go!’
It was especially cold in the early spring of 1940. All the villages in Northeast Gaomi Township lay in ruins. Those who had survived were like marmots in burrows. The powerful Jiao-Gao Regiment was beset by the miseries of hunger and cold. From commander to common foot-soldier, the gaunt, thin men all shivered in their unlined jackets. After making camp in a tiny village not far from Saltwater Gap, they lay atop the battered wall when the sun came out, to pick lice off their bodies and soak up the midday heat. All day long they conserved their energy; then, at night, they nearly froze in the cold. They were afraid that if they weren’t killed by the Japs the weather would do them in.
Pocky Cheng was their most fearless fighter, a lionhearted man who had earned the complete trust of the commander, Little Foot Jiang. Hand grenades were his weapons of choice. In battle he would rush to the front line, close his eyes, and hurl one grenade after another at the enemy. Even if they were only six or seven yards away, he refused to take cover; yet, strange as it sounds, with shrapnel flying around him like locusts, he was never hit.
Commander Jiang called a meeting of officers to grapple with the problems of cold and hunger. Pocky Cheng rashly burst in on them, a stern look on his face. ‘What do you think we should do, Old Cheng?’ Little Foot Jiang asked him.
Pocky Cheng held his tongue.
A bookish squad leader volunteered, ‘Holing up here in Northeast Gaomi Township is the same as waiting to die. We should go to the cotton factories in Southern Jiao County to get some clothes. And since there’s plenty of yams there, food won’t be a problem, either.’
Commander Jiang took a mimeographed newspaper from his shirt and said, ‘According to news reports, the situation in Southern Jiao is grimmer than here. The rail brigade was wiped out by the Japanese. By comparison, Northeast Gaomi Township is ideal for guerrilla activity. The land is broad, the villages are few and far between, and the Japanese and their puppet troops are weaker here. Since most of last year’s sorghum crop hasn’t been harvested, we have more places to hide. All we have to do is solve the problems of food and clothing. The chance to attack the enemy will come as long as we stick it out.’
A gaunt-faced officer said, ‘Where are we going to find any cloth? Or cotton wadding? Or food? Except for sorghum that’s sprouting buds, we’ve got nothing to eat. And that alone could wind up killing us! I say we pretend to surrender to the puppet-regiment commander, Zhang Zhuxi. That way, we could get our hands on some lined clothes and stock up on ammo, then pull out.’
The bookish squad leader jumped angrily to his feet. ‘You want us to become a bunch of traitors?’
The officer defended himself: ‘Who asked you to become a traitor? I said
‘We’re resistance fighters. We don’t bow our heads when we’re starving, and we don’t bend our knees when we’re freezing. Anybody who wants to give allegiance to the invader and cast off his moral courage will do so over my dead body!’
Not to be intimidated, the other officer said, ‘Is the mission of resistance fighters to starve or freeze? No, we must be flexible and resourceful. Tolerance must be one of our stratagems. The only way we’ll win this war of resistance is by conserving our strength.’
‘Comrades,’ Commander Jiang said, ‘that’s enough bickering. If you have something to say, take your turn.’
‘I’ve got a plan, Commander,’ Pocky Cheng spoke up.
When Little Foot Jiang heard Pocky Cheng’s plan, he rubbed his hands in delight and complimented him profusely.
On the night when Pocky Cheng’s plan was implemented by the Jiao-Gao regiment, they ran off with over a hundred dogskins my father and granddad had nailed to the crumbling village walls, and stole the rifles Granddad had hidden in the dry well. Having carried out this phase of their plan, they went out to hunt dogs for some needed nutrition, as well as the warmth of the skins.
That spring, as a freezing cold settled over the land, there appeared in the broad expanse of Northeast Gaomi Township an army of intrepid ‘dog soldiers’ who fought a dozen or more battles, major and minor, with the Japanese and their puppets. That included Zhang Zhuxi’s Twenty-eighth Battalion, who trembled in their boots whenever they heard the barking of dogs.
The first battle occurred on the second day of the second month, by the old calendar – the day, according to legend, when the dragon raises its head. The Jiao-Gao regiment, dogskins draped over their shoulders and rifles in their hands, slipped into Ma Family Hamlet, where they surrounded the Ninth Company of Zhang Zhuxi’s Twenty- eighth Battalion and a squad of Japanese soldiers. The enemy’s headquarters was in Ma Family Hamlet’s onetime elementary school, which consisted of four rows of blue-tiled buildings surrounded by a high wall of blue bricks and barbed wire.
The commander of the puppet Ninth Company was a brutal man from Northeast Gaomi with a deceptively gentle smile. Since the onset of winter, he had begun a campaign to accumulate bricks, stones, and lumber to build new quarters for his company. As a result, his personal worth, all of it ill-gotten, increased dramatically. The locals despised him.
Ma Family Hamlet was in the northwest corner of Jiao County, bordering on Northeast Gaomi Township, about thirty li from the Jiao-Gao regiment headquarters. The two hundred Jiao-Gao soldiers waited until nightfall to set out from the village, dogskins draped over their shoulders, fur on the outside, tails dragging between their legs, and the multicoloured fur shining brightly in the fading sunlight. It was a beautiful, bizarre army of underworld demons on the march.
Their commander, Little Foot Jiang, wore a huge red dogskin – it had to have been Red, the dog from our family – and as he walked at the head of his troops, the fur on his pelt waved in the wind. The bag hanging over Pocky Cheng’s chest was stuffed with twenty-eight hand grenades.
Cold stars filled the night sky when they slipped into Ma Family Hamlet. A couple of dogs barked in friendly welcome, and a mischievous young soldier answered them in kind. An order from the front swept through their ranks: No more barking! No barking! No barking!
They took up positions a hundred yards outside the main gate, where bricks and rocks were piled in readiness for springtime construction.
‘Pocky,’ Little Foot Jiang said to Pocky Cheng, who was sticking close to him, ‘let’s get moving!’
‘Number Six, Chunsheng, you two follow me,’ Pocky whispered.
He removed the bag of hand grenades to lighten his load. After tucking one grenade in his waistband, he handed the bag to a tall soldier and said, ‘When we’ve made it to the gate, bring this to me.’
With stars spreading their weak light over the ground and a dozen or so lit carriage lanterns hanging from the barracks, it looked like dusk in the compound. Two puppet sentries patrolled the gateway, casting long shadows on the ground. An ageing black dog ran out from behind the piles of bricks and stones, followed by a white dog, then a spotted one. They snarled and rolled on the ground, their profiles merging as they approached the gateway. In the shadows of a woodpile no more than a dozen paces from the gate, the dogfight turned nasty. From a distance it looked like three mutts fighting over a choice morsel of food.
Commander Little Foot Jiang watched the masterful performance conceived by Pocky Cheng, and was reminded of the benumbed, cowardly man who had shown up to join the army, snivelling at the drop of a hat, like a useless old woman. Pocky and his comrades continued their dogfight ruse in the shadows as the distracted sentries stood shoulder to shoulder and listened. One picked up a rock and threw it at the dogs. ‘Mangy damned mutts!’
Pocky Cheng yelped like a dog hit by a rock, and Commander Jiang had to stifle a laugh, it sounded so much like the real thing. The Jiao-Gao soldiers had been practising their barking since the assault plan for Ma Family Hamlet was first drawn up. Pocky Cheng, a Peking-opera buff and woodwind player, had wonderful breath control and a loud, booming voice, not to mention a lively tongue; he easily became the regiment’s champion ‘dog’.
Growing impatient, the sentries moved cautiously up to the woodpile, where the dogs were really getting into it. Rifles ready, bayonets fixed, they were only three or four steps from the woodpile when the dogs stopped barking and began to whine, as though afraid.
The sentries advanced another slow, cautious step.
Pocky Cheng, Number Six, and Chunsheng jumped up, fur shimmering in the dim yellow glow, and charged the sentries like bolts of lightning. Pocky Cheng smashed his grenade down on the head of one; Number Six and Chunsheng buried their bayonets in the other’s chest. Both crashed to the ground like sacks of cement.
