Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [288]
After months of training by Soviet instructors, Li Dongguan joined one of the reconnaissance groups which operated inside China from Russian bases. Over the next seven years he carried out seventy cross-border missions, scouting on foot up to thirty miles inside Japanese-controlled territory, liaising with local guerrillas and reporting on Japanese deployments. In winter the guerrillas usually stayed in their Soviet camps. Though there were occasional ski patrols, deep snow made movement difficult. In summer they worked in four-man teams. Dongguan’s favoured companion was a young Korean named Li Yunlong, “a peasant like me, who had shared the same sort of life.” They were dropped by jeep on the Russian side of the border, then travelled for three to five days in Japanese territory, clad usually in peasant clothing, occasionally in Japanese uniform, reporting back by radio. They slept mostly in the huts of sympathetic peasants. Unlike most Russian soldiers, they never carried vodka in their rations: “We saved our drinking for when we got back.” Only once did they clash head-on with a Japanese patrol, which cost Dongguan a bullet in the shoulder. Fortunately, they had only just crossed the river border. Within hours his companions were able to get him back into Russia.
The young Chinese liked the Russians: “We were all fellow Communists.” Once he had mastered the language, he became friendly with Russian officers who used to say: “You like it here. Why not take out citizenship and marry a nice Russian girl?” Dongguan was irked by this: “I am not a Russian—I’m Chinese.” “Don’t be so small-minded and nationalistic,” they taunted him. “I’m not nationalistic!” the young Chinese said angrily. “I’m internationalistic.” “Come on,” insisted the Russians. “You’d have a much better life here than in China—even when we’ve dealt with the Japanese there’ll be a civil war to come.” Dongguan brushed them aside. He met a young Chinese Communist doctor named Zhang Yujie and married her three months later. He enjoyed his life in the Russian camps. Their remoteness held no terrors for a Chinese peasant, and he loved the opportunities to hunt and fish: “There was plenty of game in the forests. We lived pretty well.” By 1945 he was twenty-eight years old, one of the most experienced of the guerrillas.
Jiang De joined a course of thirty students, most of them under twenty, who were taught the arts of reconnaissance and wireless operation—which, in the case of Jiang and several others, included some basic literacy skills. “I enjoyed it—I learned so many things I didn’t know.” Their material needs were served by Russian batmen and cooks, a privilege the teenager had never known. They liked their Russian “headmaster.” Jiang said: “I changed a lot—for a start, I learned to read and write. I became a different person.”
“The Russians were kind to us,” said Zhou Shuling. “I saw how very hard life was in Russia—worse than in China—but they shared what they had. Sometimes, a Russian might only have one potato to eat. But he would share that potato.” She herself was trained as a nurse, and during those years of exile bore her husband four children in their tiny room in the bleakness of the Russian north-east. Her husband’s career became much more exotic. He was trained as a parachutist, and carried out several intelligence missions in Manchuria. He told her nothing of his abrupt comings and goings. Once, she was amazed to see a Japanese soldier walking up the path to her home. Then she recognised her husband in the hated uniform.
More than a few of the Chinese agents whom the Soviets sent back into