It was 3:30 in the morning after the great Communist offensive began. From positions around doomed Nanking, Nationalist artillery still fired an occasional shot toward Communist positions on the Yangtze's north bank. Retreating Nationalist soldiers poured back across the river in tugboats and barges. In the yellow glare of the capital's bare electric street lights, they shuffled toward the railway station. The trains they hoped to take to the south never came. A soldier guarding a ferry building watched the routed men and said: "They have been coming back all night. I don't...
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