-smoking propaganda, and there seemed to be very few Red Army soldiers who smoked cigarettes. When I asked them to smoke, most of them declined.

This was the organized life of the regular Red Army soldiers in the rear. It may not be very irritating, but it is very different from propaganda and fabrication, and according to this propaganda fabrication, you may well think that the life of the Red Army was a feast of indulgence, fueled by naked dancers, and plundered before and after meals. This is pure nonsense – not pure. The fact is that revolutionary armies everywhere are always in danger of being too ascetic, not the other way around.

Some of the methods of the Red Army have now been emulated by Chiang Kai-shek's elite "New Army" and his New Life Movement – and there are much better conditions for them to be realized. But the Red Army said that there was one thing that the White Army could not imitate, and that was their "revolutionary consciousness", which was the main pillar of their fighting spirit. To know what this revolutionary consciousness is all about, it is better to look at the political lessons of the Red Army, where you can hear the simple creeds that are deeply imprinted in the minds of these young people, causing them to fight and sacrifice for them.