What happens
In this episode of The Pacific Story, first broadcast on October 8, 1944, two orphaned boys, thirteen-year-old Lo Tai-chung and twelve-year-old Yang Fa-shang, join a Chinese Red Army unit in Kiangsi Province and become part of its corps of child helpers known as the Little Devils. They serve as bugler, orderly, guide and spy. Yang guides Chinese officials safely through Japanese lines, then leads a Japanese patrol into a Chinese ambush. Later the two boys help carry out an attack on a collaborating village chairman and plan an escape from captivity in a village. The narration follows the Chinese forces as they withdraw before a Japanese advance.
Kiangsi Province and nearby villages in China during the Sino-Japanese War, in the hills, woods and villages held by the Chinese Red Army and the advancing Japanese forces.
Characters: Lo Tai-chung, Yang Fa-shang, Fong, Sun, Chang
Listen for: The boys' mission through the Japanese lines in the dark, and the moment Yang leads the Japanese patrol into the Chinese ambush.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.