Battle of Luding Bridge

Luding Bridge (Chinese: 泸定桥; pinyin: Luding Qiao) is a historical landmark in China where soldiers of the Fourth Regiment of the Chinese Workers and Peasants' Army secured a vital river crossing during the Long March. Without the bridge, the Red Army would probably have been destroyed. In the 19th century, the last army of the Taiping peasant rebels had been destroyed in the same area. There is an ongoing dispute about the battle or skirmish required to take the bridge.

Overview

Luding Bridge seen from the side of the city

Fleeing from pursuing Kuomintang forces, the communists found that there were not enough boats to cross the Dadu River (Sichuan province). They were forced to use Luding Bridge, a Qing dynasty chain bridge built in 1701. [1]. It consisted of thirteen heavy iron chains with a span of some 100 yards. Normally thick boards lashed over the chains made the road of the bridge.

In the morning of May 28, 1935, the 4th regiment of the Lin Biao's 2nd division of the Chinese Red Army received an urgent order from the general headquarter: Luding Bridge must be captured on May 29, one day ahead of the original schedule.

After a 120 km march and defeating numerous nationalist forces that blocked their path, at the dawm on May 29, 1935, Lin Biao's communist army forces reached the bridge, only to discover that local warlords allied with the ruling Kuomintang had removed most of the planks on the bridge. Furthermore, the Luding City itself was occupied by a regiment of troops from local warlord Liu Wenhui's 38th Brigade of the 4th brigade, under the 5th division of the 24th Corps, and its commander Li Quanshan, a wealthy opium dealer like many other local warlord commanders at the time, was an oppium addict himself, as most of his soldiers were.

Lin Biao's False Legacy

Contrary to the misbelief that Lin Biao was in command, the actual commander was the regimental political comissar Yang Chengwu. Lin Biao and other commanders were still at their temporary headquarter 160 km away, so the task was given to Lin Biao's the vanguard unit, the 4th regiment lead by commander Wang Kaixiang (王开湘) and political comissar Yang Chengwu, because the regiment was 40 km closer to the bridge. The misbelief was the result of the Cultural Revolution in which Lin Biao was glorified to boost his fame, and fabricating him with the credit for jobs accomplished by his subordinates was one of the tricks used. In fact, during the Cultural Revolution, the actual commander Yang Chengwu was jailed and persecuted under the direct order of Lin Biao. The actual decision was made by Mao Zedong himself, Lin Biao had little to do with the planning and commanding of the event besides carrying out Mao's order by orderig his unit to follow the plan.

The Battle

With the main Kuomintang army closing in on the Chinese Red Army, a small volunteer force were sent across the badly damaged bridge. After the preparation, the volunteer force lead by the company commander Liao Dazhu (廖大珠) begun their assult on bridge at 4:00 p.m. under the covering barrage. Red Star Over China - which uses the old-style name, Tatu River - says it was a force of thirty men; but it is generally accepted that there were only twenty-two. Red Army sources agree that they crawled over the bare iron chains while under heavy machine-gun fire from the opposite side.

According to Red Star Over China, three were hit, fell and died but the rest came forward, and Red Star Over China suggests that some of the warlord forces admired their foes and were not shooting to kill. The Regimental political commissar Yang Chengwu was the commander who led the actual attack, and according to his memoir and that of the survivors of the twenty-two assult team, there was no fatalities on the bridge itself, despite that several members were wounded. However, in the ensuing battle to establish a bridgehead, two were killed, and there were more fatalities in the subsequent battles to defend the bridgehead from the defenders' counterattacks until the Red Army reinforcement arrived. It further stated that at a late stage, "paraffin was thrown on the planking and it began to burn". But there were Red Army forces on both sides. The force guarding the bridge and Luding City were driven off; some surrendered.

According to an account by a now late Will Downs [2], "At last one Red crawled up over the bridge flooring, uncapped a grenade and tossed it with perfect aim into the enemy redoubt. Nationalist officers ordered the rest of the planking torn up. It was already too late. More Reds were crawling into sight. (Kerosene) was thrown on the planking and it began to burn. By then about twenty Reds were moving forward on the hands and knees, tossing grenade after grenade into the enemy machine-gun nest."

As a reward, every surviving member of the volunteer team was awarded a fountain-pen, a notebook, a pair of chopsticks, a set of Zhongshan suit, and an enamel bow. However, none of the survivors lived to see the establishment of the People's Republic. The company commander Liao Dazhu (廖大珠) was the last to die: he was killed in the battle to liberate Shanghai.

Significance

This skirmish may have saved the Red Army from a major defeat.

"'Victory was life' said P'eng Teh-huai (Peng Dehuai); 'defeat was certain death'." (Red Star Over China (1971 edition)). The event was incorporated in the elementary school text for patriotic education.

The event raised morale for the troops, and was later used as a propaganda tool to highlight the courage of the communists. "For their distinguished bravery the heroes of An Jen Ch'ang [the seized ferry boat] and Liu Ting Chiao [the bridge] were awarded the Gold Star, the highest decoration in the Red Army of China." (Red Star Over China').

Controversy

Jung Chang

The British-Chinese writer Jung Chang and her historian husband, Jon Halliday, in their 2005 biography of Mao, Mao: The Unknown Story, write that there was no battle at Luding Bridge. Having interviewed eye-witnesses, including the owner of a nearby shop, they state that the Kuomintang did not sabotage the bridge, or contest the crossing. According to them, the Long March was exaggerated and used as propaganda. Currently, Chang & Halliday's is a rare account in denying that there was a battle at Luding Bridge. There are non-Chinese historians who have supported the Communist point-of-view: for example, Harrison E. Salisbury in The Long March: The Untold Story, Dick Wilson in The Long March 1935 : The Epic of Chinese Communism's Survival and Charlotte Salisbury in Long March Diary. While much academic research exists in support of the communist perspective, Deng Xiaoping, veteran of the incident and former CCP Chairman once suggested propaganda surrounding the incident is exaggerated.

Brzezinski

In a speech given at Stanford University, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski related the following conversation with Deng Xiaoping:

"I even told them we went to Luding Bridge, which was the site of a special, important heroic battle in which the Red Forces were able to cross the river under very difficult and treacherous conditions. If they hadn’t they would have been wiped out. It was a great feat of arms to have crossed that bridge. At that point, Chairman Deng smiled and said, “Well, that’s the way it’s presented in our propaganda. We needed that to express the fighting spirit of our forces. In fact, it was a very easy military operation. There wasn’t really much to it. The other side were just some troops of the warlord who were armed with old muskets and it really wasn’t that much of a feat, but we felt we had to dramatize it.”

Weaponry

Other sources that suggest the incident is exaggerated come from the memiors of Chinese Red Army Veterans that were released in the 1990's . Numerous surviving Chinese Red Army veterans recalled that the weapons used by the local warlords guarding the bridge was far inferior than what the Chinese Red Army had and despite the Chinese Red Army's morale and courage, the weaponry was probably just as equally important:

Realizing their dangerous situation, the Chinese Red Army sent their crack troops to seize the bridge, and the soldiers were armed with the best guns captured from the National Revolutionary Army, which in turn had German assistance: the assault team members were all armed with submachine guns with an effective range of 300 — 400 meters while many others were armed with the semi-automatic rifles with 800 meter effective range. In contrast, the local warlord's troops were armed only with bolt-action rifles so that their firepower was far less dense than what the Chinese Red Army could lay on them.

Another important factor was the types of bullets used. Chinese Red Army used the best quality bullets they captured, including a significant portion of foreign made bullets, while those used by the local warlord's troops were locally manufactured, which was far inferior in quality even when compared to other domestic Chinese arms factories such as those in eastern part of China such as Shanghai. In addition, most of the bullets were decades old. When Red Army troops test fired the captured bullets after their victory, it was discovered that these bullets used by the local warlord's troops only had a maxmium range of around 100 meters: when fired from a rifle at standing position, most of the bullet would drop to the ground at 100 meters or so, and the effective range of these bullets was of course less than 100 meters, which was not enough to cover the span of the bridge. The machine guns deployed by the local warlord's troop used the same bullets, so they suffered the same problem.

This discovery was affirmed decades later when surviving members of the local warlords' troops were interviewed abroad. The local warlord's troops said that they had neither the density of fire nor the rate of fire needed to suppress the Chinese Red Army, and in fact, said they were the ones that were forced to take cover for most of the time during the battle, rarely firing any shots. The interviewers concluded that the superior density of fire, rate of fire, and accuracy gave the Chinese Red Army the edge, in addition to morale and courage and that the battle was one sided.

The technical advantage in weaponry that greatly contributed to the Red Army's success was carefully hidden by the communist for decades to fit the political propaganda needs, and it was not until 1979 during the reform era did this fact came out, first by a movie titled 'Da Du He' that was made about this battle.

Local Warlords Politics

Another factor that contributed to the Chinese Red Army's victory was that the local warlords were much more worried about Chiang's plan to take over their home turves than the Red Army's passing by: The area was controlled by a warlord Liu Wenhui, who fought the civil wars in Sichuan Province against his own nephew, Liu Xiang, another local warlord. Chiang remained neutral ostensively, in the hope of weakening the local warlords by letting them fight each other, and then making his move to take over. Gradually, it was apparent that the nephew would prevail over the uncle because the nephew was willing to take heavy loss in exchange of land, while the uncle was unwilling to sacrifice large number of his troops. Fearing Liu Xiang would not last in Liu Wenhui's massive counterattack had Liu Wenhui committed his troops in full strength in such anticipated counterattack (which never came), Chiang shifted his support to the nephew Liu Xiang, who eventually defeated his own uncle Liu Wenhui, forcing the latter to retreat to Xikang Province. Knowing that the Red Army was only passing by, Liu Wenhui, like any other warlords, was extremely reluctant to commit his force in any significant numbers to fight the Red Army because his forces had to be preserved to fight other warlords in Sichuan, a role vital to his survival.

In addition to preserve forces to fight others, the local warlords were also keen to preserve their forces to keep Chiang out of their turves: just before the Red Army entered Sichaun Province, Chiang's army followed the Red Army into the in the neighboring Guizhou province, ostensively to help the local warlord Wang Jialie to fight the Red Army, but when the Red Army was gone, Chiang's troop remained. Under the excuse of failing to stop the Red Army, Wang Jialie was removed by Chiang with the backup of his newly deployed troops in the Guizhou Province. The local warlords knew that they could return and regain control of their territory after the Red Army had left, but if Chiang's army came, they would be removed for good. Therefore, despite the Chiang's advisors' accurate prediction of the need of at least three regiments (and possibly four or five) of local warlord's troop to stop a single Red Army regiment, the local warlord only deployed a single regiment at Luding Bridge, and his main force was deployed to block Chiang's two regiments sent to reinforce the defense of Luding Bridge. The defenders of Luding Bridge were well aware the political situation after witnessed the warlord's fall in the neighboring Guizhou province and obviously not willing to sacrifice their own lives for Chiang's potential takeover.

Recent additions

Two westerners living in China investigated the matter while retracing the route of the Long March:

With the exception of Yang Chengwu, no source ever suggests that there were no casualties on Luding Bridge. The very first description of the battle, given by Edgar Snow in Red Star Over China in 1937, cited three deaths. The official number, inscribed on the bridge itself, is now four.

Sun Shuyun, who was born in China and has made documentaries for the BBC, did her own retracing of the march. At Luding Bridge, a local blacksmith gave her the following account:

Only a squadron was at the other end. It was a rainy day. Their weapons were old and could only fire a few metres. They were no match for the Red Army, When they saw the soldiers coming, they panicked an fled - their officers had long abandoned them. There wasn't really much of a battle. Still, I take my hat off to the twenty-two soldiers who crawled on the chains. My father and I did it in the old days when we checked the bridge, but we were inside a basket. Those men were brave. They crossed very quickly..

The blacksmith also said that after they had crossed, the Red Army cut through four of the bridge's nine chains, making it unusable for months. This has not been mentioned in other accounts, but Sun Shuyun found another source and discovered that the idea came from Mao. She also suggests that the Red Army was indeed given an easy passage, but that this was done by local warlords in defiance of Chiang Kaishek:

It seems that one of the warlords, Liu Wenhui, was a key figure... When [Red Army commander] Zhu De and Liu Bocheng, his fellow Sichuanese, sent him money and a letter, asking for safe passage through his territory, including the Luding Bridge, he happily obliged... 'Chiang gives my army no ammunition or food, how can we fight tough battles?' he grumbled. He told his men to put up only half-hearted resistance, and to allow the Red Army through without much of a fight...

Liu kept his contact with the Communists ... In 1949 he mutinied, taking two other warlords with him over to the Communists... he was made Minister of Forestry, and then a minister in the Communist government. (Ibid.)

Sources

• "Crossing of the Luding Bridge"
• "Account by the late Will Downs
• The Long March : The Untold Story by Harrison E. Salisbury
• The Long March 1935 : The Epic of Chinese Communism's Survival by Dick Wilson
• Stories of the Long March - Lightning Attack on Luting Bridge by Yang Cheng-wu
• Long March Diary by Charlotte Salisbury
• Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
• The Crossing of the Iron Chain Bridge
• The Long March (Jocelyn & McEwan), by Ed Jocelyn and Andrew McEwan, Constable 2006
• The Long March (Sun Shuyun), by Sun Shuyun, HarperCollins 2006