(Yicai Global) Nov. 22 -- Mount Laifeng, with an elevation of 300 meters, is in southern Tengchong county in western Yunnan province, which is on the border of China and Burma. It was in the global spotlight during World War II. US President Franklin Roosevelt congratulated Chinese military forces on regaining control of it after more than 20 days of relentless fighting with Japanese enemy troops.

Fifty days later after occupying this commanding height, the Chinese Expeditionary Force managed to fully recover Tengchong county in September 1944. It was the first county that the Chinese army had reclaimed from intense and critical battles resisting the Japanese.

For a long time, few books about these struggles hit the press, despite their significance. 1944: Battle of Mount Song, 1944: Battle of Tengchong and 1944: Battle of Longling -- three books by the writer Yu Ge that have accounts from some witnesses -- are notable exceptions.

In his two million-word work, Yu described  in detail or the first time the Dianxi War from the perspective of commanders and soldiers in the battlefield to conjure up a clear picture of the war. 1944: Battle of Longling was published in August this year, completing the Dianxi Anti-Japanese War Trilogy 13 years after Yu Yu kicked off this writing plan.

Although the battlefield where heavy fighting took place has turned into forest and a paddy field, careful observation can reveal traces of the war. Climbers are still able to dig out shells on the ground. Every local has told stories of this war. Yu decided to do his best to record this phase of history in a detailed, accurate and objective manner.

History Worth Remembering

The Japanese hold that its army were wiped out completely only three times by the Chinese Expeditionary Force in Asian battlefields during WWII, at Mount Song (Dianxi), Tengchong and Myitkyina (Northern Burma).

The serpentine Burma Road serves as a transport channel of strategic importance to China's anti-Japanese war efforts, through which freight automobiles transported munitions and supplies from America to China around the clock after coming into operation in 1938. It was regarded as one of the only channels for introducing foreign aid to China at that time.

The Japanese army attacked Southeast Asia and cut off this transportation artery amid the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, which forced China and America to open a temporary transport route, famously known as The Hump. Braving hardships and dangers, pilots had to fly through a pass between two Himalayan peaks higher up than the American military aircrafts of the time were built to fly. Many of them recalled that they could see reflected light on the metal when going through the pass, which became an "aluminum valley" made up of wrecked aircrafts.

The aircrafts could only carry a limited load of supplies even if they successfully landed in Kunming. Their effective capacity was reduced as they had to bring fuel for the return trip. "Such a scenario can be compared to a leaky pot that will be left with only a small bit of oil when it finally gets to its destination," Yu wrote. "The transportation of supplies carried by The Hump to Hunan province at the East Front would not help us gain a competitive edge in this war." So, the Burma Road needed to be rebuilt as air transport was far from meeting needs.

"Few people can remember a key policy that the war must be won with sufficient supplies," Yu said. "We were winners in Burma and Dianxi because we got supplies, which was in line with the principle of operational research that highlights the efficient utilization of material resources. Our fight in Burma was more a protection and reconnection of our own transport channel than an aid to another country."

In Japanese history, the battles of Mount Song and Tengchong are called the Eliminating-All Battle. Yu called it a Pyrrhic victory. Some 67,000 Chinese soldiers and 25,000 Japanese counterparts were injured or died in this battle that lasted a year and a half, per official statistics. In the final part of 1944: Battle of Longling, he also detailed the casualties of the Chinese army indicating that the ratio of army forces between the enemy and the Chine side was one to 25 while that of war loss was one to six, meaning China lost six soldiers in exchange for one Japanese soldier.

The Dianxi Anti-Japanese War has not been duly valued for years. Of 22 major battles in center stage battlefields, the experts on military history did not include the Northern Burma and Dianxi battles in the China Burma India Theater led by Britain and America.

Yu sees the Dianxi Anti-Japanese War as a milestone marking the start of Chinese counterattack in the anti-Japanese war. "It was generally believed that China entered this stage at 1945 after America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which failed to involve the Western Front where China had begun to carry out counterattacks in 1944 and secured the victory."

Refuse to Be Emotional

 As for the readers who lack historical knowledge, the Dianxi Anti-Japanese War Trilogy remains boring. No obvious dramatic conflicts or emotional coloring has been present in these three books. Yu seems to have written the history of warfare into a combat log, which has details about weather, landscape, equipment, forces, air assault and support conditions, and the runaway routes of the deserters of each battle.

Yu calls his writing technique the "micro war history." It hides the story conflicts in huge amounts of details. He has exerted great efforts to make the record intriguing.

As a chief editor of a magazine, he knows how to tell a story in a much more interesting way. He was less concerned about making the trilogy interesting and was dedicated to depicting the war in a detailed way. In the preface of 1944: A Record of Battle of Mount Song, the first book of the trilogy, he said, "refuse to be emotional and 'deep in the play.'"

"More work needs to be done to fully represent a complex process, rather than to simply prove a clear point of view," Yu wrote. He once counted the "war personnel and casualty statistics" one by one, which is an annex of the War History of the 8th Chinese Expeditionary Force Corps' Siege of Mount Song compiled by the Staff Headquarters of the 8th Chinese Expeditionary Force Corps, finding out 1,000 soldiers were missing in the column of the number of the wounded soldiers. As a kind of source materials to enter the official military archives, such mistake indicates that the basis of relevant research in which these materials have been quoted is not reliable. He worked to remove the untrustworthy historical materials through his inference.

National Self-confidence Must Be Built on the Basis of Solid Facts

In the early autumn this year, dressed in a black T-shirt and army green trousers, Yu lectured freely and frankly in Shanghai in mandarin with a Shaanxi accent. There were not many audience members and all of them were males who were absorbed in his lecture. 

Yu once was a radar technician in the army and now is the editor-in-chief of Cultural in Barracks of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Publishing House. He tends to behave like a soldier in many occasions. Sometimes, he may seem a little rigid.

Born in 1960s, he was influenced by old anti-Japanese movies, and will always keep "the anti-Japanese war complex" in his heart. "The victory of the Anti-Japanese War has a meaning of spiritual salvation to our nation and every individual," Yu said. He was once obsessed with his collection of spoils of the war, for "it can express the happiness of the victory." When his collection filled a room, he began to visit the remains of the war in the country to commemorate the martyrs. Until he arrived at Mount Song, he was impressed by the passion of a local old village head for that history. Through reading, he found out that "the period of the history is so important, but its content is so vague in books," thus the idea of writing a book for the Dianxi Anti-Japanese War was born.

In writing, he tried to get rid of all personal emotions and opinions, but those who have contacted him can easily sense his feelings. In the postscripts of books, he expresses his feelings about history in ancient and modern times. In the last chapter, Review of Battle, of each book, he summarizes the self-inspections of the commanders at all levels to tease out the differences between two troops from several aspects.

Yu once mainly attributed the differences between Chinese and Japanese troops to "the half-heartedness." In February 1944, a Chinese fighter was forced to land in Tengchong due to bad weather, and the code book taken by a Chinese Major on board was captured by Japanese troops. This was not noticed by China until three months later, when the Expeditionary Force coincidentally captured Japanese combat documents in a battel and found out that the Japanese has already listed China's deployment for counterattack as "the fully-mastered intelligence about the enemy." Although the senior executives of the Expeditionary Force suspected that there were Japanese undercovers in Chongqing, they still did not change the code, leaving tactical schemes exposed to Japanese troops.

"The advanced are always similar with each other, while the backward are different in their own ways." The training of the soldiers was a problem. Although the Expeditionary Force was equipped with the American weapons, they could not play the full effect of the weapons for the lack of training. Someone burned himself while using a flamethrower, and even equipped with a considerable amount of American Thomson submachine guns, soldiers did not have the upper hand in the battle due to insufficient physical energy and weak mentality.

Yu knows that the contrast might "hurt someone's national vanity," but he still has to accurately write down the real history. "To make progress, we must expose problems. The national confidence must be built on a solid foundation of the truth. Shouting 'although the enemies are far away, they will finally get their punishment' is useless and will lead our country to develop in the wrong direction."