Life Under Fire--Veterans from Mainland China

Tseng Te-fu is one of those veterans, living at a veterans' home in Panchiao. Still solidly built and with a sparkling laugh, he seems nothing like one would expect from someone almost 90 years old.

"I was born in 1916 into a rich family that grew lacquer trees in Guizhou. In 1935 my elder brother was tapped for military service, but he had just got married then, so I went in his place."

Tseng's tales of the fight against the Japanese come thick and fast; the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, the Battle of Taierzhuang in 1938, Tseng was part of them all. "Japs, Commies, I've fought them all," he says.

"We fought damned hard in those battles! Just look at the scars I got left with," says Tseng, rolling up his trouser legs and unbuttoning his shirt. His legs, back, chest, and abdomen all show scars from bullet wounds and shrapnel. Each scar reminds Tseng of the terror of being in the midst of so much death on the battlefield.

A life of war

Another veteran of campaigns in enemy-occupied northern China, Mr. Li, recalls the battles of July 7th, 1937, wherein Japanese troops charged in and brought about the fall of Tianjin and Beiping (now Beijing) in quick succession. Unwilling to become vassals in a conquered state, tens of millions of people from northern China fled, with people aiding the young and the elderly in this great exodus. Each and every road south was overwhelmed by hordes of people. They were frequently bombed by Japanese reconnaissance planes, and the roads were full of wailing, moaning, and the bodies of those who died along the way. The roads "ran red with blood and flesh." It truly was hell on earth.

Tragically, aside from those who had the money to take trains or boats and flee the area, most refugees lagged behind the Japanese front line, despite doing their all to escape. Seeing they had no chance of ever reaching the interior and the seat of the Nationalist government, many people simply decided to return to their hometowns and live their lives gingerly under the boot of the Japanese. Meanwhile, those young people unwilling to subjugate themselves to a foreign force united to form an anti-Japanese guerilla force, the National Anti-Japanese Resistance.

An education graduate who was working at a school at the time, Li recalls this ragtag band of both common folk and the intelligentsia being well aware of the overwhelming odds they faced in taking on the Japanese. They also realized, however, that by restricting the activities of the occupying force to even a small degree they would give the real frontline troops that much more of a shot at winning. To this end, they took action destroying trains and tracks, interrupting the Japanese supply lines. Although all this did contribute to the Chinese troops' victory in the Battle of Taierzhuang, it also led to the Japanese engaging in frenzied pursuit and retaliation, and those who bore the brunt of that retaliation were, by and large, innocent civilians.

When Li learned of a Japanese attack on a nearby village, he and his fellow guerrillas shouldered their weapons and rode off on their bikes to provide backup, but they were a moment too late. By the time they arrived, the village had been razed to the ground, the town square full of the dead and injured. More than a hundred corpses lay with their torsos sliced open by Japanese bayonets. The scene was too horrific for words.

The spirit of resistance

Late in the war, Li was jailed as a spy by the Japanese. During his incarceration, he was burned with pokers, hung upside-down by his feet, and immersed in water and then beaten across the torso with a shovel, amongst other abuses. In his cell, he was accompanied by five comrades, all of whom died of tuberculosis. It was only by reciting "The Song of the Spirit of Resistance" by 13th century figure Wen Tianxiang every day and by meditating in his room each night until daybreak that he was able to muster the strength to endure. However, ever since that time he has found himself unable to escape the psychological scarring of the war-during daytime he is fine, handling things just like everyone else, but come nighttime he is often haunted by nightmares, crying and screaming until dawn.

Li eventually remarried when he was almost 50, marrying a Hakka woman and fathering two daughters, to whom he rarely mentioned what he had suffered. Whenever Li heard his wife singing Japanese folk songs in her lilting voice, he couldn't help but recall a line from a song sang during the resistance against the Japanese called "The Song of the Sword": Go, my sword, slice off the Jap devils' heads! This kind of wartime song became a routine thing in the Li family.

Over the course of the eight years' fighting against the Japanese the country was decimated and the veterans of that war came to thoroughly despise the Japanese. However, the bitter civil war between the Nationalists and Communists that followed, with Chinese fighting Chinese, hurt them even deeper. "We had already fought too long! Eventually a number of our soldiers just got tired of fighting and didn't want to think about it again, just surrendering to the Commies," recalls Tseng Te-fu.

Fossilzed memories

In recent years the political situation in Taiwan has changed rapidly, with the Nationalist government that these soldiers were so loyal to and that they followed to the island becoming a page in the history books. The native-Taiwanese-led government that has arisen is something that has an entirely different set of experiences to these old veterans. Despite this, and perhaps because they've seen so much of the world, these old men are still optimistic about the future.

When asked what he thinks about those Japanese soldiers he fought, Tseng says, "We were just a bunch of ordinary folk, what'd we know? War is a matter of state. When the Japanese surrendered it meant we could stop fighting them. Those soldiers were just doing the same as us, fighting for their country!" And those Taiwanese who fought for the Japanese? "They'd been under Japanese occupation for 50 years and 156 days, so of course they were going to consider themselves Japanese!"

In light of the welcoming gestures being made in China by the "evil Commies" since the nation's reform and liberalization, several of the old veterans have been unable to resist the allure of returning to their hometowns. Tseng, who left home to fight aged 20 and has yet to return in 70 years, has a different viewpoint: "Not a chance I'm going back! Those Communists are horrible-if you go home, they'll kill you. All the landowners were killed, and my family were rich landowners. If I go back, someone's bound to recognize me."

Tseng has lived a simple, reclusive life, cared for by the government and living in homes for veterans where he keeps all his life's belongings. Why doesn't he travel and have some fun? "No chance! During the eight years we fought the Japanese we marched all over the place, and then when we Nationalists retreated from the Communists we marched a long and winding over one thousand kilometers from Nanjing to Fuzhou, then took tiny little boats from Xiamen, 30 to a boat, and after rocking away for half a day we finally reached Kinmen. I've had more than enough traveling for one lifetime!"

Let's just hope that society will show a little more concern for these old soldiers, letting them finally rest peacefully here after having traveled so far and seen so much.