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up at either end and convenient to handle in the rapids. At the back the junkman's family has a small compartment where they live, cook their meals and bring up their children. We stowed the explosives as far away from the kitchen fire as possible, and asked the passengers not to smoke. There was a porterage of about two miles to get our stores on to the junk; rather hard work, but as soon as everything was on they started off. Our additional cargo weighted the junk down; the tracking coolies found it a heavy load to pull, and we only covered about half the distance before nightfall.
Late at night Leo turned up. He had walked down the road from the village where the relief lorry was held up. Our junk reached the lorry next day round midday; we loaded up our much handled stores, and got back to Chin Ya the same night. The journey from Hunan had taken eight days.
Although the two month period of our first school course was not quite complete, the student teams had been called back to their units to meet the Japanese attack. Not all the teams were to prove useful, as they were often drawn from regular units, who were unable to operate behind the enemy lines - that sort of work came more easily to guerillas - or who were situated in areas to the west of Wuhu or towards the Poyang lake where the war was stagnant and where there were no railways or other communications, or industries, to offer targets.
We had decided on two forward supply dumps, the first, Dump A, towards the Taihu lake; the other, Dump B, towards Hangchow. We despatched a major proportion of our stores to these dumps immediately, and placed one of our officers in charge of each. These forward officers had important functions, as not only was it their business to issue supplies to replace those used by the teams - the great demand on our limited supplies made careful checking of consumption and results important to ensure that supplies were reserved for the most successful teams - but we relied on them to report to us on the work of the teams in the field, to analyze success and failure, so that lessons learnt could be embodied in future courses at the school. Moreover, it lay with them to explain to forward Chinese generals how our teams should be used: so many people, even generals, have such exaggerated ideas of what explosives can do.
Some weeks later we were encouraged by receipt of reports of our
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up at either end and convenient to handle in the rapids. At the back the junkman's family has a small compartment where they live, cook their meals and bring up their children. We stowed the explosives as far away from the kitchen fire as possible, and asked the passengers not to smoke. There was a porterage of about two miles to get our stores on to the junk; rather hard work, but as soon as everything was on they started off. Our additional cargo weighted the junk down; the tracking coolies found it a heavy load to pull, and we only covered about half the distance before nightfall.
Late at night Leo turned up. He had walked down the road from the village where the relief lorry was held up. Our junk reached the lorry next day round midday; we loaded up our much handled stores, and got back to Chin Ya the same night. The journey from Hunan had taken eight days.
Although the two month period of our first school course was not quite complete, the student teams had been called back to their units to meet the Japanese attack. Not all the teams were to prove useful, as they were often drawn from regular units, who were unable to operate behind the enemy lines - that sort of work came more easily to guerillas - or who were situated in areas to the west of Wuhu or towards the Poyang lake where the war was stagnant and where there were no railways or other communications, or industries, to offer targets.
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We had decided on two forward supply dumps, the first, Dump A, towards the Taihu lake; the other, Dump B, towards Hangchow. We despatched a major proportion of our stores to these dumps immediately, and placed one of our officers in charge of each. These forward officers had important functions, as not only was it their business to issue supplies to replace those used by the teams the great demand on our limited supplies made careful checking of consumption and results important to ensure that supplies were reserved for the most successful teams - but we relied on them to report to us on the work of the teams in the field, to analyze success and failure, so that lessons learnt could be embodied in future courses at the school. Moreover, it lay with them to explain to forward Chinese generals how our teams should be used: so many people, even generals, have such exaggerated ideas of what explosives can do.
Some weeks later we were encouraged by receipt of reports of our
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