Nobody's City

As last week ended, Changsha was nobody's city. Chinese and Japanese both claimed it. In the city, or near it, raged one of the most furious battles of the China War.

Down from the north came Japanese columns, paralleling the strategic Hankow-Canton railway on both sides (see map). They meant business. Five regular divisions, two hundred planes were in this shove. Last time the Japanese pushed on Changsha the Chinese destroyed the roads, encircled the attackers, forced them into disastrous retreat. This time the Japanese brought with them six full regiments of engineers. Communications with the rear were to be kept open at all costs.

Desperately the Chinese tried to stem the advance. Skillfully General Hsueh Yo thinned his troops out in flanking columns, hoping to round the Japanese end. But the Japanese spearheads pushed on. Their bombers pounded the city mercilessly. Chungking admitted that some Japanese had entered the city, but insisted they had been wiped out.

If the Japanese had taken Changsha, they had scored their first important victory in China since Ichang fell in June, 1940. Changsha was the focal point of all communications feeding the central front south of the Yangtze. Into Changsha for redistribution poured men and arms from Chungking, gasoline and supplies from the Burma Road, food from neighboring rice country. If Changsha was in Japanese hands, there were dark days ahead for Chiang Kai-shek's Armies to the north and east.

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