Inexorably, the Red pincers tightened around Shanghai. Inside the shrinking Nationalist lines, sweating soldiers and coolies dug trenches, strung barbed-wire barricades, sowed "dragon's teeth"—thick rows of sharpened bamboo stakes pointed toward the approaching enemy. If a stand were made at all, it would be made inside a belt of defense that extended 30 miles from the city's teeming center.
Within this belt ranged Nationalist demolition teams, blowing all bridges that might be used by enemy vehicles. Long columns of weary, bedraggled infantrymen plodded back from the front to take up new positions nearer the city. A young captain in tennis...
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