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on the far side of Grand Hinggang proved more hazardous than the climb, with tanks careering uncontrollably down steep, slippery defiles. There were constant breakdowns, and still no respite from the rain. At last, the tank crews heard firing ahead. It was their reconnaissance unit, engaged with the Japanese in the town of Lupei. The brigade hastened forward, to find the defences already crushed. They drove curiously past the Japanese positions, noting pole charges lying beside the enemy’s dead. A disappointed voice said on the radio net: “We’re too late again891.” That evening of the twelfth, some tanks ran out of fuel. “How’s the milk situation?” the battalion commander enquired by radio, in primitive code. Fadin responded that most of his company had only enough diesel for a further twenty or thirty miles. They were ordered to give all but a few litres to their brigade’s first battalion, which would keep moving. Next morning, their own tanks were resupplied by transport aircraft which landed in a neighbouring field and off-loaded drums. Soviet aircraft humped to the spearheads 2,000 tons of fuel and seventy-eight of ammunition.

If a tank broke down, it was taken in tow by another. On the plain, the armoured column found that the Japanese had blown dams, flooding huge areas. The only passable line of advance lay down a high, narrow railway embankment from Tunliao to Chzhaniu. With their crews feeling acutely vulnerable, a procession of tanks began to bump along the line. Vibration caused breakdowns and track breakages. Cripples were rammed aside into the waterlogged paddies. A lone Japanese kamikaze aircraft destroyed a T-34 and several soft-skinned vehicles. At last, however, the Russians found themselves back on solid ground, and racing forward.

Some Japanese cavalry put up a fight, but many defenders chose to surrender—1,320 prisoners were taken on the evening of 14 August. Russian veterans of the European war cried “Hande hoch!” to enemies who appeared willing to quit, for they knew no words of Japanese. The commander of the Manchukuo 10th Military District arrived in the Russian lines to surrender, at the head of a column of a thousand Chinese horsemen. Though isolated strongpoints held out, most were bypassed. Sixth Guards Tank Army advanced 217 miles in four days, its chief impediments a shortage of fuel for vehicles, water for men. On 19 August, Soviet aircraft landed at Shenyang (Mukden) and Changchun to seize the cities’ airfields. Two days later they met their brethren of the armoured columns, arriving overland.

The men of 1st Far Eastern Front found themselves advancing through a maze of wreckage left behind by Soviet bombardment and air attacks: dead men and horses, papers and photographs fluttering loose on the wind, burnt-out vehicles and debris trampled into the mud. The stench was indescribable892—a blend of death and excrement, burnt rubber and bloated animals. Victor Kosopalov’s regiment was briefly checked by a bee swarm. Gunfire had wrecked the creatures’ hives: “They went mad and stung893 everyone until they were tranquillised with smoke candles.”

LI DONGGUAN and his Soviet-sponsored reconnaissance team were working behind the enemy lines as so often before, in the city of Dongan, pinpointing Japanese positions and reporting by radio to their base. Within days they were overrun by the Russians, and the remaining Japanese threw down their arms. Li, in Russian uniform, suddenly found himself confronted by Japanese with their hands held high, bowing in abject submission. “They deserved everything894 they got,” he said laconically. “Nobody had asked them to occupy our country.”

Jiang De was among a contingent of Soviet-trained guerrillas who were suddenly mustered at their forest base in eastern Russia on 8 August, to be told: “You’re off.” They were taken to an airfield, where sixty Chinese in fifteen four-man teams were loaded aboard three transport aircraft, with strict orders that none were to discuss their destinations with others. Then they took off for Manchuria. For Jiang’s group, there