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

In early January 1945, the snow in the Taihang Mountains had not melted.

The day before departure, the transport team scouted the road. Thin ice covered the shady areas of the mountain pass, making it slippery for the mules. The drivers, carrying shovels and ashes, spread black tracks along the three sharp bends. At dawn, the ashes had frozen into the ice.

Zhao Weiguo is eighteen years old.

He stood at the entrance of the military post, checking the last mobilization form. This westward advance totaled approximately 20,400 people, divided into three columns.

The Independent Regiment has approximately 7,600 officially inducted personnel.

Approximately 4,200 have passed the training assessment and are ready to be deployed for missions.

Local transportation costs approximately 1,800.

The number of friendly neighbors is approximately 6,800.

The remaining personnel continued to guard the industrial sites, military outposts, railways, and the area under the control of Chiyabao. The general staff of 108,400 did not travel with the Third Column.

After reviewing the group assignments, Lao Zhou pointed to the column for training personnel.

"You can even beat 4200?"

"Being able to carry out this mission doesn't mean we're all veterans. Each squad has a leader, and those who didn't pass the live-fire and night-walking tests stayed on."

"How much is the allowance for the first battalion?"

"Fill the gaps as needed, don't overstaff companies and platoons. Prioritize communications, machine gun, and medical personnel."

Old Zhou rolled up the list and stuffed it into his cotton coat.

"I'll go check it out on the way too."

The three columns do not follow the same path.

The first column advanced westward along the railway branch line, tasked with seizing the old bridge and telephone node.

The second column took the mountain road on the north side, escorting the artillerymen and two armored vehicles.

The third column advanced along the southern highway and village roads, while local transport and sanitation personnel were responsible for resupply and evacuation in the middle and rear sections.

The distance covered approximately 80 kilometers over three days. Once the battlefield was deployed, it stretched about 35 kilometers horizontally and extended even further inland. Each column only reported its position at designated points, without using phrases like "the entire army has arrived" to represent the difference in distance between the vanguard and the rearguard.

The three communication channels are also separated.

The first column laid lines along the railway, the second column relied on flag signals and couriers at mountain passes, and the third column followed the telephone lines at supply depots. They reported their positions once a day at dusk, and reported immediately if they encountered enemy forces, lost bridges, or suffered wounded beyond their evacuation capacity.

The first location report after departure was missing. The second column's courier fell and injured himself on an icy slope, and the telegram arrived forty minutes late. Headquarters did not fill in the location for them, but only kept the previous node on the map and sent a backup courier to pick them up.

By the time the report arrived, the second column had already crossed the mountain pass. The injured soldier had dislocated his elbow and remained at the supply depot. The location and the extent of the injury were reported on two separate sheets of paper; the delay couldn't be erased just because the person had been found.

Each platoon carried two days' worth of personal rations, with supplies for the supply depots kept separately. Some soldiers complained the fried noodles were too dry and wanted to trade cloth for eggs when passing through a village. The guard platoon allowed transactions at designated locations, but soldiers were not permitted to enter the village as a whole, only to inquire about the price and register their transactions. One recruit took two extra eggs, and the platoon leader made him return them along the same route.

"They gave me the cloth," the recruit said.

"They didn't agree to sell that many."

The new recruit, feeling embarrassed, still returned the eggs. That night at camp, the cooks had left him his share of soup.

The two armored vehicles can only be used for short distances. The water tank patching vehicle checks for leaks every so often, and the tire liner vehicle avoids long, gravelly slopes. The third vehicle failed its clutch replacement test and remained at the rear repair shed.

Artillery was pulled by a mix of mules and trucks. The infantry gun, whose carriage had been repaired, was still unstable in its firing tests and was reserved for reserve, not to be deployed at the forefront. Mountain guns and mortars were distributed according to columns, and shells and breechblocks were transported separately by vehicle.

The second column was the slowest to move on the first day.

A mountain gun slid outwards on the icy bend. The gun crew tied the gun wheels with two ropes, and a dozen men pulled it along the inside of the slope. The mule leading the gun was so frightened that it sat back. The driver blindfolded it and only untied the blindfold after the gun carriage had passed the bend.

Zhao Gang caught up from behind, first asking if Pao was injured, then asking about the others.

"The cannon wheel wasn't cracked, but the two men's palms were worn raw."

"Where's the injury card?"

"Minor injury, bandaged."

The two men did not disappear from the camp just because their injuries were minor. They switched to leading empty mules, and someone else pulled the cannon ropes.

The first column moved quickly that day, but stopped at an abandoned train station for two hours.

The station doors were locked, the windows weren't broken, but there were new ruts beside the tracks. Zhi Zi's intelligence indicated that shunting traffic towards Taiyuan had increased recently, so the advance team hadn't dared to pass directly through the station as an open point.

The signalmen first checked the telephone lines, then the engineers checked the station doors and switches. Only coal ash and empty sacks remained in the warehouse; a makeshift radio cable hole was found behind the wall. The people had already left; the cable hole led towards Taiyuan.

Duan Peng had people trace the shoe prints and the width of the tire tracks. The station building wasn't burned down, and there was no rush to cut the telephone lines. The listening box was connected, and two calls were heard during the night inquiring about the old railway bridge.

"They're still guarding the bridge," Duan Peng wrote in his report. "Number of personnel to be verified."

The distance between the three columns widened on the second day.

The vanguard passed the second supply depot, while the rearguard was still forty li away. The local transport convoy's grain wagons were blocked by a landslide, but the advance team didn't stop to wait; they continued on, carrying two days' worth of provisions. Engineers and villagers cleared the land, and the grain wagons arrived three hours later.

A driver tried to take a shortcut across the frozen river and probed the ice with a wooden pole. The head of the transportation department saw this and stopped the vehicle.

"If a cartload of grain falls into the river, what will you use to retrieve it?"

"The ice looks thick."

"They just watch and don't keep track of it."

The convoy took a detour, with the driver grumbling all the way, but upon reaching the next outpost, he still wrote down the detour distance on the receipt.

The medical team admitted over a dozen wounded soldiers on the second day, mostly with sprains, frostbite, and recurrences of old injuries. Those who could stay with the troops were transferred to lighter duties, while those who couldn't leave remained at the outposts. The list still included personnel from this relocation, but their locations had to be changed; those remaining at the outposts couldn't be listed as missing.

A neighboring column had a mule injured in a fall. The Independent Regiment's transport section did not take care of the damages to headquarters; it simply marked the accident location on the shared road map. After signing the map, the neighboring liaison officer took away his own livestock disposal form.

No large fires were lit during nighttime camping. Each squad only boiled water in a sheltered spot, and buried the ashes after drinking the water. Two armored vehicles were parked in different courtyards to prevent both from being immobilized if one was attacked. White cloths were laid under the water tank trucks to check for leaks; the next morning, the cloths were damp, and the amount of water added was recorded in the vehicle condition log.

In the early hours of the third day, the First Column arrived at the old railway bridge east of Taiyuan.

The bridge wasn't bombed. There's a guard post on the east side of the bridge, and a machine gun hidden behind the roadbed on the west side. The enemy doesn't have a large force guarding the bridge; the advance guard is estimated to be a few dozen men, and there might be reinforcements from the rear.

Zhao Weiguo did not allow the armored car to ram through first.

The two vehicles were still on the mountain road to the north, more than ten miles from the bridge. The bridge's load-bearing capacity had not yet been tested. The first to be deployed were to use mortars and mountain guns to take out the guard post, while the engineers searched the bridge piers along the riverbank.

The first mountain gun shot landed in front of the guardhouse; it was getting close.

The second shot hit the edge of the roadbed, and the machine gun stopped for a moment. The mortar then fired six more rounds: the first three to establish distance, and the last three to block the retreat route on the west side.

The total consumption was two mountain gun shells and six mortar shells. The artillery did not fire again to pursue the stragglers.

Old Zhou led a battalion to approach from the east of the bridge. The trainees were not organized into a separate assault team; they were all incorporated into the veteran squads. When the first group reached the bridgehead, a new recruit saw Japanese soldiers running out from behind the guardhouse. He got up and chased after them but was dragged back to the ditch by his squad leader.

"The bridge piers haven't been inspected yet!"

The engineers found old explosive holes under the bridge, but they were empty. The two detonator slots were empty, and the bridge rails were intact. Only after confirming that the infantry could cross did Lao Zhou allow his men to go onto the bridge.

The enemy launched a counterattack along the western roadbed.

The number of soldiers was small, but the gunfire was spread out, hoping to mislead those east of the bridge into thinking a larger force was behind them. The First Column held the bridgehead and did not pursue along the railway tracks. The Second Column reached the high ground to the north and intercepted a group of people retreating towards the county town.

The battle lasted less than an hour.

Thirty-six enemy soldiers were confirmed dead, eighteen captured, and twenty escaped. The escapees were not recorded as dead, nor was it stated that all of them had been captured.

Our side suffered four dead and thirteen wounded.

The eighteen prisoners were held separately on the west side of the bridge. Some said that reinforcements were being sent to all three county towns, while others said that Taiyuan had been evacuated. The two accounts conflicted, and the recorder wrote down both, then checked them using tire tracks, telephone calls, and the direction of grain carts.

A prisoner recognized the duty roster in the old bridge guardhouse and pointed out that the morning shift should have been changed, but the reinforcements had not arrived. This information only indicates that the shift change was unusual and cannot be directly concluded that there were no troops in Taiyuan.

Twenty deserters fled in three directions into the ravines. The initial force was not divided to pursue them further; instead, the railway and highway exits were sealed off, and their clothing, weapons, and escape routes were handed over to the local guard. The battle report retained the record of twenty deserters, and was not changed to "captured" simply because the exits were sealed.

One of the fallen soldiers was an engineer who, after confirming there were no explosives under the bridge, was shot while returning to the bridge deck. His tool bag was still hanging at his waist, one of the probes inside was bent. Zhao Gang ordered that the tools and the body be registered separately; the probe was neither included in the spoils nor removed from the damage list.

The wounded should be transported from the ditch on the east side of the bridge. Those who can walk should be bandaged behind the guard post, while the seriously wounded should be carried across the bridge on stretchers. Only one-way traffic is allowed on the bridge, and ammunition trucks should wait until all the wounded have crossed before entering.

When the first transport truck crossed the bridge, its rear axle made a clicking sound. The driver wanted to continue, but was stopped by a mechanic sent by Zhao Tieshan. Inspection revealed that the axle fixing nuts were loose, but the wheel hubs were not cracked.

"Can it be repaired?"

"Not tight enough. Add a shim and check again after walking another kilometer."

The truck was parked on the west side of the bridge, and the goods were transferred to the rear truck. The mechanic added shims, test-drove it without load, and after a follow-up inspection confirmed that the axle was no longer loose, the vehicle was restored to usability. The axle loosening and the repair process were recorded in the vehicle condition report.

The two armored vehicles arrived at the old bridge in the afternoon. Engineers checked the bridge's load-bearing capacity and allowed only one unloaded vehicle to cross briefly, leaving the other on the east side. The water tanker truck refilled its water tank after crossing the bridge, while the tire truck did not proceed up the gravel slope.

The spare infantry gun remained in the rear guard and was not temporarily designated as a usable main gun just because the bridge was not destroyed.

In the evening, the three columns regrouped.

The first column secured the old railway bridge and the telephone node on the east side, the second column occupied the high ground on the north side, and the third column's grain wagons and medical stations arrived behind the bridge. The three-day, eighty-kilometer march concluded, with the rearguard still gradually entering the supply depot.

Zhao Gang bound the three-day marching log and the first battle log separately. Records of straggling, injuries, vehicles, and livestock were kept in the marching log; the four dead and thirteen wounded, artillery ammunition consumption, and prisoners were kept in the battle log. If the same person suffered frostbite first and then was shot, both records were kept, but the final casualty was only counted once.

The prisoners' confessions, wiretapped phone calls, and tire tracks were sent at the same time.

Taiyuan did not withdraw all its outer forces into the city. Troops were deployed in the three directions of Yuci, Taigu, and Qingxu, with each point guarding a granary, telephone station, or small artillery position, preparing to dismantle the railway and highway into several sections.

Zhao Weiguo drew three circles on the map, but did not touch Taiyuan City.

"Should we attack the county seat next?" Zhao Gang asked.

"First, cut off the path between them."

"All three together?"

"First, determine the priorities. The three cities won't be attacked on the same morning."

The signal lights on the old railway bridge have been turned on again.

The three circles of Yuci, Taigu, and Qingxu remained outside Taiyuan City.

Zhao Weiguo drew two dotted lines between the three circles with his pencil; those were the paths they used to deliver food and communicate with each other.

He put down his pencil and said something to Duan Peng.

"Tomorrow, disconnect the phone from Yuci first."