Promoting International Publisher’s ‘China’s Red Army Marches’ by Agnes Smedley, the Daily Worker serialized several sections. Based on interviews with comrades staying with her in Shanghai, the book details the Jiangxi Soviet from its birth after the crushing of the Guangzhou Rising in late 1927 to the First Congress of Chinese Soviets in 1931. Smedley’s writings were central to informing and popularizing the 1930s struggles occurring in China to the English-speaking Left.

‘The Death of Li-Kwei’ by Agnes Smedley from The Daily Worker Vol. 11 Nos. 229 & 230. September 24 & 25, 1934.

The following are selections from Agnes Smedley’s dramatic book, “China’s Red Army Marches,” published by International Publishers, 381 Fourth Ave.–Editor’s Note.

The Death of Li-Kwei

THE battle was ended and the red banners hung at rest. On the blood-stained mountain slope stood the lad, Yu-kung, silently looking down on the still face of the boy, Li-kwei. Where the head had buried itself in the snow was a pool of dark frozen blood. The feet were wrapped in dried grass, bound by old rags. Near the frail, out-stretched hand lay a bamboo flute. Both hands, and one end of the flute, were covered with fresh earth.

Yu-kung drew a sobbing breath and looked beyond. Down below, on the mountain path where the Red Army had met the White regiment coming from the north, lay other still bodies. They lay in the very midst of the enemy, still grasping their spears, knives, and bayonets. Some lay outstretched over the rifles they had captured. Chu Teh and a group of members of the General Staff were passing amongst them, bending low, talking.

To Yu-kung’s ears came the sound of shovels, digging, scraping. They would soon come for Li-kwei and place him by the side of his comrades in the shallow graves, Here, on a barren Hunan mountainside, would lie forever the frail boy whom Yu-kung had called Di-di–“younger brother.” (Used often in addressing young lads.) Brother. No, not by blood. But from babyhood the two boys had played together. Yu-kung, the older by two years, had always protected, comforted, and guided little Li-kwei. Always they had played at cooking and eating food. Only once had they pretended to be their fathers, working in the mines, An older lad had played the boss. When he had cracked a whip and yelled, Li-kwei had only stood and sobbed miserably. Yu-kung had forced the older boy to go away, and the game was never played again.

But when he was seven, little Li-kwei learned the reality of the bosses’ whips. His frail, childish body, his weak hands, his tender childhood, had seemed no hindrance to the owners of the mines. For he was the child of a worker, a miner.

AS Yu-kung stood looking down on the still face of his Di-di, these memories formed a dark picture, sweeping by swiftly in little pictures. They seemed to march to the thump of the shovels digging the graves on the slope below. First there came the memory of Li-kwei’s hand in his as the two of them had walked to the hovels they called home after twelve hours of work in the ore-sheds of Shuikoushan. Then came mass meetings of miners, struggles, killings of workers. On January 4th of this year, 1928, came the Shuikoushan uprising, Yu-kung taking a part, Li-kwei following. There followed hard partisan fighting as the revolting miners fought their way to Leiyang. There both boys became buglers in the Red Army. But Li-kwei often lay aside his bugles to play a bamboo flute given him by a peasant in Leiyang. Through Yu-kung’s mind there passed in swift succession memories of days and nights of marching as the Red Army fought its way from Leiyang toward Chaling, the revolutionary mountain city to the east. The Army had left Leiyang at midnight. The moon was high. The wooded ravines to the east lay in still darkness, the moonlight caressing the trembling leaves of the aspen. Clumps of bamboo stood in dark beauty, their long slender Angers reaching sadly toward the earth. Sharp, precipitous cliffs taught the glint of the moonlight. Yu-kung and Li-kwei had marched with Chu Teh and with two companies of peasant scouts. The girl Chang, leader of the Women’s Union of Leiyang, had married Chu Teh in Leiyang, and now marched with them. She was a member of the Political Department of the Army.

Yu-kung recalled the clank of the machine guns. The machine gunners had taken them apart and took turns carrying them and the bullets. They bent under their burdens, but since all were forbidden to speak, they neither spoke nor sang. Right in advance of them had walked the few little ragged mountain ponies, as nimble as mountain goats, loaded with the Army’s small cannons. When Li-kwei had wearied, Chu Teh had swung him astride one of the ponies. There, sitting astride the cannons of the Revolution, Li-kwei played soft, wistful folk melodies on his bamboo flute.

YU-KUNG recalled also the masses of Leiyang. Brave, heroic, filled with love for the Red Army. The feng yin tui–“sewing-cutting corps”–of women and girls had never rested until the last uniform, the last coat and trousers, had been washed, repaired, patched. When they finished, the clothing of the Army resembled a mosaic of all shades of blue patches. Other women, girls and men had made cloth shoes and straw sandals so that no man might go barefoot. So the Army walked easily, shod in sandals or soft shoes.

The peasants had Woven the broad bamboo or straw hats with conical crowns that hung down the back of each man–a protection against rain, snow, or the sun. The tailors had made a coarse sack for each man, and the Peasant Leagues filled these sacks with five or six catties of dry rice, two catties of salt, and a handful of dried vegetables. And the people of Leiyang had seen that each man had a hand towel, and some covering for the night–a robe or a blanket of some kind. Some of the men even had cups, and a few of the older revolutionary soldiers carried flashlights for rare occasions.

There followed a series of confused pictures of battles on the mountainsides as the Red Army fought its way to Chaling. The stupid, terrified faces of Kuomintang troops and the hard, cruel faces of their officers became mingled with the rattle of machine guns. Through the confusion sounded the steady crack, crack of Red Army rifles in the hands of sharpshooters. They wasted not one bullet. From behind stores, trees, walls, grave mounds, they fired with careful, deadly precision. The voices of local peasants attacking the Kuomintang troops with them sounded: “Kill! Kill!” The shouts of Red Army men sounded clearly as they called to the enemy:

“Running dogs of the landlords! Running dogs of the militarists and the imperialists! Shame!…We are poor peasants and workers!…Land to the peasants and soldiers!…Pay no debts! Pay no taxes! Pay no rent!…Eight hour day for the workers!…”

THE enemy troops heard these slogans, more deadly than bullets. What kind of war was this? they asked one another. They had been sent to destroy “bandits,” but instead they found themselves fighting peasants and workers in every village or town, and an army of guerrilla fighters made up of workers and peasants. Themselves poor peasants who had joined the army to earn their rice, they heard the cries, “Land to the peasants and soldiers!” They had been sent into a war which they thought to be like all others they would not shoot to kill, and the enemy would not shoot to kill. But here faced an Army that fought with deadly earnestness, every bullet finding a man. Such a war had never been heard of by the ears of man! Sullenly, confused, they obeyed the command of their officers, but fearfully they looked at each stone, each tree, each hut, each grave mound. Some fired into the air to make a noise that would please their landlord-officers. Some just picked up their rifles and bullets and went over to the Reds, and others ran.

Yu-kung recalled the bitter complaints of these captured or deserting soldiers, and the complaints of the men who had deserted from the “transport troops” of the enemy. “Look at me, Sze Yu-tang,” one of the “transport troops” had said, “I am a Changsha man…a peasant. One day soldiers and one officer came to the market. They pointed their guns at us and captured us…roped us together, many tens of us. They drove us away to carry their bullets and their rice….A neighbor of mine tried to escape but they shot him dead and left him lying by the path he worried about his family. worry about my family!…I have walked a thousand li, a prisoner…Now I bring you some of their bullets–I will carry them for you and help you fight the Generals…rape their mothers!”

THE peasant’s voice faded and in its place came to Yu-kung the memory of a Canton worker-soldier teaching little Li-kwei to play the Internationale on his lute. Li-kwei played it, but the melody held an echo of an old folk song, with swift minor runs between the regular beats.

The song blended with the picture of Chaling, a walled city flying red banners. It was like Lei-yang, but stronger. It took the Red Army wounded, filled the Army rice sacks, gave new sandals and boxes of silver to buy rice from the peasants. Two companies of Red troops with machine guns remained behind to reenforce the Red Guards of Chaling.

Chaling faded from Yu-kung’s memory. In its place appeared the mountains on the border of Hunan and Kiangsi Provinces. Snow-clad, frozen. Not a li but that the Army fought, zigzag, from village to mountain slope. There were days when the men said: “Not less than two hundred li have we run today.” Their sandals wore out, they began to march in bare feet black and swollen. Lice began to eat at them. Their hair became tangled, matted. The rice bags grew thin and flat. The Kuomintang militarists had eaten out every village, paying not a copper, and the Red Army could buy nothing.

Some of the Red Army men sickened and some froze to death in the cold nights on the mountains. Li-kwei grew thin and his eyes hollow. His sandals wore out and the girl Chang, wife of Chu Teh, wrapped them in dried grass and bound them with cloth torn from an extra shirt she carried in the blanket roll over her shoulder. When the Army bivouacked between battles, Li-kwei would sit on a boulder and improvise music on his flute–sad folk melodies mingling with the discord of battle and a weird undertone of the International.

THEN came Li-kwei’s last battle here on the mountain slope. A regiment of Kuomintang troops had come from the north, down over a path hidden by shrubs and over-hanging cliffs. The Red Army had met them suddenly and both sides were taken by surprise. Red Army scouts going in advance had fired three shots of warning. Knowing that this meant death anyway for them, they fired right into the ranks of the enemy, fighting until their last bullet was gone. Two of their stiffening bodies now lay below, clasping in a fierce embrace the bodies of two enemy soldiers.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n229-sep-24-1934-DW-LOC.pdf

PDF of issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n230-sep-25-1934-DW-LOC.pdf