March & Countermarch
TIME, Monday, Dec. 25, 1944
By this week the reason why the Japs had fallen back from the escarpments of Kweichow was clear. It was not the desperate resistance of the Chinese; it was because the Japs had run out of supplies. They had turned back to get something to eat.
Like their early annual drives to Changsha, the offensive aimed at Kweiyang appeared thus to have been defeated. But like their drives to Changsha, it had achieved part of its purpose: the Japs had destroyed the Kwangsi-Kweichow railway and seized its rolling stock along the line of their advance—to foreclose a heavily mounted Chinese counteroffensive.
In the retreat, light Chinese forces pressed close on the enemy's heels. The Japanese were herded out of Kweichow and the Chinese spilled back into Kwangsi Province. At week's end they had branched out across country, and were taking over Hochih, 40 miles inside Kwangsi. Behind the advancing Chinese troops, conscript and contract laborers already worked to restore recaptured airstrips for emergency use by Major General Chennault's fighters. But the nearest major air base, at Liuchow, was 95 miles beyond Hochih.
What the Japanese would do when they had steadied their lines and regrouped their divisions was unclear. Perennial optimists on the Allied side fondly hoped that the enemy was preoccupied with the still-remote threat of U.S. landings on the coast. But there was no indication that the Japs intended to confirm this view. Once food supplies had been laid up and winter uniforms provided for their troops, the Japanese were likely to strike again toward Kweiyang and Kunming, try again to cut off China from the Ledo-Burma Road.
Sources: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,791720,00.html
