The Courtyard House: The Little Red Devil Returning from the Peninsula

The note that read "Okamura is here" remained in Zhao Weiguo's pocket for three days, but the area outside the Heshun County Government Office remained quiet.

Grains were drying at the street corner, a few chickens were pawing at the ground below the stone steps, and a row of new recruits were squatting in front of a wooden board learning to write. The board only had the two characters "peace" on it.

Someone had dragged the horizontal stroke at the bottom of the character "安" too long, almost touching the edge of the wooden board. Zhao Gang picked up a twig from the base of the wall and rewrote it in the soil.

"First, write down the location where you are stationed."

The new recruit looked at the wooden plank, then at him.

"Political Commissar, aren't we the Independent Regiment?"

"Yes."

"Then why write 'peace'?"

"From today onwards, you will be guarding more than just one barracks."

Inside the main hall of the county government office, four maps were pieced together on a long table. They covered Heshun, Xiyang, Pingding, and the eastern part of Shouyang, as well as the control zone along the Zhengtai Railway, spanning approximately 120 kilometers. Brigade headquarters bulletins were pressed against the edges of the maps; the paper wasn't thick, but it covered a lot of ground.

The higher command established a peace zone, with Zhao Weiguo in charge of actual military coordination, and Zhao Gang in charge of political work, local mobilization, and the main force's border control. The independent regiment's designation remained unchanged. There was no change to a brigade, nor was a division headquarters created out of thin air; the highest official designation among the subordinate units remained a battalion. The East, West, South, and Mobile divisions were simply mission directions that changed every ten days and were not considered newly established.

Old Zhou read the report over and over again twice.

"So, is the commander still the commander?"

"Otherwise what?" Zhao Gang asked.

"Someone outside is already calling for the commander."

Zhao Weiguo folded the report and stuffed it back into the document bag.

"Let them call us whatever they want. Distributing rations, issuing weapons, and roll call will still be done according to the Independent Regiment's rules."

A red list of 9,000 people was posted on the wall: nine main battalions, 600 men each, totaling 5,400 men; artillery battalion 700 men, engineer battalion 500 men, cavalry battalion 400 men, communications battalion 300 men, special operations battalion 200 men, transport battalion 650 men, medical battalion 250 men; regimental headquarters, guard, reconnaissance and various directly subordinate units 600 men, totaling 9,000 men.

Next to it was a blue form listing over 4,300 local militia members. The county brigade, district squads, and village self-defense forces each had their own number of guns and tasks. The people on the blue form couldn't be used to fill the gaps on the red form.

Zhao Gang tapped the weapons bar with a pencil.

"There are more than 8,100 rifles. Nine hundred men do not have rifles."

"Transportation, medical, and engineering personnel do not need to all carry rifles."

Even after deducting these, it's still more than four hundred short.

"Pistols, old guns, and hunting rifles will be replenished first. Training guns will be rotated."

Zhao Weiguo didn't cover up the gap on the table; he just drew a circle next to it.

Duan Peng's Third Battalion and Cavalry Battalion, totaling 1,200 men, were designated as a mobile reserve for the district. This force could not be directly transferred from any county requesting reinforcements; it had to go through the regimental headquarters.

"What about the east side?" Old Zhou asked.

"The three main battalions will rotate."

"west?"

"two."

"south?"

"Two. The remaining two will be used for training and backup defense."

"Who owns the artillery?"

Zhao Weiguo looked at Lao Zhou.

"You will also be in charge of reorganization."

Old Zhou paused for a moment, his hand still on the map.

"I?"

"Now you know to wait for the cannon flag."

Someone inside laughed. Old Zhou's face darkened instantly.

"Just because of that?"

"Also because you dared to argue with Zhao Tieshan, and after the argument, he would listen."

Zhao Tieshan, sitting in the corner, did not look up.

"Let's make this clear first, if the cannon breaks down, you're on my side."

"Listen to my orders when it comes to fighting."

"Stop firing if it overheats, listen to me."

Old Zhou took his hand off the map.

"OK."

He spoke reluctantly. Zhao Tieshan didn't thank him either.

Three telegrams also arrived that day.

Li Yunlong wrote only one sentence: "Nine thousand men. Don't hide all the good guns in your own home."

Ding Wei asked the radio station to relay the code, wanting to connect the sentry post in the Yuci direction to the communication network.

Kong Jie said that there was an empty old county government office in Xiyang, which could be used as a liaison office for the Independent Regiment, and they could bring their own food.

Zhao Weiguo replied to each and every telegram.

Give Li Yunlong two boxes of gun barrel repair kits, but not the complete guns. Send a communications officer to teach Ding Wei relay code reporting, but don't hand over the complete codebook. Take over Kong Jie's house; the liaison office will provide its own food and guards.

The three units remain friendly neighbors. Roads can be borrowed, cables can be connected, and skills can be taught. Unit numbers and supply accounts must not be mixed up.

Halfway through the Party Committee meeting, Zhao Gang put the old brigade commander's secret telegram back on the table.

Autumn is not peaceful.

The paper has been folded to reveal white edges.

"I used to think it was just a routine sweep. Okamura Yasuji took office in July, and by August someone had already found Xigou. The more we resemble a district, the less likely he is to send just one brigade."

Zhao Weiguo turned the joint defense map over.

The original twenty sentry posts were increased to twenty-six, and the eighty-seven landmines were no longer scattered randomly along the road, but only blocked fourteen essential passages. Each landmine had a location map and a record of its deployment and retrieval; if the people wanted to pass, the engineers would clear the way first.

Duan Peng stared at the easternmost line.

"The order is too slow. It will take at least an hour to reach Heshun from there."

"The three radio stations will be set up separately." Zhao Weiguo marked three locations on the map with a pencil. "One in Heshun, one in the middle section of the Zhengtai Railway, and one in the mobile battalion. Minor matters will be handled according to the plan; major matters will be reported later."

"What qualifies as a big deal?"

"The enemy has more than one company, artillery, has blockaded more than two villages or towns, or has discovered military equipment."

After the last sentence was spoken, the room fell silent for a while.

This order was put to use that very day.

The outpost east of Xiyang reported that more than 100 Japanese soldiers had entered the village. The liaison office did not wait for Heshun's reply and, according to the plan, first transferred the grain and livestock of the two villages, and then had the county brigade keep watch on the road.

By the time the news reached the middle of the journey, Duan Peng's 1,200 men were fully equipped. They had fastened their saddles and taken their guns, but they did not set off.

Half an hour later, the second report arrived.

More than seventy puppet soldiers arrived, escorting a grain requisition team; they had no artillery.

The Xiyang liaison office dispatched its own squad to ambush the enemy and seized more than twenty guns.

Zhao Gang nailed the two reports side by side to the wall.

"Everything is left to Heshun's orders; by the time the orders arrive, the grain will have already been seized."

Zhao Weiguo looked at the first false report.

"The first letter was enough to transfer the mobile battalion away. If we move Yangquan again, we'll be left with nothing."

By clearly defining the boundaries of each area, local authorities will know what they can handle on their own and at what point they should stop.

It was time to stop at Xigou.

The enemy's pamphlets had already drawn up the routes for the waterwheels, chimneys, and mule carts. The key equipment remained there, simply waiting for the shells to fall.

Starting the night of the relocation, the entire factory couldn't be moved and had to be dismantled and transported separately.

The spindle, tool post, gauges, and transmission components of the high-precision machine tool were loaded into three separate convoys, while the heaviest machine bed was towed to the deep ditch by forty mules and two captured trucks.

The cartridge case line points south, the propellant charge line points west, and the barrel and measuring instruments point north. The three lines are more than twenty miles apart at their furthest point.

The old factory did not demolish its chimney.

They burn wet firewood twice a day there, leave a lamp on at night, and the empty warehouse is filled with discarded bullet casings. The waterwheel keeps spinning, and the belt only carries a broken shaft. From a distance, the old factory still appears to be in production.

After moving the last box of gauges, Zhao Tieshan went back to the old factory for a walk. He placed the cracked mold on the most conspicuous workbench, with a few scrap materials scattered around it.

The foreman guarding the factory followed behind and checked the newly repaired roof several times.

"What if someone actually comes to bomb it?"

"Let him blow it up."

"This house took six months to renovate."

"The house is cheaper than the motherboard."

Zhao Tieshan walked to the door and looked back one last time.

"Don't clean it too thoroughly. If you go inside and see that it's all empty, everyone will know they've moved out."

The shift guarding the factory only showed up during the day, and retreated two miles away at night via a hidden ditch.

On the third night, the escort team was ambushed. More than twenty plainclothes officers opened fire from the ridge, the first round targeting the truck carrying the mother machine components. The fuel tank was punctured, and the driver swerved the truck sideways into the ditch, where gasoline dripped down the rocks.

When Duan Peng arrived with his mobile unit, six men were killed and fourteen wounded. A generator rolled off the vehicle, its casing cracked, and the coils inside were bent out of shape.

When Zhao Weiguo arrived at the ditch, his shoes were covered in leaked oil.

"Where's the motherboard?"

"The spindle is fine, the gauge box is not open."

He then looked at the generator.

"Can it be repaired?"

Zhao Tieshan squatted down and examined it for a long time. When he pulled his fingers out of the crack, they were covered in black oil.

"Yes. At least ten days."

"Yield?"

"It will fall off."

In the first seven-day cycle after the new site went into operation, the average daily output of reloaded ammunition was 900 rounds; in the second seven-day cycle, it was 1,080 rounds; after the generator was repaired and the cartridge molds were replaced, the average daily output of the third consecutive seven-day cycle finally reached 1,200 rounds for the first time.

Zhao Tieshan brought all three forms together, without using the highest single-day figure to make up the difference.

"I can write 1200 words now."

"Mortar shell casings?"

"About twenty rounds a day. The cannon is still not good enough; we'll try one next month."

"barrel?"

"Monthly production is less than three hundred. Someone wrote eight hundred in the old detailed accounts, but I crossed it out."

Zhao Gang took the three forms and recalculated the numbers.

"Nine thousand men, twelve hundred rounds a day, is still not enough to fight a major battle."

Zhao Weiguo pointed to the inventory column.

"Store fifteen days' worth of rations and six rounds of artillery shells at the new site. Do not attack the county town unless you have six rounds of shells."

Literacy classes were expanded from Heshun to the four counties. New recruits first learned their names, unit numbers, and three types of alarms. Squad leaders and above were also required to read simple maps and write casualty figures. Nine thousand regular soldiers used red thumbtacks, four thousand three hundred militiamen used blue ones, and the three outposts and three workshops used black ones.

The wall of the county government office was gradually covered with thumbtacks. Someone nailed one crookedly, pulled it out and re-nailed it, and small pieces of plaster fell off the wall.

The decision to establish the partition ultimately came down to this diagram where red and blue cannot be mixed.

On the evening of August 28, the communications soldier arrived in Heshun from the brigade headquarters. His back and neck were covered in white foam. When he landed, his legs went weak, and he had to hold onto the door frame to stand up.

"Urgent report from Jinzhong."

Zhao Gang opened the coded telegram.

The advance force of the Japanese 36th Division, along with approximately 5,500 attached puppet troops, is assembling in the direction of Yangquan, Yuci, and Shouyang. The number of transport vehicles, mountain guns, and engineering equipment is also increasing.

After reading it, Zhi Zi only said one sentence.

"This is no ordinary test."

Old Zhou asked, "Where should we rush?"

The communications soldier took a few breaths.

"It's not finished translating yet. The brigade headquarters said there's one more letter coming up."

Zhao Weiguo pulled a recently inspected mortar shell casing from his pocket. The casing still bore the fine marks of a lathe tool, and it felt a little rough to the touch.

The old factory chimney in Xigou is still emitting fake smoke. The new site is still short 15% of the six artillery shells needed. The advance troops of the 36th Division have already arrived in Jinzhong.

Zhao Gang re-copied the grain, ammunition, and pack animal inventory of the three military stations. Fifteen days' rations were only enough for defense; pursuit was out of the question. The red and blue forms were laid out separately, ensuring that no one could list the militia as the main force.

"First, clearly state the gaps in the defense," Zhao Weiguo said. "No matter how urgent the battle, we cannot use false figures to fight the enemy."

He clutched the spent cartridge case in his hand, the fine lines pressing into his palm. After a while, his palm became sweaty.

"Next telegram."

Zhao Gang did not look up.

"It's not good news."