Veteran Tsai Yu-jen (蔡裕仁), 79, can still vividly recall the night five decades ago when he fired his machine gun at Chinese infiltrators swimming off the coast of Kinmen County’s Dadan Island (大膽島).
Tsai shared his story at a veterans’ reunion on Dec. 20 at Kinmen Airport, where they marked the 60th anniversary of the 823 Artillery Bombardment.
The bombardment, also known as the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, was a battle in which China fired more than 470,000 shells at Kinmen over 44 days in 1958, although intermittent shelling continued well into 1979.
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
Tsai said that he was keeping the midnight-to-2am watch when he spotted an unfamiliar boat approaching shore through the moonlight, adding that he alerted his superiors and was granted permission to fire.
Firing machine-gun bursts into the boat, he saw two “bogies” swimming away underwater, as its driver escaped ashore and found cover behind some rocks, he said.
The boat was riddled with hundreds of bullets by the time other soldiers captured the driver, a Chinese fisherman who kept saying that he was forced to take the job to make ends meet, Tsai added.
Veteran Wu Chung-ho (鄔中和), 72, said he arrived on Kinmen in 1963 to serve as a sergeant in an armored unit.
By that time, Kinmen was resupplied by airdrop, with Chinese artillery strikes coming in whenever the cargo planes flew overhead, he said, adding: “It was as if Kimen was an island made of flames. The shells wreaked havoc with the residents and their property.”
Veteran Chien Wu-nan (簡武男), 76, who was in the coast guard in Shamei Village (沙美), said bombardments were a daily occurrence.
“They shelled Kinmen on odd days and held their fire on even days, so the political officer would have the men gather up the propaganda leaflets and the shell casings on the mornings of the even days,” he said.
Residents would later use the casings to make Kinmen’s famously sharp kitchen knives, Chien said.
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