FIGHT FOR KIANGWAN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17739, 28 March 1932, Page 2

FIGHT FOR KIANGWAN

EYE-WITNESS’ STORY CORRESPONDENT CAUGHT IN GUNFIRE . SHANGHAI, Feb. 20. War ami all of its horrors were revealed to-day, the' efficient Ninth Division of the Japanese army pushed on relentlessly through the greening countryside, toward Kiangwan village. The dead ; the unconcern at mass hillings; the terrific cannonade corning from batteries of 8-in. guns; the futility of the defenceless as their homes and barns were burned were part of the picture of this .new war zone which the writer witnessed to-day. China fought back in a gallant effort to stop the big push which started with the dawn. FARMER THROWN INTO CREEK

The Japanese army marched on. They shelled mercilessly in their attack. Fields were trampled. Homes and barns were destroyed. One saw a defenceless Chinese farmer thrown into an icy cold creek. En route towards the very centre ol activity, the writer passed'the Yangtsepoo airdrome. Japanese planes, carryiug.~ nj >o-poiuid bombs, were constantly arriving and departing. From the .b'drqme the route led towards Kiangwan. Along dusty roads passed, marching companies of infantry. Everv hundred yards or so were vacated Chinese trenches—poor affairs which seemed not meant for tho vigor of battle now raging. They were made of mud, straw and a few planks with only a few sandbags atop of them because sandbags were scarce and were not enough to go around. Japanese marines, who failed in the attempts of a week ago to displace the Chinese, were busy stringing field tele : phones.

JAPANESE IN CHINESE TRENCHES

Soon one encountered the Japanese • artillery. There were lung lines of horses standing along the roadside. Across the field in a menacing battery stretched the rearmost line of the Japanese barrages—lo lotteries of 8-in. guns. Trim officers were nearby, barking out the orders of the gunfire. _ The din from the cannonading was terrific. One could watch the projectiles hurtle forward, some falling iuto the village of Kiangwan and some going over. Further on there was a bridgehead, barricaded.' Shell holes surrounded it. Japanese were in the trenches, caressing the wicked-apnearing machine guns. These were the same trenches the Chinese had occupied only a short time before. The sentries were indifferent to my movements. They seemed to believe they were fighting Chinese and not concerned with other business Bodies were sprawled in the shellshattered trenches. REFUGEES STRUGGLE DOWN ROAD At one crossroad, around which wero deserted trenches, there was a rude board shack. A bullet-riddled sign overhead read “Merry Cabaret.” In this little shack foreign sailors once danced with halfcaste girls. Across the street was a symbolic signboard, from which leered a" skull and crossbones —placed originally to warn of the dangerous intersection. As the writer turned towards the main approach to Kiangwan village he passed the entrenched Japanese infantrymen. Down the road trooped a group of straggling refugees, terror-stricken and dazed. Their homes had been burned, their goods destroyed. Across one. field ran a little girl, crying. She was dragging a piece of tattered bedding Behind the Japanese infantry lines, six Japanese 4.7 guns were shelling the village and the Chinese were returning the fire. I was caught between the two fires. A farmer, forced by the heat of his own burning home, ran directly across the road into the arms of-wait-ing soldiers. He stumbled. Overhead a telephone wire snapped as a bullet severed it. Frightened, he staggered to his feet and raced to tho soldiers, dropping to pray. The soldiers tossed him into the cold waters of a creek. He stood waist-deep chattering as the soldiers pointed their havonets and guns at him menacingly. Soldiers finally dragged him ashore, searched him and found no weapons, then bound him. Ten soldiers marched him off toward company headquarters. The thirty-fifth and thirty-seventh Japanese regiments immediately took their places, preparing to advance. As one turned'hack towards Shanghai the continual thudding of bombs and the continuous cracking of guns could he heard. Company after, company of Japanese soldiers marched along the roadside, pushing any pedestrian to one side. One watch, the shells from the Chinese defense striking at the invading Japanese, but they were futile, falling short and bursting in great clouds of black dust, powder and smoke. SHANGHAI SHAMBLES U.S. EDITOR ALLEGES ATROCITIES SHANGHAI, Feb. 22. Mr. T. 0. Thackrey, managing editor of the American-owned Shanghai Evening Post-Mercury, wrote, under his own signature, in to-day’s edition of the newspaper an article alleging that Japanese soldiers behind the Kiangwan lines are killing defenceless Chinese peasants. Mr, Thackrey said he reached the Kiangwan International Race Club without being observed by the Japanese quartered there and watched Japanese officers putting men, women and children to the sword. “I stood there in the grandstand with, one of my reporters,’' lie wrote “and watched wind happened to those Chinese prisoners in the hands of the Japanese. ■ “A Japanese officer turned cue of a group of Chinese in peasant garb to face the sun. His shining sabre dashed up to the hilt in its human sheath. A second figure took its place and once again the sabre found its pulsing scabhard. “Perhaps, as the official Japanese military communiques say, these corpses once had been snipers or even perhaps spies. I make no challenge, I just detail what I have seen. “There were women and children among the corpses. Women shot through their padded coats and run through with sabres. Children whose, bodies were, riddled with bullets. Men garbed as peasants were heaped grotesquely about, their wounds soaking the ground.” He told also how he had seen a farmer filing face down on the ground and shot to death by Japanese officers.