Most people assume the Long March story begins and ends with the odyssey of the Red First Front Army, as retraced by Andy and Ed in 2002-03. But there's much more to the tale.

Soon after Mao Zedong and his ragged band had arrived safely in the northwest, distant comrades in the Red Second and Sixth Regiments decided to abandon their base in Hunan Province.

On November 19, 1935, the Second and Sixth set out on their own Long March. They were driven even further west than Mao and his men, marching all the way to Lijiang in Yunnan Province, then across the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and through the Tibetan highlands of far-western Sichuan.

During the journey, the regiments united into the Red Second Front Army, led by He Long and Xiao Ke. He and Xiao were married to sisters who also marched with the army. He's wife, Jian Xianren, carried the baby daughter she had given birth to three weeks before her Long March began. Jian Xianfo gave birth on the March itself, in the desolate swamps of northern Sichuan. She also took her baby - a son - all the way to the northwest base where the First Front Army finally welcomed them in October 1936.

The union of the First and Second Front Armies completed the gathering of Red forces in northwest China. This was the true end of the Long March, a two-year epic that brought the scattered Communist armies together in the single base area from which they would eventually launch their conquest of the Chinese mainland. 

The Long March of the Second Front Army gets short shrift from the history books, probably because Chairman Mao wasn't along for the ride. But the Second's journey is every bit as remarkable as the First's - and perhaps just as important. There are many untold stories along its route. New Long March 2 is setting out to find them and tell them.