Chinese Literature

to persuade them to move!” And some of them went up to the soldier, and said, “It’s all right, mate. You get off to safety now. We can manage.”

The wounded man was intent on his “listening,” and could not take in what was being said. His ear still glued to the bomb, he only grunted.

“Hey you, get off to a safe place. We don’t want you here. If the bombs begin to talk, we’ll take to our heels all right. But you can’t, with your crutch. Can’t you hear us? Don’t look at me as though you were daft! It’s you I’m speaking to, you i

He stirred as though he had only just woken up to the fact he was being spoken to. ‘Oh, me!’’—he rubbed his head with his hand as though he was feeling to see if he did exist as an individual—‘Oh, ’m a Communist. You don’t have to worry about me.”

At such a moment, with enemy planes lazing around the night sky, our communication lines cut, and the anti-aircraft barrage thundering, and when the spirit of readiness to overcome all obstacles was almost palpable, the lucid simplicity of these words struck home to me more powerfully than any rhetoric could have done. Its very simplicity illumined the depths of man’s nobility.

The workers shifted the bombs within half an hour. They were parked by a hillside, some hundred yards away. ‘The lorries roared away, and the road cleared. We wanted to find our wounded soldier, but he had also disappeared. Of course we felt that we had come to know many people closely, but we were particularly drawn to him. Who was he, where did he come from? We didn’t even know his name, and we would not know his face again, after only seeing him in the night. He had made a profound impression on his hearers, and some of the crowd went over to “listen” to the bombs as he had done.

It was already daybreak when we got back, but we got constant reports that there were still people on that hillside, “listening” to the bombs. The Commandant promptly ordered a notice to be put up, to say the place was dangerous, but this had no effect. He followed this with another order that the area should be roped off and an “Out of Bounds, Danger” notice put up. We still heard that this didn’t discourage the “listening.” Then a report came in that one bomb had exploded, and had killed a boy messenger. While the Commandant’s heart went out to the youngster for his courage, he mourned the unnecessary loss of life, and felt that he ought to have taken steps to enforce the orders. He said to us that as the Volunteers came from all over China to fight against U.S. aggression, they would have to learn the reason for military orders, and finally gave strict orders that a sentry should be posted at