China WWII – Description I by Pearl Buck

Gang Rape

Dragon Seed by Pearl Buck, 1942, Excerpts

Then the enemy began to come from the city and to spread among the villages, and one day Ling Tan looked up and there at his door stood four enemy soldiers. “There are no women in my house.” But they in turn could not understand what he said and so they leaped in and pushed him aside and searched for themselves in every room and place and when they found no sign of women, except some women’s garments left behind, they grew fierce and bellowed at him, and still he could not understand what they said. But their anger he did understand.

When those furious soldiers saw that indeed there was no woman, their lust knew no bounds. It burst from them like wicked flames, and Ting Lan saw what he had never dreamed of seeing. He saw them lay hold upon his youngest son, that lad who had always been too beautiful for his own good, and now his beauty was his grief, for they took this boy and used him as a woman. Then, laughing, those soldiers went their way. The lad was not dead, nor even wounded near death, but he was like one dead, as though his heart had been stabbed, and his father was afraid he was out of his wits.