The Courtyard House: The Little Red Devil Returning from the Peninsula

October 4th, Beiping. The clock at the North China Area Army Headquarters struck nine, and Okamura Yasuji slammed Ohno's battle report onto the table.

The teacup was knocked over by the corner of the paper, and water dripped down the edge of the table. The staff officer who was closest saw it but didn't dare to wipe it up.

Ono was killed in action. An entire reinforced battalion at Sanglin'ao was almost wiped out. Kinoshita's unit was retreating along the Beishan Road, and several outposts outside Yangquan had lost contact. When the situation map was hung on the wall, a string of black dots had been drawn from Shouyang to Yangquan. Bridges, railway tracks, and telephone lines were being repaired during the day and then broken at night. Two military trains were stuck east of Jingxing, carrying mountain artillery shells, gasoline, and winter clothing. No one could say for sure when they would reach the front lines.

Okamura Yasuji stood before the map, his pointer pointing towards Yangquan, without saying a word. Seven or eight staff officers sat ramrod straight in the conference room, none daring to speak first. Finally, it was the logistics staff officer who reluctantly handed over the freight car list.

"The Zhengtai Railway has been continuously restored, with a maximum of twelve military wagons per day. At the section where the rails broke, wagons had to be unloaded and reloaded, leaving only six wagons, requiring three hundred large wagons to connect them."

Okamura asked, "Where's the car?"

"Continue the campaign from Yangquan and Pingding."

"What about the last one?"

The staff officer paused for a moment. "One hundred and twenty-seven wagons went missing during the night, and the drivers took the livestock with them. More than forty others fell into the hands of the Independent Regiment."

Okamura said, "Recruit again."

The staff officer's pen hovered over the paper for several seconds before finally falling. The villages and towns along the route had already handed over their grain, livestock, and laborers. Going again, it was uncertain whether they could even bring back carts, let alone how many guides they would send to the Eighth Route Army. Everyone knew the math, but no one dared to speak first.

How many formal armed forces does Zhao Weiguo currently have?

"Approximately 14,000, with local armed forces in the surrounding areas counted separately."

"last month?"

"Nine thousand to ten thousand."

Okamura tapped the table with his knuckles; the sound wasn't loud, but everyone in the room could hear it. "Four thousand more in half a month?"

The intelligence officer turned to the next page and pushed over a handwritten replenishment speed chart. The Independent Regiment wasn't just hastily conscripting men to fill numbers; local armed forces underwent long-term rotational training, initially performing tasks in transportation, guard duty, logistics, and supply depots, before being transferred in batches after passing the initial assessment. In the past, the Japanese army classified all these men as scattered soldiers, so they couldn't see their true replenishment rate. Three to four thousand men per month—not a sudden increase, but a steady, assembly-line process.

Several more photos were laid out on the table: standard-sized shell casings, numbered armor plates, a scrap sheet listing cracks, dimensional deviations, and the person who handled it, with a "Do Not Assemble" stamp in the lower right corner.

"They have established acceptance procedures," the intelligence officer said. "If one factory is bombed, as long as the technicians and measuring tools can be moved, it can be rebuilt elsewhere."

Okamura stared at the scrap sheet for a long time. A factory that would stamp and scrap even defective parts clearly wouldn't forget how to build things after just one bombing.

"What did they find out over at Xigou?"

"Four people went, three went missing. One returned, finding only an empty warehouse, discarded molds, and a fake chimney."

The meeting room grew even quieter. They'd transferred a whole brigade over for that empty shell. Four people went, one came back. It was a terrible deal.

Someone whispered, "Zhao Weiguo is not yet fifteen years old."

Okamura looked up. "Can age bring Ohno back to life?"

No one answered. The old files described Zhao Weiguo as a young officer with excellent marksmanship and the courage to fight at night, but those words now seem too simplistic. One man's marksmanship cannot explain the 100-kilometer, four-line dispatch, nor can it explain why Sanglin'ao was able to hide for five days, let alone explain why the battalions below could still hold their positions after the commander was wounded.

Okamura walked to the map and slowly moved his baton along the Zhengtai Line.

"Behind him were supply depots, factories, couriers, local armed forces, and a group of officers who could carry out orders without him having to speak. We always treated him like a knife, thinking of breaking it."

The baton stopped in Yangquan.

"Looking at it now, it's a furnace. The knife is broken, but the furnace remains. As long as the furnace remains, the knives will never run out."

The operations chief of staff presented a six-page contingency plan. The first plan was to draw three battalions from the existing garrison in North China. The second plan was to transfer a mixed brigade from Inner Mongolia. The third plan was to request the Kwantung Army to provide two infantry regiments, equipped with artillery, engineers, and transport support, totaling approximately seven thousand men.

Okamura turned to the third case, first asking about the railway, then about gasoline, and finally whether Tokyo would agree.

The chief of staff did not answer immediately. The Kwantung Army was not under the command of the North China Area Army. The entry of 7,000 men into the pass involved not only troops, but also railway schedules, ammunition, vehicles, and border defenses. Tokyo would certainly ask: There were already hundreds of thousands of Japanese and puppet troops in North China, so why transfer troops from outside the pass to deal with a nominally independent regiment? No one could answer this question, because the answer was too shameful.

Okamura flipped the plan back to the cover. "Change it to an appendix for a wargame simulation; don't submit it formally for now."

What about Ohno's death?

"Attach the document."

He then ordered Kinoshita's unit to withdraw to Yangquan and reassess the remaining troops at the front. Yangquan cannot be lost again; anyone who abandons it without authorization will face a military court-martial. He stated this calmly, but no one in the room felt it was a light sentence.

The contingency plan wasn't issued, nor was a departure date specified. Yet, those six pages didn't end up in the wastebasket. The chief of staff kept it under the train schedule, next to the twelve-car, six-car, three-hundred-car, and one hundred and twenty-seven missing old trains. Seven thousand men couldn't simply cross the broken tracks just by having the plan written on it; until Tokyo gave its approval, it was just a stone weighing on the corner of the table.

The chief of staff put the documents into an unnumbered leather wallet. After he closed the wallet, Okamura called him back.

"In the next simulation, we'll list one particular scenario separately."

"What?"

"Even though Zhao Weiguo himself is not at the front lines, the Independent Regiment can still operate as usual."

The chief of staff paused for a moment. Previous simulations had focused on finding the command post, the radio, and Zhao Weiguo himself; the idea was that removing that small red flag would bring the Eighth Route Army on the table to a halt. Sanglin'ao and Houerling had already proven that the real battlefield wouldn't stop for them.

Okamura didn't explain further. He walked back to the map, pointed his baton at the string of black dots around Yangquan, and counted them one by one. He stopped when he reached the seventh dot.

"Were there any contacts with this location yesterday?"

"It broke down this morning."

Okamura placed his baton on the table. "Meeting adjourned."

The staff officers filed out. As the intelligence officer collected the photos, a scrap sheet slipped off the corner of the table. He bent down to pick it up, his finger hovering over the words "Do Not Assemble," holding it there for two seconds before finally lifting it.

Three days ago, at the barracks north of Yangquan.

Private Kenji Kobayashi sat on the edge of his bunk, carving a mountain out of a plank from an artillery shell box. He was from Nagano and had never seen the real Mount Fuji, only in elementary school textbooks. The plank was too narrow; he couldn't carve the base, and the snow line at the top was crooked. He still carved three Japanese characters on the back: "For Mother."

The knife was borrowed from the cookhouse; a small piece of the blade was chipped, and it jammed every time he tried to cut. Kobayashi gathered the sawdust on his knees, afraid to let it fall to the ground. If the sergeant saw someone using an ammunition box as personal belongings, he would be punished by standing for at least a night. He had originally wanted to carve a picture of his old family house in Nagano, but then realized he couldn't remember which way the eaves sloped. The picture of Mount Fuji in the textbook was simpler, with only a white peak and two slopes.

The squadron originally had over 180 men, but after retreating from Xigou, Sandaoliang, and Houerling, less than 90 remained. The newly arrived puppet troops slept in another row of houses, but the veteran Japanese soldiers, finding them dirty, refused to share the stove, yet insisted on waiting for them to bring coal from outside the city at night. No one mentioned this, and even if they did, it would be of no use.

Dinner was rice mixed with sorghum, and each person had a small piece of salted fish. The bottom of the pot was skimmed twice, and there were still more than a dozen bowls only half full. The sergeant cursed the transport team for delivering the wrong grain, and he himself had half his meal left. After cursing, he still had to eat, otherwise he wouldn't have the strength to dig fortifications tomorrow.

When the broadcast came from outside the city again, everyone in the room stopped eating. The loudspeaker read out names, unit numbers, and the deaths of certain people in Sanglin'ao and those captured in Hou'erling. When someone heard a fellow villager's name, they lowered their head and shoveled their food even faster, as if shoveling it faster would make the name disappear from their ears. Xiao Lin waited for his own name to be called, yet he was also afraid of actually hearing it.

The loudspeaker would pause after each verse. Inside the barracks, the only sounds were the clinking of chopsticks against bowls and the crackling of damp coal in the stove. Someone said it was fabricated by the Eighth Route Army, but before the words were even out of their mouth, someone next to them asked: "Then how did he know Fujita's unit number?"

No one answered.

Sato leaned closer and asked in a low voice, "Have our letters home fallen into their hands too?"

No one could answer it. This question was more sleep-inducing than the broadcast itself.

Xiao Lin hid the wooden carving under the bedding, but the squad leader still saw it. When the carving was taken away, he stood ramrod straight, his face redder than if he had been slapped.

"Want to go home?"

"I want to give this to my mother."

The squad leader turned the wooden carving over and looked at the three crookedly carved characters on the back. "Live long enough to be mailed out."

That evening, the three deserters were escorted back to the barracks by the military police. They had gone out through the drainage ditch and were caught by a puppet army patrol less than five miles away. The entire battalion was herded into the courtyard to watch as the three men's crimes were read aloud. One of the three was barefoot, his soles blistered and bleeding. The other kept looking up at the second floor of the barracks, where several wet uniforms were hanging to dry. Kobayashi recognized him as a private first class from the next platoon but couldn't recall his name.

After the gunshot, no one moved. The courtyard was so quiet you could hear the coal in the stove collapsing.

The squad leader clutched the wooden carving, and only after the military police had gone far away did he pass by Kobayashi at the back of the line and stuff the wooden block back into his pocket.

"Hide it well."

Sato was on night duty that night and didn't return the next day. No one knew if he had deserted, died, or been captured by another unit. Kobayashi didn't dare ask. During roll call, the sergeant paused after Sato's name, and finally wrote only "not returned." No one in the barracks answered for him, and no one dared to look at the empty bunk for too long.

Kobayashi tucked the wooden carving into his cotton-padded coat, the sharp mountaintop pressing against his chest through the fabric. This incident was not recorded in the Japanese army's report.

The puppet soldiers delivering coal saw it.

On October 4th, Gardenia's courier brought back a rubbing of a wood carving. Behind the rough mountain shape, three Japanese characters were faintly pressed. Along with the rubbing came news: the garrison had executed three deserters, and Kinoshita had been ordered to withdraw, carrying artillery and wounded soldiers only through the North Mountain Road.

Zhi Zi registered the two messages separately, without mixing them together.

"The wood carving only shows that the person was homesick, not that the entire company would surrender."

Zhao Gang picked up the rubbing and looked at it. "Where's Sanqiang?"

"This shows that Okamura was afraid the person would escape. He killed because he was afraid the person would run away."

Duan Peng turned the rubbing over and looked at the three Japanese characters on the back. "Damn it, even the Japanese miss home."

Zhao Gang put down the rubbing. "Missing home and surrendering are not the same thing. Missing home and running away are not the same thing either. Remember these three things separately, and don't combine them into one sentence like 'The enemy is about to collapse.'"

Duan Peng remained silent.

Another tattered telegram mentioned the Kwantung Army, two regiments, and railway schedules, but lacked formal orders and departure dates. After reading the telegram, Zhao Weiguo folded it and placed it under the map. He did not send troops to the Northeast because of the words "two regiments," nor did he arrange for any new decapitations.

Zhi Zi put the wood carving rubbings, the deserter execution records, and the route to Beishan Road into three separate paper bags. Zhao Gang wrote the source on the opening of each bag.

Zhao Weiguo placed the Kwantung Army's contingency plan at the very bottom of the map, leaving only the Beishan Road at the top. The draft was still in a drawer in Beiping, but the artillery vehicles under the wood were already on their way.

"Beishan Road, Shimen Bridge, Yangquan." Zhao Weiguo drew a line under each of these three names with a red pencil. "Intercept what you can first. We'll deal with the matters outside the pass after we've settled the accounts inside."

Duan Peng asked, "How many men did Kinoshita bring?"

"The remaining troops, including artillery, numbered a little over two thousand. They had four mountain guns and two infantry guns, but less than a full load of ammunition."

"A little over two thousand." Duan Peng clicked his tongue. "Enough to eat."

Zhao Weiguo didn't respond. He put the red pencil on the table and pointed to the line of Beishan Road.

"Kinoshita is still on his way. Let's leave this group here for now."