China Fights Back by Agnes Smedley

Author:Agnes Smedley
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 1443736880
Publisher: Victor Gollancz Ltd
Published: 1938-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part 5

Traveling With the Headquarters Staff of the Eighth Route Army

General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army

November 9, 1937

This whole region is being organized into Partisan groups. Four li in one direction from our headquarters is a town where there are three hundred Partisans, and five li away are two hundred miners from Yangchüan. I walked to that village with my guards to take pictures of the miners. Our army has given them uniforms, shoes, and stockings. They have their own guns. They are of all ages, though the youngest is perhaps eighteen and carries only a big sword. The others are mature men, most of them between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, with a few much older. They are real proletarians, serious-minded and determined, thoughtful, somewhat reserved yet friendly.

A few li from here is a group of eighty Manchurian Volunteers, all students from Peiping, whom I shall soon visit. All together in this region there are now two thousand Partisans, all organized within less than one month, and many of them since our headquarters came here.

The Front Service Group, led by the well-known woman writer, Ting Ling, has arrived at General Headquarters. The group conducts all kinds of propaganda among the people and troops. They present plays – the acting group is the best and largest. They teach the people patriotic songs, and they lecture. Some of them write stories of their experiences.

Ting Ling tells us many stories of the experiences the group had on their way from North Shensi Province, up the railway to Taiyüan and then down into Eastern Shansi. They have seven donkeys to carry their bedding rolls. All the rest of their baggage they carry themselves. They have no riding animals at all. They go from village to village, giving plays. They have been bombed by Japanese planes, and they have spoken to thousands of people calling upon them to organize and arm themselves.

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