At the same time, they took away our stored grain, leaving their houses and fields empty, which meant that our officers and soldiers had no food for many days."[13] This was revenge for the 1938 Yellow River flood and the Chinese famine of 1942–43.[14] General Jiang's account also said: "Actually this is truly painful for me to say: in the end the damages we suffered from the attacks by the people were more serious than the losses from battles with the enemy."[15] The Henan peasants picked up the weapons Kuomintang troops had abandoned to defend themselves against the Japanese.[16] Moreover, when the Kuomintang army ordered the Henan locals to destroy the local highways to prevent the Japanese advance, they refused.[17] In fact they sometimes even went back at night and mended roads which the army had torn up by day.[17]