Long March (Little) - Down The Tingjiang To Doom

Down The Tingjiang To Doom

Having rested at the headwaters of the Ganjiang, the Liberated troops filed over into Changting Prefecture. The best combat troops formed the vanguard, they were soon 20 miles and two days' march ahead of the rear. Most of the leaders of the revolutionary committee and Nanchang civilian sympathisers were in the main section. The rearguard, 200 troops under Li Lisan, had the wounded and the baggage and veteran peasant activist Peng Pai; it is said that 1000 women of the area, some widowed, perhaps by war, joined them as carriers.

At the prefectural centre in early September, Li commandeered 100 boats each with her crew of four to take the wounded and weak down the Tingjiang river to Shanghang county; not letting the crews sort themselves out resulted in costly accidents. The Chaozhou-Shantou (潮汕) area, their destination, and the hope of Muscovite reinforcement, lay much further downstream.

In the meantime, other Left-KMT troops had convened at Wenjiashi (文家市), on Jiangxi's western border) ostensibly for a similar uprising (Autumn Harvest), this to seize Changsha for the Hankow government. The troops instead found themselves commandeered by Mao Zedong and marched south up into the Jinggang mountains.

And so it was that by the end of September, with their Nanchang troops poised above Shantou, the Communists knew that their uprisings had yet to take and keep one city from the Rightists. The Jiang-affiliated KMT or warlord forces were even now moving in to trap the Left Mutineers with the sea at their backs. The Com-Intern's Hong Kong station sent word that they should avoid further battles, forgo Shantou port (where in any event Soviet arms would not be forthcoming) and take cover like the Wenjiashi troops, and furthermore establish a rural soviet in Peng's hometown. There was now, however, no avoiding the Rightist hammer: Ye and He lost two-fifths of their troop strength in battle at Fengshun County-town. In belated accordance with the Com-Intern directive, Ye circled down to Shanwei, lending peasant leader Peng a triumphant return to his home town Haifeng.