FIERCE FIGHTING

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 70, 24 March 1938, Page 9

FIERCE FIGHTING

JAPANESE SETBACK

DRIVE TO SUCHOW

IMMEDIATE THREAT REMOVEL

(United Press Association—By Eleettle 5 Telegraph—Copyright.) i (Received March 24, 11.20 a.m.)] SHANGHAI, March 23. Both sides admit a fierce struggle for supremacy on the TientsinPukow railway. '

The Chinese claim to have outflanked and wiped out 10,000 Japanese who had reached the Grand Canal, and also to have driven back the Japanese to the positions they occupied before their drive, thus removing the immediate, threat to Suchow. The Japanese do: not mention this setback, but admit that the armies proceeding from north and south towards Suchow are still 114 miles apart, i The centre of the present intensity appears to be Lincheng, where there were heavy casualties on both sides. Japanese announcements are limit« ed to the suppression of Chinese resistance in north-west Shansi and the occupation of new positions west and south-west of Shanghai. DEATH BEFORE SURRENDER. A vivid incident arose from an encounter by Japanese and 300 Chinese troops, part of the army of 200,000 attempting to stem the Japanese advance. These men swore they would die rather than surrender their positions. When their commander, Wang Ming-chang, blew out his brains with a revolver after receiving a ' fatal wound in the stomach, they blew themselves to pieces with hand: grenades.

A Hankow report says that the Chinese in the northern sector of tha Tientsin-Pukow railway counter-at-tacked against the Japanese who wert advancing along the Lingchen line, and gained some success.