<P> The Battle of Luding Bridge has been portrayed as a glorious and heroic moment in Chinese Communist history, analogous to the Texan Battle of the Alamo . The official account of the battle depicts exhausted and depleted Communist forces in a desperate situation, where they must fight across a bridge that is guarded by the numerically superior forces of Chiang Kai - shek and his warlord allies . The Communists send a small volunteer force that braves a hail of gunfire to climb across the bridge on underlying chains and assault the enemy positions on the other side, hence securing the bridgehead for the rest of the army to cross . </P> <P> However, there is evidence that differs from the official account of the battle . This suggests that much of the fighting was dramatized, by Communist leaders, for propaganda purposes . Authors Andrew McEwen and Ed Jocelyn who retraced the route of the Long March, interviewing survivors along the way, said that a woman in her early 80s recalled that local people led the way across the bridge and were all shot and killed . Author Sun Shuyun quotes a witness who said that there was a small enemy force on the other side armed with guns that could "only fire a few metres". They panicked and fled . </P> <P> The writer Sun Shuyun writes that generations of Chinese have been taught a glorious account of the Long March in order to justify Mao's Revolution: "If you find it hard", they were told: </P> <P> think of the Long March; if you feel tired, think of our revolutionary forebears . The message has been drilled into us so that we can accomplish any goal set before us by the party because nothing compares in difficulty with what they did . Decades after the historical one, we have been spurred on to ever more Long Marches--to industrialize China, to feed the largest population in the world, to catch up with the West, to reform the socialist economy, to send men into space, to engage with the 21st century . </P>

Who led the chinese communist party during the long march