He was interrupted by an American plane flying slowly overhead, which was broadcasting a message urging us to capitulate, promising to treat us humanely. An endearing female voice said in standard Mandarin: "Chinese soldiers, your national leaders say you volunteered to come to Korea, but in your hearts you all know you didn't come here of your own free will. Your leaders stuck the name of the People's Volunteers on you and sent you here as cannon fodder for Stalin and Kim Il Sung. Now, you have no food or warm clothes, you dare not speak your minds, and you cannot write home. Think about it, brothers, are you really volunteers?"
Hearing those words, a few men broke into sobs. As the plane was banking away temporarily, Pei said, "Don't be taken in by the enemy. Remember we're Chinese and must never betray our motherland. If I find anyone who wants to surrender, I'll shoot him on the spot." He slapped his pistol.
At this point Tiger appeared. From somewhere he'd gotten hold of a mule with a lopped tail, which must once have belonged to a mortar battery. He patted the half-filled sack of grass that had been placed on the mule's back as a saddle, and said to Commissar Pei rather proudly, "Sir, you can ride on this from now on."
"No, I won't!" Pei 's eyes shone with determination. To our astonishment, he pulled out his pistol and shot the mule in the forehead. The animal dropped to the ground, gasping noisily while blood flowed out of its mouth and its legs stretched as if pulled by invisible ropes. With his left hand on Tigers shoulder, Commissar Pei raised his voice and announced, "Comrades, we must live or die together! I shall walk with you all the way back to our lines. Don't lose heart. We must help each other and find our way out."
Why did he shoot the mule? Just to show his resolve to these men? Or to assure them that he wouldn't run away? Or to frighten them into obedience? I was confounded, and so was Tiger, who looked upset and hurt, but we didn't dare say a word. If only we could have stayed a little longer and cooked some mule meat before we had to leave.
We set off for Shichang Village. Dead tired, we couldn't walk fast. The enemy didn't shell us at this time; probably they saw that we were just a bunch of wounded men and could hardly get anywhere, no immediate threat to them. When darkness deepened, we began moving faster in the direction of Shichang, at the pace of about one mile an hour. Without a map or a compass or stars in the sky, we just followed our instinct for direction. The commissar, Tiger, Dr. Wang, and I walked at the head of the first team while the other two groups marched behind us.
Originally I had thought I would be assigned to lead a team of the wounded men, but Pei had ordered both Tiger and me to stay close to him. Perhaps he was scared too. Tiger carried on his back a leather bag containing Pei 's personal belongings. The commissar, suffering from a stomachache caused by an ulcer, pressed his fist against his belly from time to time. He told us that if we couldn't break out of the trap, we would go to the mountains and wage guerrilla war, waiting for an opportunity to return to North Korea.
To our horror, at daybreak the two teams behind us had vanished. We couldn't see whether they had purposely quit following us, or had been captured by the enemy, or were simply too exhausted to march anymore. I guessed they might have disbanded of their own accord. Now we had about eighty men with us, most of whom had belonged to the Guards Company and the Mountain Gun Battalion. Many officers were also in this group.
3. THREE MONTHS OF GUERRILLA LIFE
After a month of hiding in the daytime and trying in vain to find a rift in the enemy's encirclement, our team was reduced to thirty-four men. Whenever someone was killed or disappeared, I couldn't help but think about my promises to my mother and Julan. It seemed unlikely I would be able to make it home. But in spite of my fear and sadness, I forced myself to appear cheerful, especially in the presence of Commissar Pei, who always insisted that at all costs we must survive. Some of the remaining officers were familiar with guerrilla tactics. Our team leader, Yan Wenjin, the director of the divisional security section, had led dozens of guerrillas in both the war against the Japanese and the civil war. But we were in a foreign country now. Without the knowledge of its language, its terrain, and its people, how could we get the civilians' support that was the basis of guerrilla warfare?
Hunger was our most pressing problem. During the day we picked wild grapes and berries on the mountain, though we dared not move about conspicuously. The wild fruits, tiny and bitter, numbed our tongues and made a greenish saliva dribble out from the corners of our mouths. Commissar Pei couldn't eat what we gathered because of his ulcer, but he encouraged us to search for fruits and herbs for ourselves.
One morning Yan Wenjin ran over and beamed, "There's a dead horse in the woods!"
We all went over to take a look. The horse, a Mongolian sorrel, had been dead for some days. Its hair had begun to fall off, and the gun wound in its chest festered with rings of maggots like a large white chrysanthemum. Flies droned over it madly even though a man wielded a leafy branch to drive them away. Yet we were elated to find the carcass and immediately set about looking for bayonets, wooden shell boxes, and steel helmets. I went up a slope with two men to search the area beyond a patch of dwarf fir trees. As we walked, flocks of crows took off, cawing fitfully. Behind a low rise we came across four dead South Korean soldiers. In the middle of them lay a Chinese soldier, whose head was smashed and whose face was gone, eaten up by birds. Around him were scattered splinters of wooden grenade handles. Clearly he had detonated the grenades and died together with the enemy. We carried his body into a cavity under a juniper and covered him with stones and green branches. After saluting him, we went back with two bayonets and an empty box that had contained mortar shells. We had also found a brass lighter in a Korean man's pocket. The other groups brought back a bayonet, three helmets, and some wooden cartridge boxes too. From God knows where one man returned with a dented field cauldron.
Immediately they started butchering the horse. The air turned putrid as dark sticky blood dripped onto the ground. Soon, large chunks of the meat were being boiled in the cauldron, which had been propped on a horseshoe of rocks. Dr. Wang limped over. Frowning, he had a look at the carcass and then with a pair of tweezers poked the horsemeat in the pot. He said in a thin voice, "The meat is rotten. You'll get poisoned if you eat it."
Disappointed, we walked away to wash our bloody hands in a puddle of rainwater. Some men couldn't stop swearing.
To solve the problem of hunger, Yan Wenjin offered to go down the mountain with five men to search for grain. Commissar Pei let them go. They left after sunset, and we waited for them anxiously. But for five days we heard nothing from them. Later in the prison camp I learned that they had ambushed an American truck transporting a squad of GIs and some supplies. Three of them had been killed by a machine gun, and Yan Wenjin had been hit in the stomach and died on the way to the hospital. After that failed attempt, smaller groups were sent down the mountain to search for food, but none of them ever came back. By chance, I had seen through binoculars how three of our men fell into the enemy's hands. It was overcast that morning, but the air was clear. As our comrades were approaching the foot of the southern hill, suddenly about twenty GIs with two wolf dogs appeared in front of them. Our men swung aside, dashing away in different directions, but the Americans caught up with them and brought them down, some kicking them furiously and some stomping on their chests. For a moment a cloud of dust obscured the human figures. When I could see again, the dogs were springing at our men and tearing at their limbs. Viewed from the distance of one and a half miles, the whole scene was eerily quiet, without a single shot fired. Horrified, I reported the loss to Commissar Pei. His face fell, and for hours he didn't speak a word.