The Diary of an Immortal (1945-1959) by David J. Castello

Author:David J. Castello [Castello, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2016-09-02T18:50:06+00:00

I pressed my broken pencil firmly against a scrap of paper I could barely see. The tiny, flickering light illuminating my words emanated from a slow burning cotton wick immersed in a brass saucer of bean oil. The shadows dancing on the stone walls around me revealed my bed to be little more than a wooden door supported by two saw horses. My only protection against the freezing winds gusting from the Gobi Desert was my cotton padded suit and a tiny brazier by my bed that had to be kept constantly fueled with charcoal sticks. And all of it was housed in a small cave carved into the side of Green Ridge Mountain.

Such were the wretched conditions we shared with Mao Tse-tung and his People’s Liberation Army during the fall of 1946. Jennifer, Albert, and I made the three hundred mile journey in the Communist Eighth Route Army’s black 1939 Chevrolet. The Communists housed the car in Sian during the war with Japan so that any disagreements with the Nationalists could be remedied by making an emergency run up to Yenan. When the truce expired, the Nationalists confiscated it. The day before we left for Yenan, Albert brazenly approached General Hu and asked if we could borrow the car for a Christian missionary expedition to deliver the word of God and a trunk full of Bibles to the atheistic rebel capital. Incredibly, General Hu gave his permission. The knot in my stomach didn’t abate until we cleared the military checkpoint five miles north of Sian.

Our trunk was stuffed with medical supplies.

Albert decided to risk the trip after he received word that General Hu was preparing to mount a full-scale assault on Yenan sometime after January 1st. The Nationalists were now equipped with American military firepower and had tired of the cat-and-mouse civil war with the Communists that had dragged on since 1927. Propped up by millions of dollars in American aid, Chiang Kai-shek was launching offensives all over the country and by November of 1946 his army outnumbered the P.L.A. three-to-one in manpower and five-to-one in supplies. I didn’t see how the Communists could hold out much longer.

All of this convinced Albert that a mad dash up to Yenan would probably be his last chance to see his old Communist friends. Furthermore, the summer had come and gone, and there was still no sign of Chow Li. We dodged bomb craters for most of the journey, trailing a large plume of yellow dust behind us, and arrived in Yenan at dusk. I was surprised how easily we made the trip and asked Albert why Chiang Kai-shek hadn’t simply marched on Yenan and taken the rebel city.

“The American tanks haven’t arrived in Sian,” he said. “When they do, he will.”

I was appalled by the devastation the Japanese bombers had wrought upon Yenan. Tokyo must have wanted Mao and his men quite badly, as hardly a structure remained intact. The city’s population was left with no choice but to abandon the area and, hide in the surrounding hills, digging caves into them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.