Take China-CH19A

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Chapter 19A
CAPTURED
. . . . .

The men who ambushed our patrol in the Loh Shan Mountains were guerrillas, not Mao Tse-tung’s regulars. They called themselves freedom fighters, but in reality they didn’t quite know who they wanted to be free from, the Kuomintang or the Nationalists. We thought of them as nothing more than bandits, the worst kind, lawless to themselves, a ragged, malicious band of renegades on the loose, charging across the face of China ahead of the Red Army. Their dress was a hodgepodge of mufti-bits and pieces of uniforms from a half dozen armies. Some wore Marine Corps field jackets and a few had helmet liners; two. men had regulation boondockers. One man had a Japanese peaked cap that he wore rakishly to one side. But mostly they had Nationalist uniforms, quilted coats and canvas shoes. Their weapons were as diverse as their clothing, from old Springfields to Japanese 7-mm bolt-action rifles. The leader wore a Mongolian piss cutter and a long sleeveless goatskin coat, and in spite of his arms being bare he didn’t seem to mind the cold. He barked orders in Mandarin Chinese, but it was a plains dialect spoken in the remote northern regions of the Gobi. I had heard it before by students in the language school. His men, more than a dozen, began prodding us with their rifles, pushing the barrels into our sides, their fingers on the triggers. They lined us up, made us kneel down until our foreheads touched the ground. I was the third in line.

One single thought ran through my mind-I was going to die. We wonder about death, how we will face it when the time comes. We all feel it won’t happen to us, only to the next guy. Then when we know it’s coming, and we are rendered helpless to do anything about it, we become overtaken with anger. It’s not as Hollywood portrays death on the silver screen.

I had witnessed death at its worst on Okinawa. Dying men didn’t utter final words to their buddies, asking them to tell their wives and sweethearts back home that they loved them. They cursed the Japs, calling them every four-letter word they could use. They cursed their enemy to their last breaths. But in death even the most gallant, even the bravest man, is betrayed by the look in his eyes. This is when you want to reach out to him, when all you can do is touch him. It was seeing the look in Hecklinger’s eyes, an empty, glassy gaze and yet so full of meaning, that now haunted me. Did he know at the time that death was overtaking him? Did he believe it was happening to him? Did he ever think about his own death when he worked in the funeral parlor in Oklahoma City, when he was surrounded by death? Did he ever think about it when he lay in the arms of that Chinese whore in that dark alley in Tsingtao? Maybe it happened suddenly, and he didn’t have time to think about it. It was different with the three of us. Except for these renegades who were about to kill us, who would know what happened? We would simply disappear, vanish, never to return home; they would put on our gravestones-MISSING. Nothing else.

The leader was standing in front of Sgt. Granger. My thoughts now became bizarre. There I was, about to be shot, and running through my mind was the old Marine Corps saying: “Ten thousand gobs lay down their swabs to fight one sick marine. Ten thousand more stood up and swore, twas the damnedest fight they’d ever seen.”

They lay down their swabs; I would rather have faced ten thousand gobs than a dozen ruthless bandits. Lord help me! What a way to die. Events that now happened came in a blur.

The man in charge stood in front of Sgt. Granger. I could not see him, with my head in the dust, but I knew his voice. He began shouting in Mandarin. “How many soldiers are you? How many more?” Sgt. Granger didn’t answer. How could he? He had no idea what the man wanted to know, and I was in no position to answer for him. I was sure if any one of us made a sudden move we would be shot on the spot. Did it matter if we were going to die anyway? But there was always that one chance that we wouldn’t die. Was it chance, or was it hope? In a rage the man gave the command to take the sergeant and shoot him. “Ten thousand gobs lay down their swabs.” I could hear them dragging Sgt. Granger away. What had we talked about only a few hours ago, that there is no guarantee we won’t get killed in war. Did he really mean what he said, that’s it’s better to die doing what is right than doing what is wrong? Why does he have to die at all? Their leader now stood in front of the driver, and shouted the same questions at him. When he got no reply, he repeated the same order-shoot him. Moments later two shots rang out.

Their leader now stood in front of me. He put his pistol under my chin and raised my head up to where I was looking directly into his face. Good gawd, he was only a kid, not much older than me. “How many soldiers are you?” be screamed. He never expected me to answer in Chinese.

“Only three of us,” I replied. “We came for the children.”

“Children! Children!” he stammered. He was taken aback for a moment. “You speak Chinese,” he continued. “Why do you speak Chinese?” He lowered his pistol.

“I was a student in the Northern Capital,” I replied.

He then asked my name. I gave him my Chinese name. “Wo de be mingzi shi Hsi Huan Loh,” I said-“My humble name is Hsi Huan Loh.” He pondered over this and again asked about the children. I explained about the nuns and the orphans.

A calm seemed to settle over him. The scale was tipping in my favor. It was clear that be didn’t quite know what to do with me, and yet he must have thought with my speaking Chinese I might be helpful to him later on. I was his trophy. He began mulling over the situation with his men. They began arguing, all trying to speak at once. I tried but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I could see in my mind Hecklinger again. I saw his body before me, those eyes, his arms reaching out. The blood everywhere, blood turned black. I imagined him dying the agonizing death that he did, and would this be my fate too? “Twas the damnedest fight they’d ever seen.” I could grab a weapon from one of my captors. They would probably kill me anyway. I was no hero. This would just make the end quick. No suffering. Suddenly the leader turned and walked up to me, and stopped less than a yard away. He withdrew his pistol. It was too late. Why did I wait? He pulled back the hammer, and said, “You will come with us.” He pointed the weapon skyward and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out and reverberated through the canyon walls. It was a signal. While we waited, the leader ordered his men to get a length of rope, and then he did the most surprising thing. He offered me a cigarette, one from the pack he had taken from Hecklinger. I refused, said I didn’t smoke, but never did I want a cigarette more than at that moment. The men came with the rope and tied my hands behind my back. At this point the weapons carrier came rumbling up the road. They pushed me into the back seat and men took positions on either side of me. The leader walked slowly around the vehicle, admiring his prize. The trace of a smile crossed his face but he quickly wiped it away; he then pushed the man behind the driver’s wheel out of the way. He took over.

At his command, his men rushed to climb aboard the weapons carrier and the Jeep parked nearby. They suddenly became kids, scrambling to find room, shoving, laughing, shouting, pulling at one another. We soon looked like two overloaded Chinese buses, with men hanging from the sides of the vehicles, sitting on the hoods and standing on the front and rear bumpers. The leader sat behind the wheel, grinding the gears trying to find first, which made me doubt that he had ever driven before. He finally found the gear, let out the clutch and with a jerk we took off like a shot down the mountain road. Bumps, holes, rocks in the road, landslides, nothing mattered. I was sure at every bump, at every turn, we would loose a couple of men but they miraculously-like flies on flypaper-hung on. We were so crowded I was unable to see any of the road ahead.

I had no idea what my captors intended to do with me, nor, did they I suspected. After several hours of breakneck speed thundering down the road we came to the village that had given our patrol a hard time two days before. Without slowing our speed, we shot straight through the gate, but suddenly, in our own cloud of dust, we skidded to a stop after turning sideways and nearly rolling over. I had trouble extracting myself from bodies jammed all around me, and I could not see what caused the abrupt stop. The men began to disembark, and there, blocking the street was an armored car. Standing directly in front of the vehicle, legs apart, his hands on his hips, was an officer. With my hands still tied, I had to raise my knee to wipe the dust from my eyes on my pants leg to see. I thought at first the soldier was an officer of Chiang K’ai-shek’s Nationalist Army. I then saw the red stars on his collar and another on the brim of his hat. Judging by the braid on his shoulder epaulettes he was a ranking officer. On both sides of the vehicle were other soldiers, with red stars on their uniforms. They were communist troops of Mao Tse-tung’s Eighth Route Army.

Our freedom fighter leader, with his men following close behind, approached the officer. He saluted and then with a wide sweep of his arm, he pointed to the two vehicles he and his men had captured. He called his men to bring me from the weapons carrier, and when I stumbled out, he proudly pointed to me. I could hear him telling the officers there were many others, but they were all dead. He and his men had defeated the enemy.

The people of the village began to gather. They were the same people our patrol had encountered two days before, but their mood was not the same. They were jubilant now, their faces beaming with smiles and happy grins. They carried tiny red flags and waved them above their heads. They had obviously known the Red Army was on the march, and that was the reason they treated us as they did. Now when they saw me, still in uniform, they began sneering and shouting. The officer in charge raised his arms and they fell silent.

He then began interrogating the rebel leader. For five minutes the rebel leader ranted on. He was humble and bowed every minute or two. He pointed to the hills, to the two vehicles, and then to me. His men nodded in agreement to everything that he said.


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Take China-CH18B

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Chapter 18B
The Bible Sergeant
. . . . .

Those left behind in the weapons carrier could set up camp and await our radio report. If we needed them, they could follow the next morning. Everyone agreed and Sgt. Granger put Hecklinger in charge. We hated leaving him and the others behind but he assured us he would be fine.

The monastery turned out to be less than a two-hour drive. We arrived at a heavy wooden gate flanked by mud brick pillars. The gate was open and we entered. The monastery, a lonesome, forlorn building, was set back a hundred yards from the gate on a high rise of ground. It had the appearance of one of those imperial palaces you see in Peking, with red tile roofs and supporting pillars, painted red, and walls of stuccoed brick between the pillars. There was a long open corridor in the front of the building with flagstone walkways. But unlike the imperial palaces in Peking, this one was in need of repair. The pillars only had a semblance of having once been painted, and the bricks between the pillars were crumbling. But the place was clean and the yard in front was swept. You could see broom marks in the earth floor. A nun, in fact, was sweeping the yard when we drove through the gate. When she saw us, she dropped the broom and took off running for the monastery, as if she had seen monsters from a Lon Chaney horror movie. She was yelling something but we could not hear what it was.

We parked in front of the building and waited. We knew someone would appear shortly, and we were right. An elderly nun in a black habit came marching out the door and without hesitating came straight at us. We could see anger in her face. We were thrown completely off guard. We thought she would be pleased to see us but that was not so. Before we could extend our greetings she demanded to know why we there.

“We are under orders to come and give you assistance,” Sgt. Granger said “We don’t want any military here,” the nun announced emphatically.

“Then who’s in charge here?” Sgt. Granger asked.

“I am,” she replied. “I am Mother Superior, Sister Bernice.” She was a cagey, hatchet faced European woman, and we gathered that she demanded respect. Sgt. Granger was taken aback by her tenacity, but only momentarily. Two other nuns in black habit appeared, and in the back ground we could hear the murmur of children’s voices. Mother Superior immediately admonished the nuns and instructed them to get back and keep the children away.

Sgt. Granger stepped down from the Jeep and I followed. We stood facing Mother Superior. “I am sorry if we surprised you,” Sgt. Granger said politely and in carefully chosen words explained our mission, that the communists were closing in and we were the forward echelon, prepared to evacuate them.

“This is not our war,” snapped Mother Superior.

“I understand that, ma’am, but you may not know the communists,” he replied, but his words were received without conviction.

“We know God, and that is all that is important.”

“Mother Superior,” he replied, angered now, “we are tired. We came a long way. Don’t give us that crap about knowing God. So does Satan know God.”

“Young man, how dare you! I won’t let you mock the Bible.”

“Ma’am, I am not mocking anything. We are Marines and not altar boys. We are not here to be lectured. We are here for your sakes, and the kids, not ours.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The sergeant was a holy roller.

We were interrupted when we heard voices coming from the monastery. It was children’s voices. The children had seen us and suddenly came storming out of the monastery, full of happy innocence. At that moment, Mother Superior turned to face them and raised her hands. The children stopped in their tracks. “Go back, go back,” she shouted in Chinese. They stood there, confused, until two more nuns appeared, ushering them like sheep back into the building. There must have been at least 30 children, boys and girls, perhaps three to ten years old. With Chinese children it’s difficult to judge age. They were dressed in blue uniforms; the girls in skirts and the boys in shorts. They kept stumbling, one falling over the other as they retreated, attempting to keep their eyes on us. Soon they were gone and Mother Superior turned to face us again.

“God will take care of us,” she repeated.

“Well perhaps it is God’s will we came to evacuate you,” Sgt. Granger said, “to take care of you!”

“I told you, God is not to be mocked. God’s power is everywhere and it reaches to the ends of the earth. We do not need to be evacuated. God will protect us, no matter where we are.”

“Ma’am, I told you, we are tired and hungry and it’s getting dark and we don’t have time and energy to play chess with the scriptures, alright? I may not be a priest or a holy man but I know my Bible too.” The Mother Superior stood back in awe. Sgt. Granger continued. “God was on the Israelites’ side, yet why did he command Moses to evacuate them from Egypt? Why didn’t God protect his people in Egypt if he was all powerful and everywhere? And why did God’s angel tell Joseph to take Mary and Jesus and flee from Bethlehem when Herod was out to kill the infant Jesus?”

Was I hearing right? Who would ever have believed Sgt. Granger could quote scriptures from the Bible. He didn’t stop here. He continued. “You may know God, ma’am, but you don’t know what the communists are capable of. If you want to risk your lives, that’s fine but why are you risking the children’s.” He hesitated, staring at Mother Superior. “We do have our orders.”

Mother Superior looked at the children, and a subtle change came over her. She was now unsure of what to do. When we first arrived, she wanted us to leave immediately. Now, when Sgt. Granger pointed out that the road was dangerous at night, she mentioned another road that led down to the coast on the north side of the peninsula, and that was the route they used. Sgt. Granger explained it would be impossible for us to return to Tsingtao that way, for the weapons carrier was waiting for us at the watch tower below, and most likely the entire north of the Shantung Peninsula was in communist hands. Finally Mother Superior relented.

“There’s an empty room at the far end of the hall,” she said quietly. “You can stay there for the night.”

We moved into our new quarters for the night. It was a simple room with four beds, whitewashed walls and a cross on one of the walls. There was one window and it appeared never to have been opened. There were extra blankets on chests at the foot of each bed. Servant boys brought a charcoal brazier to keep us warm and a pot of hot tea to drink. We had our C-rations for dinner.

When things settled down, I asked Sgt. Granger about his religious beliefs. He was reluctant at first but eventually after some prodding gave his thoughts. “My parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he explained. “They were very upset about my enlisting. Witnesses are opposed to war and killing, and I joined the Marines. Hypocritical, ain’t it? But now when I see all this that is going on in China I am beginning to wonder. Maybe they are right. Where does it stop? Nothing makes sense anymore.”

“C’mon, Sarge! Someone’s got to do the killing. We can’t just stand back and watch misfits like Hitler and the Japs murder people by the millions. Wouldn’t that be a sin to let them go? To watch someone get bullied and not do anything about it, that would be worse! I know little about the Bible but I know about David and Goliath and Samson and Delilah and Moses and the Egyptian army; I’ve seen the movies. God said it was okay to kill, you know, the bad guys.”

“I agree, and that’s the dilemma that I’m in. It’s got to stop somewhere,” he said, kicking off his boondockers and stretching out on the bed.

“Exactly, it’s gotta stop, and that’s why we are stopping it. Right?” I replied.

“Yea, by being bigger, with bigger guns,” he said. He slipped under his blankets. The driver was already in his bed for the night.

“Tell me, Sarge, how else can we do it? If we aren’t bigger, and don’t have bigger guns, we can’t stop it. We’d be just in the middle, and maybe get killed at it. If your folks are true Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses you say, don’t they still have to fight wars and save those who are being bullied?” He didn’t answer, and I continued. “You parents must be proud of you, Sarge. You know who the bad guys are.”

“That’s exactly it!” he said and sat up. “That’s precisely it! Who are the bad guys? Just because they are fighting for their principles, what they believe in, are they bad guys? Wars are simply matters of opinion. People kill one another over an opinion, when the other guy’s opinions doesn’t agree with theirs. Then others step in and they get involved, and the killing gets bigger.”

The driver became bored with our conversation and put a pillow over his head. This was the same talk I had at the university with the Chinese students in Peking. Who was right and who was wrong? I was tired of these games of political volleyball. “I thought you might have a Bible solution,” I said to change the subject. There was a long silence and he didn’t answer. “Okay then, Sarge, aside from your parents and their religious beliefs, do you regret being Marine?”

“You’re back to the matter of opinions. You’re asking me to pick one side, the one you stand for, and it becomes my opinion. He thought for a while and continued. “Is it wrong to be a Marine? You’re asking me a question that requires an opinion. It doesn’t matter what my opinion is for no matter what I say, it will only be my opinion.”

“There has to be one opinion that is right,” I said.

“There is, the Bible,” he replied. I knew it. I knew it all the while. Sgt. Benjamin Granger was a holy roller. He then cut me short. “If you are looking for the truth, then get a Bible. That’s your highest authority, and that’s all I have to say.”

“Look, Sarge, one last thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Your parents and their kind would rather be killed than defend themselves.”

“Look at it this way,” he replied. “Is there a guarantee we won’t get killed in war? Not at all. The Bible says if we must suffer, we might as well suffer doing what is right rather than doing what is wrong. You figure it out and go to sleep.”

The discussion was over.

The beds were quite soft, and most comfortable, but too many conflicting things were running through my head to sleep. Sgt. Granger’s words kept echoing though my head, and I thought about Hecklinger and the others bivouacking in the open. Hecklinger had hopes about sleeping in the watchtower when he first saw the place, but then he discovered the concrete floors inside the building were covered with human excrement and the place stunk horribly. “Why do these gook bastards have to crap inside a building when they have the whole countryside?” he ranted. I could still hear him as we drove off.

There was little sleep and at the first light of dawn we were up. Already the children were playing in the open compound. We dressed and went out to greet them. They came running and were soon climbing all over us. Each one vied desperately to get our attention. Unlike most orphans we saw, generally shy and withdrawn, these kids were friendly and filled with cheer. We had to give the nuns credit. They did a fine job in raising them. I had wondered before we came, why the nuns chose these kids above all the other orphans in the country. Why them? What criteria were they using to judge? When I saw the kids that morning I immediately knew. A young lad about three approached me, eager to hold my band. He had blue eyes. At his side was a young girl, about the same age, and she had light brown hair. The children were of mixed blood-Russian, American, English, Japanese. My heart went out for them, and I wished we could carry all of them back with us to Tsingtao. Maybe we could. We would need to go back to get more vehicles. We had to hurry.

While the driver and I were cavorting with the kids, Sgt. Granger wandered off to make one last plea with Mother Superior and the nuns to evacuate the monastery. Before he left, he instructed us to make radio contact with Hecklinger. He returned half an hour later, and he was steaming mad. “Let’s go and get the hell out of here,” he said and made no further comment. I wanted to say that this was not the way for a Jehovah Witness to act but thought it best to let it go. I knew that sooner or later he would tell me what had happened with Mother Superior and why she had refused our offer.

We were unable to reach the others by radio. We assumed bad radio transmission in the mountain area was the cause. We made several more attempts while en route but still we had no luck.

I am one who doesn’t believe in premonitions, but I have to admit there was an eerie and uncertain feeling during our drive back from the monastery. I was very uncomfortable, and I could feel that Sgt. Granger and the driver felt much the same way. Maybe it was the gloom of having to leave the nuns and orphans to an uncertain fate, or it could have been the feeling that we were pushing our luck too far. I don’t know what it was but when we rounded the bend in the road before reaching the watch tower, expecting to find the weapons carrier waiting for us, and it wasn’t there, we knew immediately that something was wrong. We leaped out of the Jeep and began looking around. Sgt. Granger suddenly froze in his tracks; the expression on his face changed to one of horror. He pointed towards the tower. There in the semidarkness of the interior were two shadows, two bodies, hanging in mid-air. My pulse quickened. We advanced ever so cautiously, peering hard into the interior. Sgt. Granger withdrew his .45 from his holster and slid a round into the chamber. At the door we stopped, not wanting to believe what we saw. Two bodies hung by their feet from the ceiling, their heads inches from the floor. I felt my knees grow limp. The sight was dreadful! Their arms, their hands and the floor were covered with dried blood. Their eyes were open, their arms reaching out. The men were dead. Hecklinger was one of them. Their tongues had been cut out and they were left to bleed to death.

My first impulse was to get back to the Jeep and get my carbine, but it was too late. It wouldn’t have done me any good anyway. We were completely surrounded. Guerrilla fighters had suddenly appeared from everywhere. A dozen weapons were pointed directly at us.


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Take China-CH18A

Previous – CH18A – Next

Chapter 18A
THE NUNS AT LOH SHAN
. . . . .

Our Little Lew was still asleep when I returned to my quarters after spending the night with Ming-Lee. A few weeks before a third bunk had been moved into the room and one of the new replacements had taken it over. We called him Sam but that wasn’t his name at all. It was Shirley Jackson, a tough name for a gung ho Marine to live down. We wondered about him when he first arrived, with a name like that, but on his first liberty he went to Ping Pong Willies and got laid. After that we knew he was all right, so we started calling him Sam. Unfortunately, he was a dreadful bore. He was a California beach-boy jockstrap, a sun worshiper, who loved surfing. No one objected to that, except that all he talked about was the California surf. After an hour in his company you wanted to tell him to shut up. It did little good. He still raved about surfing and told how the waves were better at Rodonda Beach than they were at Peblo Beach, and that he would rather be stationed in Hawaii than in China. He was disappointed that Tsingtao beaches didn’t have surf. Sam, however, did impress Little Lew with all his tales about challenging monstrous waves and things like “wipe outs” and “pipelines.” Little Lew was a willing listener, and for me, that was fine. It was much easier on me, especially when I was spending so much time with Ming-Lee. I did take Little Lew on my outings with Ming-Lee as much as I could, and it was fortunate that he and Ming-Lee got along fine. In fact, Ming- Lee became his jiejie, his big sister.

Both Little Lew and Sam were asleep when I came into the room. In the dim light from the glow of the kerosene stove, I noticed someone had placed a few letters from the last mail call on my bunk. I carried them over to the window where the light was better so I could read who had sent them. They were from the guys back home, Terry, Stevenson and Whittington, all civilians now. I couldn’t wait to open them. Maybe the guys had joined up again and were coming back to China. That would be great, just like old times. I had an hour before we had to muster for the patrol to Loh Shan, enough time to read the letters before I packed my gear. Rather than sit in the head to read my mail, I hurried down to the mess hall. It was always open and well lit. I was surprised to find Smitty sitting at a table by himself, drinking a cup of joe. He had just returned from Japan after escorting a shipload of POWs and their families back home. I waved the letters above my head and saw his face light up. I knew he would be as anxious as I was to hear the news from the home front. He had been very concerned about Terry, who the last we heard, had been locked up for vagrancy. I opened Terry’s letter first. By nervous habit Smitty began rubbing the Hawaiian dancer tattoo on his forearm, beneath the sleeve of his field jacket.

Although the letter was addressed to me on the envelope, it was addressed to the “whole gang” inside. It was the usual stuff, how was life in Tsingtao? And he admitted he missed China. He was sorry he left, and said life in the US was mighty hard. He tried a couple different jobs but always got fired when he punched out the foreman, and as a result he couldn’t get his 52-20 money any more. He was bitter about that. But things were looking up. When I read the next line, Smitty and I couldn’t believe it. He had gotten married. Her name was Mary. She was a former WAC and a few years older than he was. They got married after the VA notified him there was a shoe cobbler school in Kansas City, Missouri, that he was eligible to attend. “Well my wife Mary and me packed all we owned which we got in two suitcases and off to K.C., Mo. we went,” he wrote. It was almost as if he was sitting in the mess hall talking with us. I could hear his voice as I read. “Well I wasn’t there in school two days when an instructor said to me that I shouldn’t be doing what I was doing, that I hadn’t reached that point of progress yet, and I didn’t like his attitude. Even Lt. Brandmire wouldn’t have done that. So I decked him and he was a head taller than me and I was kicked out of school. So the VA sent me out to Thompson School of Watch Making on main street, and here I am. Ernie runs the school. He’s a navy vet who went through the thick of it with us, so we get along. I hope you guys are not still running from those gook cops, but if you are, stay off the firing line.”

Terry’s letter ended with a sentimental note. Neither Smitty nor I, nor any of the guys, had been aware of some of the anguish Terry had suffered. One was a simple thing like getting mail. At mail call we always crowded around the company clerk as he called out names, sometimes smelling the letter and then holding it up, saying, “Get a whiff of this!” and then he’d put the letter at the bottom of the pile and make the Marine whose letter it was wait till the last. I read on with Terry’s letter: “l know how much mail means to you guys, you fighting boys overseas, so I’m writing these letters. I’m going to tell you something I never told anyone before. When I got a letter from home, which wasn’t often, I would not open it right away. I was like a little kid with a piece of candy who wanted to make it last as long as I could. I’d keep it in my dungaree pocket and make believe I had just gotten it. Of course I wouldn’t let any of you Jarheads know what I was doing and you were all so busy with your own mail you never knew anyway. I would do this, even though I wanted to read my letter very badly, and after a few days I would open it and read it slowly, and I’d even make up things to tell you guys. Be good and if you can’t be good, be careful. Semper Fi, Terry.”

It wasn’t only Terry who lamented. Everyone made up tales and exaggerated about mail from home. Every time a Marine got a love letter, we all had to hear about it. They made glowing announcements like how their girls back home bought “these new see-through nighties” for when they get back home. There were other letters, of course, maybe a Dear John from the girl back home who ran off with Billy Smith next door, the 4F guy who never went to war but who made manager at Sears & Roebuck and bought a new Packard with white walls, just like Tokyo Rose predicted. You never heard about these letters. You only knew something was wrong when the Marine went out and got drunk and swore he would re-enlist.

And so it was this way with Terry. We both agreed that maybe Mary was good for him. We all deserve a chance, and I had my chance waiting in a hotel room in downtown Tsingtao. I would have to write to Terry and congratulate him.

I opened Whittington’s letter, and as I read the neatly typewritten pages we felt that he too, like Terry, was sitting next to us in the mess hall. He wasn’t having the same hard time with the 52-20 payments that Terry was having. He was still the company runner with all the gold bricking skills intact and applying them to civilian life. He wrote: “I took advantage of the 52-20 Club for almost a year. All I had to do was show up at the Veteran’s Office once a week and sign for my 20 bucks. There was the mandatory ‘interview,’ and I made friends with the girl who conducted them. In the winter I told her I was looking for work as a lifeguard, and in the summer I told her I was an unemployed snow plow driver.”

He bought a car right after he got home, a 1933 Plymouth Coupe for $75.00 that had been up on blocks during the war. He said he had his eyes “on a beautiful 1937 Buick Convertible but that will have to wait for now.” He took aptitude tests at the VA and planned to enter college in the fall. “I’m thinking of journalism,” he wrote. “If you don’t know what that is, it means to be a writer. If l go full time, nights and summers, I’ll get my 120 hours in, in three years, and earn my ‘badge of social acceptability.’ Look out Walter Winchell.”

He went on to tell us that he thinks of us guys often. He learned that a couple of former Marine buddies, boyhood pals, were killed; one on Iwo Jima and one on Saipan. “I guess we in Fox who survived were just plain lucky. It would be great if 50 years from now we could all get together, but that’s too far away to even think about. I guess that’s hoping for too much.” He then gave me some tips. “Pick up some of that good jade and ivory stuff around that can be had for a pack of Luckies. You can bring them in with no trouble. But not everything. Remember that Thompson Sub Machine gun I stole from that Army mess tent? I field-stripped it and buried it in my seabag. I got it all the way back to San Diego, and then I got this lecture the sergeant gave us about stolen Government property and a place called Leavenworth. He scared the crap out of me and I left that beautiful piece under my sack in a Quonset Hut. It turned out that no one ever touched my seabag.” Then even Rick Whittington got sentimental. “In many ways I’d like to be with you guys. Every once in a while I think of re-enlisting, but I go out and have a few cold ones and the feeling goes away. Take it easy. The news coming from China isn’t good. Keep in touch and stay off the sky line. Semper Fi, Rick.”

Stevenson wrote to say he missed China too. He wanted to know about Mrs. Djung and Roger. I hadn’t told him in my letters about Roger being a naval officer on the other side. But I did tell him about Ming-Lee, and that Judy always asked about him.

In the last paragraph he said he was back in college, and that he had enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve. He was almost apologetic when he said that after graduating he’d be given a commission in the US Marine Corps.

“I’ll be gawd damned,” Smitty said. “You mean he might come back to China and this time we will all have to salute him?”

I couldn’t wait until I told Judy the news, but that would have to wait until I returned from patrol in a few days. I rushed back to my room, put away the letters in my seabag and quickly packed. I strapped two blankets to my field pack, grabbed my helmet and trusty carbine and met the others at company headquarters. The Jeep and 4×4 weapons carrier were parked outside.

Staff Sergeant Benjamin (don’t call me Benny) Granger was in charge and sat up front in the Jeep beside the driver. I sat in the rear with another Marine, one of the replacements. Hecklinger was behind the driver’s wheel of the 4×4 weapons carrier. The Jeep took the lead with the weapons carrier a good hundred yards behind, far enough to avoid most of the dust we coughed up. In spite of the cold, everyone seemed to be in good spirits, but my mind was elsewhere. My thoughts were on Ming-Lee. She would be moving in with Judy at the Prime Club while I was gone, and I wondered if that was a good idea, just to save a few bucks. I didn’t like the idea of her hanging around the club at night.

The drive north from Tsingtao led through flat open farm land of brown rice paddies laid out in neat but odd shaped patches that looked like the quilts grandma made. There was frost on all the water sheds that divided the land, and a mist hovered over the land. From mud-brick farm houses thin columns of smoke rose skyward and lingered motionless in a colorless sky. The wind was bitter and in an open Jeep rumbling along on an unpaved, pot-holed road did not make for easy traveling. We pulled our parkas tightly around us and for extra warmth we unstrapped our blankets from our field packs and draped them around us making us look more like Franciscan monks than Marines on patrol.

After three or four hours of bouncing up and down, and with our knuckles white from holding on, the road turned into a track and we had to reduce our speed to a crawl. We came to road signs but we were unable to read the faded Chinese characters. It wouldn’t have done much good if they had been readable. Chinese place names don’t translate well. The students in Peking were forever quizzing me on place names, and then made fun of me whenever I attempted to translate them-Fortune Showing Village, Terrace of Tower Watching Place, Town of Temple of Fragrance Gathering. I was sure these faded signs were no better. We attempted to ask peasants we met along the way for directions, but when they saw we were “foreign devils,” they turned their backs on us. Some even took off running across the open fields. I had not witnessed such behavior before when I drove my Jeep into the countryside on weekend outings. I could feel that something was dreadfully wrong, especially when we reached the next walled village. Villages always had a warm welcome.

The village was no different than others I had seen scattered around China-clusters of buildings surrounded by walls. Roads run right through these villages, and at each end of the towns there are huge gates. At one time the gates may have had a purpose, but now were merely vestiges of an unsettled past. All the buildings, whether homes or shops, were constructed from sun-dried mud bricks of uneven shapes and sizes, the same stuff as the surrounding walls. The color of the buildings, the town, the walls, they were all brown. It must have been that when God made the Chinese countryside he was running low on colors in his palette, and the only one he had left was brown. Even the clothing the Chinese wore was brown, and so was the color of their skin-brown. The food they ate was brown, and they ate it from brown bowls. And there was a brown dust that settled over the entire area.

It was a brown village that we entered.

In villages in China, and even in the big cities, when a motorist drives through the streets he toots his horn to get people to move out of the way, and they always responded. Not in this village. The people refused to give way, and the louder our drivers tooted their horns, the more defiant they became. These were not the same Chinese we knew when we arrived. We had grown accustom to people smiling and waving, and kids running alongside attempting to keep up with us. We soon worried that their defiance might turn into open hostility. We were relieved when we finally reached the other end of town and exited through the gate. This behavior we witnessed was strange and I didn’t like it. For my first time in China I had an uncomfortable feeling. I was considering suggesting to the sergeant that we turn around and return to Tsingtao but I knew we were under orders. “Gut feelings” don’t justify one to disregard orders. So a few natives were unfriendly-that would be the reaction back at headquarters. We pushed on.

Once we were beyond the village, the track began a steady climb to the hills above, and beyond these low hills were the mountains of Loh Shan. Their summits blended into the sky and it was impossible to discern where one began and the other left off. It was no small wonder our two F7F Tiger Cats

and the SB2C Hell Diver crashed in the mountain when they became disorientated when trying to fly across the Loh Shan Mountains. That seemed like ages ago. Before long the track narrowed. Steep precipices dropped down from one side and deep canyons formed below. At times so narrow were the gaps we could reach out and touch the rock walls as we drove by, and several times the driver of the weapons carried had to back up and start over again to ease through a narrow pass. Whenever we reached an opening the view was always spectacular. I had heard the Mongols cut the first road through the mountains centuries before, and we did come upon strange markings carved in the stonewalls that could have been left by them. Every now and then we came upon a temple ruins. We seemed to be driving not only forward over an ancient road but backwards into time. We came around one bend and standing there on a rocky overhang was a rather large temple which, after a closer examination, appeared to be a watchtower of sorts. It had crenulated walls and open embrasures facing the road from which we had just come. It was a striking structure, partly in ruin, with a crumbled roof and sagging lintels over the doorways. It had been long abandoned. The road above and beyond the tower appeared to be even more hazardous than the one we had just driven. We estimated we had no more than a dozen miles to travel to reach the monastery, but we had only a few hours of daylight left. Traveling would be slow with the two vehicles. We reasoned if the sergeant, driver and me went ahead in the Jeep we could reach the monastery by nightfall and spend the night there.


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Take China-CH17C

Previous – CH17C – Next

Chapter 17C
Between Peace and War
. . . . .

Mail call brought slews of letters from the guys who had returned home. They all had the same tune to hum. Hometowns had not changed much except the people had gotten older and the girls were more independent. Gasoline prices were up, at 29 cents a gallon, but ration books were no longer needed. The guys keep in contact with one another. Some of them returned to their old trades and some went to college on the $500 yearly tuition plus living allowance-$90 a month for married men-provided by the GI Bill of Rights. And the letters always had the latest skinny from the home front: “Night Baseball Revived in America,” “Jackie Robinson becomes first Black to sign a contract with a major baseball club,” “Joe Louis retires from the ring after fighting 25 title bouts since 1937,” “Shirley Temple is Engaged,” and “Benny Goodman plays at the Dome in Chicago.”

And the same old talk was still there-girls.

They were all looking for girls, and wanted them, but they did not want to have to work to get them. China had ruined them. They were finding life at home all too complicated when they had to explain their actions. There was not all this need to talk to Chinese girls. It was so simple. After a while at home they didn’t want to talk about China, nor the war, for no one wanted to listen, nor did they believe them anyway. Every letter I received had a message to pass on to a Chinese girl left behind.

Some former Marines, of course, were having harder times than others. Stevenson was able to pick up with his old sweetheart he knew before the war, but he still had his dark confusions of the mind. Ruker and Chandler returned to their hometowns and took up life where they left off. Terry wandered the streets, got arrested for vagrancy, but found an older girl who took him under wing. Whittington started college.

Although it was obvious some Marines would always bear physical and emotional scars from the war, I could read between the lines that they would eventually let the war memories pass and forget about China, at least for the time being. They were quickly getting caught up in the new America they discovered-the latest cars like Studabakers with convertible tops and whitewalls, the gadgets like television, new personalities in politics and entertainment and the new fads.

Not all the mail came from America. A letter came from Shanghai. It was from Ming-Lee. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Katarina had found her and they became friends. Katarina explained to Ming-Lee that our relationship in Peking was not intimate. Upon receiving the letter I immediately went to see Roger, but I was terribly disappointed to learn he had moved out. He and his wife no longer lived in the hotel, and they left no forwarding address. I had the feeling I would never see Roger again. One day might he be at the opposite end of a Marine’s gun sight? It might even be mine. Could I pull the trigger?

I answered Ming-Lee’s letter, and more letters followed.

She liked going to school, and enjoyed the new friends she had made, but she confessed she missed me. In one letter she said she was thinking about taking a respite from school and coming to Tsingtao. Would that be agreeable with me? With great joy I told her to come ahead. She arrived the day before New Years. She was the best present I could ever have had.

For the next two months we were together every minute. I was earning enough money, with the help of a few black market sales, to rent a small room in a hotel in town, and with my MP pass I could come and go as I pleased. We had much to talk about, and so much to learn about each other. We were two cultures trying to be one. However, we knew we had to be rational and we agreed we would use logic. But logic has to do with words and arguments, and the tools of logic are thinking. And a man in love is not a thinking person. A kiss can annihilate all logic.

Nevertheless, we did our utmost to close off the world outside our door. While letters from home talked about peace and prosperity, Asia was in turmoil. Harry Truman was elected president of the Unites States, and he appointed General George Marshall to US Secretary of State. Marshall, who had replaced Patrick Hurley as US Ambassador to China, turned a cold shoulder on the Far East and concentrated on rebuilding Europe by initiating the Marshall Plan. Marshall not only turned a cold shoulder but he also withdrew as mediator in China and let Generalissimo Chiang K’ai-shek and Mao Tse-Tung fight their own battle. The China Marines were in the middle.

The end of the war saw the beginning of the end of colonialism in Southeast Asia but it did not end political strife. It created it. India gained her independence from Britain, and before the ink was dry, the partition of the subcontinent began with Hindu battling Moslem. The Dutch East Indies fought tooth and nail to free themselves from the yoke of the Dutch and did get independence, but at a great cost. Burma was set free but the French were fighting a losing battle in an attempt to hold on to Indochina. When would it end?

It was no secret that Chiang K’ai-shek was losing his grip on China. The Marine garrison in Tsingtao was ordered to pull in its perimeter. Patrols went out to warn those in the field that the US could no longer guarantee their protection. Among the relief organizations was UNRA, and everyone was concerned about Melanowski. I had no word from him in months. We used to see Monique once in a while at the PX but no more. Patrols now were a daily occurrence and the circle kept getting smaller and smaller. Even the beaches were closed to military personnel. The Provost Marshall ordered a patrol to proceed to the Loh Shan Mountains north of Tsingtao to assist with the evacuation of a Christian monastery nestled in the mountains. The monastery was run by nuns who maintained an orphanage for abandoned children. I was assigned to go along as interpreter. When Hecklinger heard about the patrol he volunteered as driver. We were notified on a Friday that we had to depart early Monday morning. There would be six of us on the patrol, and we were authorized the use of a Jeep and a 4×4 weapons carrier. We were to be lightly armed. No heavy guns. On standby were another six 4x4s if we needed more space for transporting the nuns and orphans out of the mountains. We had no idea how many people were there, or if they would even come with us.

Ming-Lee became very upset when I told her about the assignment. “Do you have to go?” she pleaded. She had already made up her mind not to return to school in Shanghai but to remain with me in Tsingtao. We wanted no more separations.

l promised I would be back in a few days, and I vowed I would never leave her again. She agreed to move in with Judy at the Prime Club while I was gone.

I spent the night with Ming-Lee, with her curled up at my side, but I knew she wasn’t sleeping. With a faint light coming through the window, I studied her gentle face. She looked so beautiful, and we were so helpless, two kids, neither of us 20 yet. We had no control over anything, not even our own fate. We were at the mercy of whatever came our way, and there was no changing our destiny. How hopeless a situation; such agony we had to suffer. Just before dawn her breathing grew steady and I knew she was asleep. I had to leave now, or I might never be able to tear myself apart from her. I wanted to kiss her gently on the cheek but that might awaken her. Instead, I slipped silently out of bed, dressed, and before the light of dawn befell the sleeping city, I made my way back to the university.

I met with the others in the mess hall where they were having an early meal and discussing our plans. I joined them for morning chow. Nothing like hot coffee in a canteen cup that burns your lips and a plate of shit-on-the shingles to start the day off.

When we went to the office to check out, the duty clerk handed me half a dozen letters. “Something for you to read on your trip,” he said. He mentioned they were waiting for a news report from the Associated Press, and asked if we wanted to wait round for it, but we didn’t have the time. We had to get moving to reach the monastery by nightfall. By 0600 we had cleared the outskirts of Tsingtao and headed north. Hecklinger was at the wheel of the Jeep, with Staff Sergeant Benny Gray in charge sitting in front beside him. I sat quite contentedly in the rear with another Marine. I had my mail to read and for the first time I didn’t stop to enjoy the scenery. But we did make a mistake; we did not wait for the news report from Associated Press. It would be some time before I did read it.

Shanghai, May 8 (AP)-The Chinese Communists tonight announce capture of a town 33 miles north of Tsingtao in a drive aimed at the anchorage of the U.S. Western Pacific Fleet.The two warships off Tsingtao were listed as the light cruisers Pasadena and Springfield and 10 destroyers.


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Take China-CH17B

Previous – CH17B – Next

Chapter 17B
China Marines in Another War
. . . . .

Romance in China wasn’t gone; it was still with us. The diver wasn’t John Wayne, but he did have the reckless appeal of Capt. Jack Stuart in “Reap the Wild Wind.” I wished at that moment I could have been with that Navy diver, diving to the bottom of the ocean in a deep-sea suit, and what did it matter if an octopus was there waiting? But the Navy would never have let a Jarhead without training go deep sea diving. It was impossible. The Navy had its regulations. But I could still dream.

When the diver came up empty handed, not once but half a dozen times, everyone lost confidence, but I vowed that one day I would come back to China and look for Tojo’s Treasure. Nor had I forgotten Peach Blossom Spring. I’d go searching for that too, one day when the communists backed off.

Looking for lost treasure was fun; saving Charley Company was not. History does repeat itself. We were living in a period reminiscent of the Boxer Rebellion.

Communist guerrillas, who had watched American Marines join forces with Kuomintang troops to bar them from the railway lines for so many months, grew impatient and trigger• happy. A field detachment of guerrillas ambushed a Marine convoy on the highway between Tientsin and Peking, and soon Americans and communists were killing each other.

A more serious incident involved Charley Company, Fifth Marines. I was called to accompany our regiment commander on an investigation of the conditions, but when we arrived it was too late.

For more than a year Charley Company had been defending the ammunition supply point at Hsin Ho, north of Tankgu and south of Tientsin. The Japanese, aware of its vital importance as a port, first invaded Hsin Ho in 1932. Now with General Chiang Kai-shek’s forces withdrawing, it was up to the Marines to defend the depot. They had little supplies and equipment, only their old M1s, some BARs, a few mortars and a machine gun platoon to guard an eight-mile periphery around the ammo dump. There were no tanks, and no planes flying overhead for support. Their defense required them to man eight towers on rotation of four hours on, eight off. At night eight sentries, one on each milepost, stood guard. They manned these positions for ten straight months. They had no time off, and no liberty.

With incidents happening almost every night, Charley Company was literally in the midst of a war, while Americans back home thought the war was over. Mao’s forces finally became convinced that the Marines were not about to give up, and on April 5, 1947, they attacked. They attacked with several thousand men. Throughout the night Charley Company fought off the Chinese troops at the odds of 100 to one.

Finally, after a night of fierce fighting, Charley Company drove the enemy back, but at a cost of five Marines killed-in-action and sixteen more wounded.

No Marine unit deserved more credit than Charley Company, Fifth Marines. The company served beyond the line of duty without relief from any other unit, and it fought on with minimum supplies for ten months. The fighting was over when we arrived. The depot at Hsin Ho had been a living hellhole, and the site of the worst U.S. fighting in North China. When I talked to a few of the Marines who had survived, I pictured them, had the circumstances been different, playing a game of football back home at their high school. They were so young, too young to vote, and too young to go into a bar back home to have a beer. But not too young to die. They were Marines.

After months of fighting, Mao’s army was pushed back, thanks to this gallant company of teenage Marines, but disheartening was the knowledge that waiting in reserve were two million or more Chinese troops ready to attack at a minute’s notice.

Smitty was setting off on another trip to Japan, and Hecklinger and I went down to the docks to see him off. He was happy as a recruit getting his emblem after graduating from bootcamp. He rolled back the sleeve on his field jacket, ran his hand over his Hawaiian dancer tattoo, and said, “Baby, we are off again.”

Smitty always came back to Tsingtao with the latest news from MacArthur headquarters. What would he have to tell this time? He had a couple of buddies who were assigned as guards to the Tokyo Trials and from them he gathered the latest skinny. In the beginning we liked the way the trials were going. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East began its trial of Japanese war criminals in Tokyo on May 3, 1946. Every one of us, down to the last Marine, waited to hear that Emperor Hirohito had been sentenced to death. The only thing we couldn’t agree upon was whether they should shoot him or hang him. We were certain he would be held responsible for the deaths of three million Japanese, 35 million Chinese, 109,656 Americans, and many millions of Asians. His guilt, they say, was greater than that of Hitler. Undoubtedly, had Hitler lived, he would have been tried at the Nuremberg Trials, condemned and hanged as other Nazi leaders had.

But Emperor Hirohito was not sentenced to death, nor to life in prison. He was not even tried.

The first group of 70 Japanese war criminals-all major leaders in the military, political, and diplomatic sphere-were apprehended and set to stand trial. But only 28 of the war criminals on the list were brought to trial. The others were released and their cases were closed.

Across the China Sea in Tsingtao, we knew that Japan was under U.S. occupation, and we were aware that the Supreme Commander was Douglas MacArthur. Despite Australia and China demanding that Emperor Hirohito be tried as the chief culprit of war crimes against humanity, the US took Hirohito from the list of war criminals.

As Supreme Commander, MacArthur had the authority not only to select judges but also “to reduce, but not to increase the Sentences.” Chief Prosecutor Keenan, a politician from the State of Ohio, cooperated slavishly with the Supreme Commander; under such circumstances, the Tokyo Trial dragged on for two and a half years and closed on November 4, 1948, with its sentences meted out to the 28 criminals. Only seven received death sentences. MacArthur insisted it was for the sake of expediency for the governing Japan under occupation that the Emperor was not tried.

MacArthur didn’t win favors with the Marines who fought on Okinawa and with those who witnessed Japanese atrocities in China. No, not with way he handled the Emperor, nor when he struck a deal with Lt. Gen. Ishii Shiro, former commander of Japanese biological warfare Unit 731, that he and all members of Unit 731 were to be exonerated from war crimes in exchange for data they had acquired through human experimentation of many thousands of Chinese, Korean, Soviet, and even US POWs. Without a shadow of a doubt, Ishii’s crimes had far exceeded those committed by the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele for conducting human experiments. Unit 731 had murdered many times more than the number of Jews, Gypsies, Polish, and Russians killed by the Nazi doctors.

And Emperor Hirohito went free, to reign again in the grand Imperial Palace. If General Douglas “Dugout Doug” MacArthur had some other objective in mind, we Marines never knew it.


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Take China-CH17A

Previous – CH17A – Next

Chapter 17A
SAVING CHARLEY COMPANY
. . . . .

The Poet William Cowper once wrote: “Pernicious weed, whose scent the fair annoys.” That pernicious weed was China, and the “fair” in this case, if I may be so bold, was the China Marines. I don’t think there was a China Marine who didn’t have a legitimate complaint about the smell of China. It was not like the smells back home. The scent at home which played the best upon my mind was that of morning air on the farm, the sweet scent of grass and bloom, the damp earth from a field just plowed, or the freshness of a hayfield newly mown. Maybe those who came from the big cities had their own memory of smells, but mine were about the farm. Even the barnyard had a pleasing smell. China was so much different. When we arrived in China, we got our first whiff of the land miles off shore, and those smells never left us. In Tsingtao we got used to them, more or less, but when we went on hikes into the countryside the odors there manifested themselves. It was most unpleasant. Farmers used human excrement to fertilize their fields, and the odor seemed to be permeated into the very soul of the land.

But the rankest and most villainous smell that ever offended nostrils was what we experienced on Okinawa. I think the memory of those smells on Okinawa made China tolerable. Replacements arriving in China from the States would complain, and then you would hear one of the old combat men say, “If you think this is bad, you should have been with us on-” No, nothing could compare to Okinawa. Nearly a quarter million corpses lay all over the place, busting open from the hot sun, stinking even through their shallow graves. There was neither time, nor did we have the energy, to bury all the dead. Marines who were killed in action, came back from the front lines stacked like unwanted logs one on top another in ten-wheel trucks.

By the fall of 1947, the number of old China hands in Tsingtao was dwindling very rapidly. Smitty was scheduled to return with the rest of the troops, but he was on a run with a load of Japanese prisoners en route to Japan when the transfer orders came through. When he returned to Tsingtao, the others were gone, with the exceptions of Hecklinger and me. It took Headquarters a while to sort out the records, and Smitty was quite happy about it. He had a job he liked-security guard on LST’s escorting POW’s back to Japan. He was no sooner back in Tsingtao than he quickly offered to make another run and was accepted.

One wondered if the repatriation of Japanese from China would ever end. The problem continued because Japanese soldiers had been hiding out in the mountains ever since the war’s end, refusing to surrender, fearful that they may end up in Soviet hands as several hundred thousand of their comrades had. But then as the balu swept across north China, they flushed out scores of enemy soldiers, and rather than suffer an unknown fate, they began surrendering. When they did surrender they had to be repatriated. That task was left to the Marines. LSTs were converted to troopships and as many as 500 Japanese-civilians and whole families as well as POWs-were herded aboard and transported to Japan. The accommodations given them weren’t luxury liner, and according to Smitty, more like 15th century African slave ships, except that voyages lasted only a week compared to months at sea that it took for a slave ship to reach the New World. Nor were the Japanese placed in chains, and they were going home, a big difference. Some who had been born in China, had never seen their homeland.

After I finished my brig duty, I went back with the MPs, and found myself constantly on call as an interpreter for any number of assignments. Most of these were routine and boring, but a few were packed with real excitement. One that I liked was classified. I was to assist with the search for “Tojo’s Treasure.” That was the code name. Whether it was fact or fiction I never knew, but the quest was real enough. The month before the Sixth Marine Division landed in Tsingtao, a few of the Japanese high command did a bunk and fled China by sea, and with them they took a vast treasure from north China. Intelligence estimated that the Japanese had melted down tons of gold, gold stolen from the Chinese, and it included everything from jewelry to gold teeth. At $36 an ounce, it mounted to millions of dollars. The big question was, what ever happened to this gold bullion and other treasures? Anybody who knew anything about the gold had also fled before the Marines arrived. The authorities doubted the loot ever reached Japan. Any booty or spoils of war brought from abroad was certain to be confiscated. The only solution was to bury the treasure before they left, and return for it later. The question was, where did they bury it?

The search for Tojo’s Treasure began immediately upon our arrival in China. G2 had their hands full. Records were scrutinized and thousands of Japanese, both military and civilians, were interrogated. Every lead was investigated and always stopped at a dead end. The breakthrough, however, came when a white-bulled yacht flying an American flag appeared off the coast of the Shantung Peninsula. The yacht was the Scandia out of Honolulu.

Scandia was a beautiful gaff-rigged sailing schooner, a hundred or more feet long with a 20-foot beam. It was odd to see an American sailing vessel in Chinese waters and the Navy ran a check on the vessel only to discover it had been stolen twelve months before from its mooring at Ala Wai Yacht Club in Honolulu.

The Navy immediately dispatched a patrol boat and boarded the vessel. Instead of finding Americans aboard, the captain and crew they found were Japanese. A further check revealed the captain had been an officer in the Japanese garrison in Tsingtao. They had aboard salvage equipment that included an air compressor and deep-sea diving gear.

At a Naval Board of Inquiry, the Japanese officer claimed he had purchased the vessel in the Philippines, and he produced documents as proof. The documents, as expected, were forged, but the investigation was unable to prove whether or not the captain had faked the papers himself or if he had purchased the vessel believing it was legal. The vessel was confiscated and the Japanese were dismissed with all charges pending. What no one could answer was why was the captain attempting to return to Tsingtao waters? A vessel flying an American flag certainly had a better chance, of course. But was he after a sunken treasure? The hunt for Tojo’s Gold was renewed with more zest than before.

The Navy began systematically searching the waters around Tsingtao, under pretenses other than treasure hunting, of course. I would have known little about the mystery had I not been taken out to a navy barge one morning to do some interpreting. It seems Chinese fishermen claimed their fishing lines were constantly being snagged by unknown objects on the ocean floor a mile or two off the coast. When G2 received the report, they thought it might be sunken vessels but after checking found there were no reported ships that had gone down in the area. Could it be a vessel or barge that was deliberately sunk?

The fishermen were already aboard the barge when I arrived. They pointed out the location and the Navy diver was preparing to be lowered over the side.

I couldn’t help envying the diver when I saw him sitting on a capstan on the fore deck. He was the very soul of adventure and romance; fitted out in his rubber deep-sea diving suit. While the Chief Petty Officer gave orders, his dive team huddled around him, each sailor with a task to do: one checked the air gauges, another coiled air hoses, a third man tested the pump handles on the air compressor. Two men made ready to place the three-windowed hardhat over his head and shoulders while still another man stood by with a wrench ready to bolt the hardhat in place.

The barge was anchored about a mile off shore from the rocky peninsula near Long Beach. I knew the place well for it was here that I had taken Stevenson and Little Lew several times.

The diver and his crew bantered back and forth, and I listened to the chief telling them that the deep-sea diving equipment they were using would be outmoded and obsolete in a couple years. A new type of diving apparatus called a “diver’s lung” had been developed by a Frenchmen and the US Navy was testing it. “You just strap this thing on your back and away you go,” the chief said.

What the chief had to say was perhaps true, but what romance was there in a backpack replacing the deep-sea diver’s hardhat? My attention focused on the diver. The two assistants were about to lift the hardhat and fit it into place, but it wasn’t the Navy diver I was now seeing. It was John Wayne. We were on Guam, seated in the outdoor movie theater. Our seats were coconut logs, and our ceiling was a star-filled sky. All around us were palm trees, silhouetted against the night’s sky. We had been anxiously awaiting the movie for weeks. It first had to do the round of navy ships, and finally it came to us in Tent City. It was “Reap the Wild Wind” with John Wayne, Raymond Massey, Ray Milland, Paulette Goddard and Susan Hayward. I remembered the names, even John Wayne’s name in the movie-Capt. Jack Stuart.

On a silver screen-that fluttered when there was even the slightest wisp of a breeze-we watched John Wayne in full Technicolor standing at the helm as he skippered a salvage boat in the tropics, while fighting off both pirates and the advances of two beautiful women. His competition was Ray Milland, and the action peaked when the two men donned deep-sea diving gear and descended to the bottom of the ocean in search of a sunken treasure. When Milland was attacked by a giant octopus, it was John Wayne who saved his life, but at the expense of his own, and Milland won the hand of Goddard. Whew, what romance.


Previous – CH17A – Next

Take China-CH16C

Previous – CH16C – Next

Chapter 16C
Katarina and the Yalta Agreement
. . . . .

Christopher who hailed from New Orleans was a street fighter, and he thrived on fighting. He didn’t care who it was, he’d fight him. He never lost a fight. For some reason Whittington liked to pal around with him. “But he was really a dangerous mother to go on liberty with,” Whittington admitted after their big fight. Christopher hated the US Navy, and he loved Tsingtao beer. The two didn’t mix. When he drank he became belligerent and terribly antagonistic. He’d then look for the biggest sailor in the room and begin to crowd him a little. As soon as the sailor became aware of Christopher’s presence and looked him in the eye, Christopher would always shout, “What the hell are you looking at, shithead?” After that, it was every man for himself.

That was the night they destroyed the Camay Club.

But there was one fight in Tsingtao that no one can ever forget. It will go down in history books, and it wasn’t even the main event at the championship China-South Pacific Area Boxing Match. It was another match.

The championship fight went on as planned. The US Navy from the Pacific Fleet pitted their top boxers against the top boxers in the China Marines, and winners in each category would go to Guam for the South Pacific championship fights. Most of these top contenders had already made names for themselves. The scuttlebutt was that there were scouts from the World Boxing Commission who were ready to sign up the winners when they got out, and both press reporters and radio announcers were on hand to record the moments. Roy Heinecke from Stars & Stripes came all the way from Japan to cover the event.

But there was one match that our guys and the sailors from the Seventh Fleet wanted to see more than all others. The match we had in mind was between two men listed at the bottom of the program. But for us, it was the main event.

The man the Marines wanted to see win, and betted on, was Herbert Jones. The Seventh Fleet put up a seaman named Frenchy. Herbert had faithfully served his time in the Tsingtao brig, where l first met him, and ever since he got out he had followed a straight and narrow, and above all, a clean path. He gave up his boozing and trained at the gym hours every day. We used to go watch him train. No one wanted to spar with him, and more often than once he knocked the heavy punching bag right of its chain and swivel with a couple solid blows. We were all betting on him. We were convinced he could beat any Swabbie in the Navy.

But Seaman Frenchy was no pushover. There was no doubt about it, he was a mean bastard. He beat every sailor on every ship in the Seventh Fleet, and they said he could have beat everyone in the entire US Navy and some thought the British navy as well. He really was a brute, and when you saw him you did a double take. He looked very much like the black-bearded sailor in the Popeye comic strip. We saw him around town a couple of times when the fleet was in, and he was always surrounded by a dozen of his henchmen, like one of those movie stars you saw on a Movie Tone newsreel.

The first time the name Herbert Jones was mentioned to Frenchy, that a Marine by that name wanted to fight him, he laughed until his sides hurt. “Bring him on,” he shouted. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, to put the two unknown men on the program; but by pulling a few strings, we finally succeeded. The matches were set, the programs were printed up and distributed, and then the match was cancelled. Lt. Brandmire announced that the match was illegal.

He read in the books that any Marine or sailor who served brig time for a Summary offense could not participate in any boxing match for a period of one year after completion of the sentence. Herbert had only been discharged from the brig nine months before.

No amount of pleading could make Lt. Brandmire change his mind, and probably it wouldn’t have done any good if he had. It had been entered in the book and even the CO could not change the ruling. The Rocks and Shoals are black and white and there are no grays between. Herbert Jones and Seaman French could not fight.

But it was not over.

The championship matches lasted three days, and on the night of the final day, we arranged for the Jones-Frenchy fight. But it was not staged in any auditorium, and there were no timekeepers, seats or bright lights. Standing room only. The fight was in the wide-open street in front of the Prime Club.

There was no law saying the men couldn’t fight, and there was little the MPs and SPs could do to stop it anyway. The rules were simple: no gloves and a knockdown was the end of a round. When a fighter could no longer get to his feet, the other fighter was the winner. A large circle was formed and the crowd was soon boisterous, shouting for the fight to begin. They wanted blood. Bets were being made and fists full of money passed hands back and forth. I sat, along with my buddies, on the railing at the Prime Club. We had the best view anyone could have had.

We could see from our vantage point both men sweating profusely. They had stripped down to their waists and circled one another clenching their fists. The crowd cheered, and soon the cheers became chants-“Fight! Fight! Fight.” They were gladiators in the ring, and when they looked up at the mob of blood crazed spectators, you wondered if the spectators would give thumbs down like the Romans did in their time. No one really cared who won, just so there was violence and blood. The two men raised their hands, and the crowd went wild. The chanting became louder.

Then the strangest thing happened. The two men approached each other, bent over in kind of a huddle, and with lowered headed began conferring with each other. Were they setting their own rules?

Presently they stood up, and Herbert motioned for silence. The crowd became deathly still. “You will have your fight,” he shouted for all to hear. “You will have your fight but you will have to wait for the results.” At that he and Frenchy pushed through the crowd and headed towards a darkened alley next to the Prime Club. A couple of spectators, sailors and Chinese, attempted to follow them, but the two men turned on them and they quickly withdrew. Herbert Jones and Seaman Frenchy disappeared into the darkness.

Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, still not one nor the other man appeared. Which one would it be? We kept peering into the darkness down the alleyway, wondering. We even had thoughts that they might have killed each other. Perhaps one of us should go and investigate.

There was no need. In the deep abyss of the alley we could see a shadow emerge, ever so faint at first. Then it became clearer, and clearer. It was not one shadow, but two. The two men came walking out of the darkness, side by side. They were scuffed up, their faces marked and bruised. Their hands were bloodied and their trousers covered with dust. The crowd grew silent. With all eyes upon them, Herbert slowly raised his right hand; his fist was closed. The victory was his, and we were all about to shout when Frenchy raised his right hand. His fist too was closed. They both held their hands high, both with closed fists in victory, and like two longtime buddies, shoulder to shoulder, they marched into the Prime Club and up to the bar, and when the crowed followed them, they made their announcement. “None of you will never know,” Frenchy said, and Herbert Jones vouched for him. No, we never did know who won that fight, but those who were there will never forget it either.

Lt. Brandmire had his day. Ours was coming. We combat Marines had learned the hard way that in battle, officers must not wear side arms nor carry binoculars, both of which would identify their command function and make them prime targets for the enemy. The Marines under Lt. Brandmire’s command presented him with two gifts of appreciation: a brand new pair of binoculars they bought at the PX and a very fine, handmade leather holster for his .45. “So you look sharp when you lead a patrol,” they said, and they thanked him. He was pleased and proud that his men appreciated him.

The guys were fortunate they didn’t have to take a slow troopship back to the States. Times were changing. They shipped out aboard C-47s to Cherry Point Air Station in California. Hecklinger ended up in sickbay and missed the flights. As for me, they figured with my speaking Chinese I might be of some use and held back on my orders. Hecklinger and I decided to celebrate. I knew he would be heading out to see his girl but we could have a few beers first at the slopchute at the EM Club. When we went into the office to get our liberty passes, the duty clerk announced that I had a visitor at the main gate waiting to see me. He didn’t know who it was, except to say it was a woman, and the guards would not let her come in. Hecklinger told me to go ahead. A dozen thoughts ran through my mind as I rushed to the main gate. It had to be Ming-Lee. Who else would come to the compound to see me? I didn’t walk the last hundred yards; I floated.

Sentries stood at the gate checking passes and saluting officers in their vehicles as they passed. Whoever it was had to be inside the guard shack waiting. I opened the door, and I had the shock of my life. My eyes were deceiving me. Sitting on a wooden bench was Katarina. She saw me and jumped to her feet. Her eyes filled with tears. Before I could say a word she said, “I came to say good bye.”

“You already said good bye, once,” I replied.

“Come, where can we go?” she said. “I have to tell you the good news.”

We went to a small White Russian cafe down from the university and took seats at a small table. Katarina did look wonderful, and it took all my effort to not be taken in by her again. She reached out and placed her hand on my arm. She explained she was on her way to Shanghai and had a steamer to catch that night. She admitted she felt bad about Peking.

“You are returning to your family then,” I said.

“Not exactly,” she said. “I’m going back to Russia.”

“Back to Russia!” I exclaimed. “You can do that?”

“Yes, it’s okay now,” she replied. “The Russians are allowing White Russians. It’s part of the Yalta Agreement made between your President Roosevelt and Stalin. It has just been made public. American ships are providing transportation for us from Shanghai to Vladivostok.”

Katarina was very happy. At last she had a homeland to return to. She asked about Ming-Lee and I explained I had not seen her since Peking, and that Ming-Lee was in the lobby when she, Katarina, was in my room. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “You do love her, don’t you?” I didn’t reply. What was the use?

We finished our drinks and I wished her luck and saw her to a rickshaw out in the street. I didn’t think I would ever see her again.


Previous – CH16C – Next

Take China-CH16B

Previous – CH16B – Next

Chapter 16B
FULL CIRCLE
. . . . .

We called it “shell-shocked,” when a Marine suffered trauma from the fighting and killing. I always prided myself that I wasn’t bothered with such memories. I was spared that fate and felt lucky about it, or so I thought. That changed for me one afternoon when I went to the head to shave and cleanup for liberty. The guys were outside clamoring for me to hurry. I did the best I could. I lifted my shaving brush to my face, tilted back my head, and looked into the mirror. I froze, and immediately began to quiver. My hand shook so violently that I dropped the brush. I fell back in terror. I trembled so much I had to toss my razor aside. I could have cut my wrists wide open with the blade.

What I had seen in the mirror was not my own face but one of a dead man. I had seen it before. We were on patrol on Oruku Peninsula, skirting the hills searching for hidden caves. We climbed up one steep ravine by grabbing on to roots and tree stumps to pull ourselves up. I had reached the crest, and just as I pulled myself up, I came face to face with a Japanese head stuck on a spike. It was but inches from my face. I was so close, in fact, my eyes gave a distorted view and had to get back to see if what I was looking at was real. It was, indeed, real. The poor devil’s mouth was open wide, his skin drawn tight around the lips. There were only holes in the sockets where eyes had once been. There were bits of whiskers on his chill” the hair on his head was matted and caked in dried blood.

A patrol had passed before us, maybe the day before, and a Marine had obviously cut off the Jap’s head and stuck it on a spike and placed it is such a way that anyone coming up the ridge would come to it face to face. The skull had been separated from the torso to which it was attached and lay in a ravine nearby.

It took my buddies an hour or more to calm me down, and a bottle or two of Hubba Hubba to make me forget altogether.

Whether it was the memories of Okinawa or the thought of getting involved in another war, we were becoming unnerved. We began drinking more, and if we weren’t on guard duty or on patrol, we’d get drunk, almost every night. And we began fighting more. I even had a knockdown fight with Terry, or I mean be knocked me down. Terry and I had shipped out together from the States. I had gone through the entire Okinawa campaign with him and survived. We had spent days and nights in the same foxholes, and we held off banzai charges, and then one day in Tsingtao when I neglected to wait for him at liberty call, he caught up with me in town, and knocked out my front teeth in a brawl. He felt so badly about it, he bought a bottle of Hubba Hubba and we got drunk, and the next morning he never remembered a thing. “Hey, who hit you in the mouth?” he asked when he saw me. I was about to slug him but I thought it was best to wait until we were away from quarters, so as not to go on report, but I never got the chance. Terry’s orders for his transfer back to the States came before he had another liberty.

Orders began arriving right and left for our transfers back to the States. You would imagine we would be anxious to leave, but for many it was not that way at all. “What am I gonna do back home?” Terry asked. “Pick up coal along the railroad tracks and sell it. Who has any use for a China Marine?”

Hecklinger didn’t fancy going back to working in a funeral parlor in Oklahoma City. “You have to accept it,” he said, “that sometimes you are the pigeon and sometimes the statue. I don’t wanna be a statue again.”

Ruker admitted that even if he had a laundry room back home in West Virginia it would not be the same. “Unless,” he said, “I could take back a couple of Chinese dollies, and I’d have all the coalminers in the state coming to my laundry room.” He thought for a minute and then said, “Can you imagine coalminers in starched khaki!” Ruker dreaded leaving all the girls behind. He did have a way with women, and it wasn’t until he was shipping out that we learned he even had a way with enemy women. That’s right, with enemy women. He had a hard time living down an experience he had on Okinawa. No one could understand how he did it. It was one of those black edgy nights when the earth and sky don’t seem to meet. The Japs had captured our Fox Company runner and Ruker and the others on the gun could hear them torturing him all through the night. His screams kept up until the Marines couldn’t bear it any longer. The squad sneaked off into the night to see what they could do=-which was what the Japs wanted, to find where we were holed out=-and they left Ruker alone on the gun. The next thing he knew was stars. He was knocked out. Cold! Someone had sneaked up from behind, hit him on the head and knocked him out. When he awoke he saw two Jap nurses were standing over him with a couple of rocks in their hands.

“Then what happened?” we asked him.

He couldn’t give us an answer. He just didn’t know. For some reason, that he will never understand, they didn’t kill him. We joked that he was such a lady-killer, the ladies couldn’t kill him.

Chandler and Smitty, they both felt much the same about going home. It wasn’t that the guys didn’t want to go home, they did, one day, but not right now. Marsden had already left, a couple of months before and we heard he had re-enlisted. All he had talked about was going back to his wife and then he re-enlisted. We thought we might be redeemed when we read a news story in Stars & Stripes.

NAVY CANCELS CHINA TRIP FOR 500 MARINES

Pearl Harbor, May 7 (AP) The Navy disclosed today that it has held back 500 of the 650 men of 7th Marine Battalion bound for China and that they are here awaiting transportation back to the United States mainland. The 7th Battalion had been scheduled to relieve the 3rd Battalion, now in China waters. “The men were found to be in excess of present requirements in the Western Pacific,” the Navy announced in explaining that orders were changed just before sailing time Monday.

We reasoned if our replacements didn’t arrive, then we could stay on for a while longer. It made no difference. Transfer orders kept coming. Samuel Carver Washington from Motor Pool got his orders and he was on his way the same day. They hardly gave him time to pack. A priest in Tsingtao reported to headquarters that he applied to marry a local girl. None of us saw him go but we could only imagine he didn’t leave without a fuss.

One Marine who didn’t have to worry about transfer orders was Melanowski. His got his discharge in Tsingtao. He began immediately as a driver for UNRA. We heard that he and Monique took an apartment out along the coast road near to Mrs. Djung’s old house.

In the past it was possible for a Marine to extend his stay in China a year at a time. No more. Marines whose time was up had to go back. Stevenson broke the news to me when his orders came. “This times it’s me who is going,” he said sadly.

When a buddy is leaving, and you realize you may never see him again, you say all the things you really don’t mean. “It’s about time,” I said. “Maybe we’ll get a good office clerk this time.” But when the ledger is closed and he has departed you miss him terribly. You remember all the little things, like the time when you thought you couldn’t make it on a hike due to a hangover from a heavy bout of drinking the night before, and to save you from going on report, he carried your gear and helped you stumble along so that you wouldn’t have to fall out. There was real meaning when he gave you his Sam Brown belt, and said to you, “Here, I am not gonna be around to protect you in a fight anymore.” And even more important, when he handed you his prized barracks hat, and you replied, “Hell, it’s pretty much worn out now anyway.” Marines know no other way to express their gratitude to a fellow buddy except by sarcasm. You wonder, if you ever meet again, will it be the same?

We had two weeks before they left, and one big last shindig was planned. It was the finals for the China-South Pacific Area Boxing Matches held in Tsingtao.

Marines like to fight. They teach Marines in bootcamp to fight, and they become good at it, but when a war is over, how do they expect Marines to stop fighting? China Marines were no exception. They lived to fight. When the navy was in port, they fought the navy. When there was no navy to fight, Marines from one battalion fought Marines from another battalion, like the 29th verses the 22nd and so it went, battalion against battalion, company against company, platoon against platoon. When there was no one else to fight, squad member battled squad member.

Some fights became legendary. Whittington will always remember the one he got into with Vic Christopher. That was the time when they cleaned up the Camay Club. The bar was Stevenson’s favorite hangout, other than the Prime Club. He took pride in giving the place the name Camay. The first time he went into the bar, when we first arrived in Tsingtao, the place had another name. Stevenson had some PX supplies he was trying to sell on the black market and offered some pogey bait and bars of soap to the owner. One of the bars was Camay Soap. The owner liked the soap, and renamed the bar after it. Stevenson wasn’t too happy when Whittington and Christopher wrecked the place.


Previous – CH16B – Next

Take China-CH16A

Previous – CH16A – Next

Chapter 16A
FULL CIRCLE
. . . . .

With each passing day, refuges by the thousands flooded into Tsingtao. They came by land, by rail and lorry truck; by sea, by junks, scow and coastal steamer. They came seeking security under the American flag, and they brought with them all the belongings that they could carry. Some even brought their furniture. They were the wealthy, the Chinese and the White Russians. The poor came in carts and riding bicycles, and some pushed wheelbarrows. And there were those who had nothing to ride or push. They walked with rags wrapped around their feet for shoes, carrying all they had left in the world on their backs.

The balu were not far behind them.

Marine headquarters felt we should make our presence known, and once again long hikes into the hills around Tsingtao were initiated, but now we would go armed and with full marching packs. “We are not to look for trouble,” our CO said, “but to ward off trouble if it comes.”

Sometimes we took along scouts to guide our patrols through unfamiliar terrain. They were Chinese ex-soldiers, hardened to warfare and who had spent years fighting the Japanese. They had horror stories to tell, and during our breaks I translated them. They told about the Japanese invasion, how the peasants had fled before the soldiers came with their guns and swords, slicing to pieces anyone who got in their way. The fleeing Chinese took with them everything from seed grain to furniture. They herded their pigs and cattle off into the hills, hid their clothes and valuables in the ground, and fled to the mountains, and when the Japanese came they entered a barren wasteland, and became even more enraged.

The Japanese, in turn, fled when the Marines came, but they left behind a blazed blackened earth and devastation that stretched across the countryside. We could still see burned villages that were simply huddles of ruins. In some places the roads were so torn that even walking was difficult. The land was bare, and not a tree or even a shrub stood. They had long been stripped away, the wood to be sold for firewood, and, as the guides said, the bark to be eaten.

Our eyes, however, were not on the ground where we walked, but to the hills that lie beyond. We could hear heavy gunfire and sometimes feel the very earth beneath our feet shake. The Nationalist Army was defending China from the advancing Red Army, but the soldiers we met along the road were not advancing. They were in retreat.

When the road was clear on a far ridge, we could see clouds of dust puffing into the air from the movement of troops. Then as the hours passed, we could see the troops, endless columns of haggard and wounded soldiers coming down the dusty road from out of the hills. There were convoys of military vehicles that rumbled along at reckless speeds. The vehicles were empty, with guards to keep soldiers from climbing aboard. They didn’t even stop for the wounded. The guides explained it took more fuel for vehicles that were loaded. By the thousands the soldiers were giving up, abandoning vehicles wherever they stopped, throwing away their weapons, discarding their uniforms. Their will to continue was gone.

How strange it all was. With the sound of artillery echoing in the distant hills, life in the city continued on as always. The bars were open, taxi dancers waited for customers, restaurant owners stood in front of their establishments beckoning customers to come in, pimps on street corners offered their clean virgin sisters waiting at home, money changers had special last-chance deals, and everywhere there were crowds. Many believed that the Marines would stay, and that certainly the all-powerful Nationalist Chinese Army would defend their city.

The burden to keep the city alive was placed on the Americans. Food, medical supplies, oil, and all necessities had to be imported by sea, and everything depended upon the US Navy to keep the sea-lanes open. For the Marine garrison, some 8,000 men now, morale began to wane. The problem was, the men of the old China hands were leaving. Stevenson cried in his beer the loudest. He really loved China. “Remember Mr. Wong?” he lamented. “I will always feel bad that we didn’t help him.” I remembered Mr. Wong. It would be hard to forget him. We ran into him in the street near the docks one afternoon. He introduced himself and said his wife was very ill. He had a little vial of penicillin he had bought on the black market. Penicillin was new then. We could see the vial had already been pierced with a hypodermic needle. He had tears in his eyes and pleaded when he asked if we could take it to a sick bay somewhere to find out if the penicillin was still okay. We told him there was nothing we could do to help. We left him crying on the sidewalk. The poor man was worried about his wife. “I often think of that,” Stevenson continued. “There was a hospital ship nearby and it would have been so easy just to walk up the gangway to the quarterdeck and ask the OD if he could help us out. Maybe he would have turned us away, but it wouldn’t have hurt to try.”

Maybe our wounds were deeper than we realized. None of us were truly free from the war. We had our fears, some deeply submerged in our subconscious. These were dreadful scars to burden tortured minds of youths. They could erupt at any time. We could control such emotions, as long as we had “our buddies” with us. Maybe this is why we didn’t want to go home; we would no longer have buddies to rely upon.

Back home, we had heard, there were many people-psychologists, sociologists and just plain mothers and wives-who were determined to believe we had a readjustment problem. They were all worried that they didn’t know how they could solve it. Hell! We were condemned and labeled even before we got home. Articles ran in women’s magazines with titles like “What You Can Do to Help the Returning Veteran” and “Will He Be Changed?” Good Housekeeping wrote: “After two or three weeks he should be finished with talking, with oppressive remembering. If he still goes over the same stories, reveals the same emotions, you had best consult a psychiatrist. This condition is neurotic.” House Beautiful suggested that “Home must be the greatest rehabilitation center of them all.” The magazine then showed photographs of a living room designed for a returning general or admiral. All we wanted was our same old room back.

On Okinawa and later in China we came to understand

man’s unbelievable inhumanity to fellow man. We survived the battle but we could not forget the Marines who had been mutilated hideously by the enemy. Who could forget the Marine who had been decapitated? When we found him, his head lay on his chest; his hands had been severed from his wrists and also lay on his chest. The Japanese had cut off another dead Marine’s penis and stuffed it in his mouth.

Each Marine had his own fears he had to battle. Terry could

not get over the terror of being under artillery or mortar fire. Hecklinger would wake up at night screaming. He was knocking out the gold teeth from a Japanese corpse when the man came alive. Chandler thought he had killed a Marine. It had its roots when our replacement draft landed on Okinawa and we were assigned to our outfits. We ended up in the machine gun platoon. Our first night we were bivouacked on a ridge and had to stand guard duty. Chandler was on watch when on the road below, he heard footsteps. He called out to give the password, something like “lucky legs,” but the intruder did not respond. “Shoot, shoot,” we all shouted to Chandler. Finally, pressured, he pulled the trigger on his Ml. The shot rang out in the dark. He fired again, and again. A flare went up, and in the road below was a body. Someone thought it might be a Marine. Chandler was in hell all night long. He was sure he had killed a Marine. In the morning, with first light, we could all be seen peering over the edge of the cliff; the body was that of a Japanese soldier When we scampered down the hill and investigated, we found that the soldier was about to pull the pin on a potato masher. It exploded in his hands before he could toss it up the hill at us. Had he succeeded, a half dozen Marines may have been killed. Still, Chandler was haunted by the thought that it could have been a Marine that be killed.

Smitty was obsessed with the smells. Everywhere on Okinawa was the putrid odor of rotting flesh. The island was all rock, and digging holes to bury the dead, or to dig saddle trenches, was near impossible. Dead rotting bodies and human excrement was everywhere. Blowflies had a field day and enjoyed the banquet that had been made for them. That horrid smell would be with Smitty wherever he went. “That stinks just like the time-” he would remind us when we were on liberty or on patrol with him.

“Shut up, Smitty,” we’d say. He ruined many meals for us.

Stevenson had a problem of a different sort. He didn’t think he could ever marry. He confided in me that afternoon after we had left Mrs. Djung’s abandoned house. It was afternoon and we had stopped in Rusty’s Russian Cafe for a couple of Tsingtao beers. “I’m afraid if l got married,” he began, “and I had kids, and one was a girl, I’d see in her that little girl on Okinawa.” He poured the last of the beer into our glasses and ordered two more Tsingtao. A Russian hostess, built like that two-ton Japanese tank we found on Guam, with dyed blond hair and black roots, came to sit with us. Stevenson barked at her to get lost. He had something to say and didn’t want to be interrupted. He lit two Chesterfields, handed one to me, and he began telling about the little girl and the time he was on patrol on Okinawa during the mopping operation. “We were told there was activity in an abandoned village to the south of Naha,” he said, “and we had to check it out. A couple of guys from Able Company had gotten there just before us, and we watched two Marines approach a young girl about four years old. All she had on was a straw G-string. She was the cutest thing you could imagine, but with a real look of fear in her eyes. One of the Marines, feeling pity for her, stooped down to pick her up, and just as he did, the kid pulled a sash cord and set off a charge. I swear at that moment she looked up at me standing there. It killed both of them.” Stevenson thought for a while, until I touched a hand on his shoulder. Words were not necessary. He continued: “When I see my daughter, I will see that little girl. I will forever see that face.”


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Take China-CH15B

Previous – CH15B – Next

Chapter 15B
Ming-Lee, Roger, Christmas Publicity
. . . . .

Months were flying by and still no word, not one single letter, came from Ming-Lee. I was contemplating trying to get TDY and go down to Shanghai to find her, until I went to see Roger one evening. “I told you,” he said, “she’s in school.”

“Why can’t she come to Tsingtao?” I demanded. “There are schools here.”

“You have to understand that she doesn’t want to go back to taxi dancing,” Roger said. “She’s been studying in Shanghai and she wants to continue. She has support from her friends.”

Then he said something that made me shutter. “The civil war is going to come to an end, and the new government will bring about changes,” he said. He didn’t call Mao’s army communists, nor did he call them balu as the people did; he called them “the new government.” He continued: “One of the changes will be to close down all the brothels and dance halls. Prostitution will be outlawed. Service girls, prostitutes, taxi dancers, they will all be sent to camps, to be re-educated. You wouldn’t want that to happen to Ming-lee would you?”

“Ming-Lee is not a prostitute,” I protested.

“And who’s going to believe that?”

“I don’t care who believes it or who doesn’t. I do and that’s all that counts.”

Li-Yian had gone to visit her mother. Roger suggested that we go to a teahouse where we could talk. “You will be leaving one day, and what about Ming -Lee?” he asked when the tea came.

“I’ll be back,” I replied.

“Perhaps, but not as a China Marine. You are the last of the China Marines. You will be no more than a memory in the minds of the Chinese people.”

“So you are against Marines in China,” I said.

“No, you are missing the point. It’s not Marines,” he replied, “it’s all foreigners, all those who want to take over and dominate China.”

As Roger sat there talking, I couldn’t help wondering if he believed in what he was telling me, that he was an idealist? I knew his heart was with the Chinese people, but was this the Machiavellian case of the ends justifying the means?

“Tell me, you do believe you are our liberators,” he began. “You believe you freed China of the imperialist Japanese, right?”

“Right,” I replied, careful not to fall into a trap. “For what purpose?” he asked

“To help the Chinese,” I answered

“Do you remember me taking Ming-Lee to meet with you at Long Beach?”

“Yes, you were a great help, and I appreciate it. I couldn’t have gone out with Ming-Lee without your help,” I replied. No sooner had I said it, than I knew I had taken the bait. I had fallen into his trap.

“That’s correct, but think of this,” he said. “I’m Chinese, and this is my country. I take Ming-Lee, a Chinese woman, out to a beach in China, and there are US military guards there at the entrance, and a sign that reads No Unescorted Visitors Allowed. What it really means is-No Chinese Allowed. It’s no different than a sign on the Bund in Shanghai that says-No Dog and Chinese Allowed.”

“You sound like my professor in Peking,” I said, hoping to change the subject and avoid an argument. “You talk just like him. What happened to that phony accent you had when we first met?”

“If I bad talked like a professor, you Marines would have avoided me,” he said. “But don’t change the subject. It’s not only Long Beach where you guys hang out, but most of the beaches are closed to Chinese. We Chinese can’t go on our own beaches.”

“We needed some privacy, that’s all,” I explained.

“Privacy, at what cost?” he fired back. “At the cost of the Chinese. You preach righteousness but you are no different than all the other imperial foreign powers that preyed on China. “You come not to liberate but for your own interests. I hate to keep mentioning the Opium Wars, but think about them, think what the British did. What an easy way to conquer a country. Feed them drugs. No guns. No armies. No fighting. Only drugs, that’s what happened, and then it was so simple. All the European powers march in and chop up China into what they call Treaty Ports. The British, the French, the Germans.”

“Come on, Roger. That’s history.”

“In your mind it’s only history. What would you think if drugs were introduced into your country the same way? How simple it would be for a foreign power to conquer mighty America!”

“Let’s be reasonable,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll be reasonable. You think it’s nothing for the US to march into Tsingtao and commandeer every important building in town. You don’t pitch tents or move into the warehouses on the docks. You take over every major building, places like the university. You throw out of the windows desks and lab equipment, and all the thousands of books written in Chinese because no one can read them. But worst of all, you throw out the students. You take away their place to study. You make their schools your quarters, not for a few months, but for years now.”

“Roger, you speak with such know-it-all authority,” I said, “well tell me, what if you are wrong?”

“Wrong about what?” he asked.

“Wrong about this new government you are talking about?” I asked.

“Maybe it won’t be the best,” he admitted, “but it will be better than what we have now.”

After an hour or two with Roger I felt I had been run over by that two-ton Japanese tank Stevenson and I had found in the hills on Guam, and almost gotten blown up in. I went back to the quarters to talk to Stevenson but he was out with Judy. I wanted to talk to someone, and I then thought about Mrs. Djung. I hadn’t seen her in a long time and I wanted to tell her I knew who Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre were now. I wanted her daughters to be there, and maybe Dr. Fenn too. I would tell them that I not only knew about Kierkegaard, but about Hegel and Kant as well. We could discus Descartes and his cognito, ergo, sum theory. We could talk about Chinese history, and I would ask them if they thought James Hilton got his theme for Lost Horizon from T’ao Yuan-Ming’s Peach Blossom Spring. “You know, I might go and look for Peach Blossom Spring,” I would say. “It’s possible that it does exist, you know. Professor Heng at the University of Peking thinks it does. We talked about it. You know him, don’t you?” And then I would tell them about Dr. Franz Weidenreich and ask if they knew about his research on the Peking Man. I might even tell them I thought they were wrong about Lin Yutang. I read nearly everything he wrote, and I might even quote a passage of his from the Wisdom of Laotse. I was trying to recall the lines when I went to the office the next morning to get a pass to Sick Bay. But I did not go to the Sick Bay. Instead I had Sammy drive me out to Mrs. Djung’s place. I could have driven myself but I thought it might be nice to talk to Sammy about all the pressing things on my mind, but it was a bad choice. He had met a bargirl from Ciro’s and had fallen in love with her. Instead I had to hear all about her, and what a great girl she was.

I was shocked when I reached Mrs. Djung’s house. The lovely garden that she had been so proud of, had gone to weed. The house and grounds that once looked so neat and trim had peeling paint and were unkept. No one had even bothered to sweep up the leaves. This was not at all like Mrs. Djung. I knocked on the door once, then twice, and must have waited a full five minutes before deciding to leave. I turned to go when the door partly opened. It was the amah Bee Ling. She said her madam was not at home and then pleaded that I leave. She did not explain.

I waited several days and decided I would try again to see Mrs. Djung. I was curious. Stevenson went with me this time. It took a lot of courage to walk up the steps to her house, not knowing what to expect, with each of us pushing the other ahead. When we did reach the top of the steps, we were too late, far too late. The doors and windows were boarded up. Mrs. Djung and her two daughters no longer lived at the grand house on Lai Yang Road.

Christmas was coming and everyone was looking forward to the holidays. I was hoping that Ming-Lee might come up from Shanghai but according to Roger there wasn’t much of a chance. She was deeply involved in her studies.

We were lacking a Christmas tree, and the only place to find a proper tree was in the Low Shan Mountains to the north of the city. At better times we had made hikes into the mountains. There was still a Christian monastery for orphan kids further back in the hills, but since then the communists had taken over much of the territory. Nevertheless, we needed a tree. Terry took it upon himself to organize a party to find the biggest and best Christmas tree in north China. I don’t know how he finagled it, but he did. I had the duty and couldn’t join them, but he and the others set out early one freezing winter morning just as dawn was breaking over the city. Anyone seeing them might have thought they were going to war. They weren’t taking any chances. Armed with M1s and carbines, they boarded two ten-wheelers and took with them for support a 75mm-pack howitzer and a couple of 50 cal. machine guns. They also had standing by, and on call, a Sherman tank. “In case the friggin’ commies attack us,” Terry said. For the sake of a Christmas tree, we could have started a major war with the communists and changed the course of history, but fortunately they didn’t, as fate would have it. But they did come back with a grand Christmas tree. It made a splendid show in our compound at the Shantung University.

We had a new commanding officer fresh from Nav Pers at the Pentagon, and he decided, after seeing all the street urchins around town, that the Marines should have a Christmas party for the “lost children of Tsingtao.” The old man had Motor Pool send out trucks on Christmas morning and round up all the kids they could find on the streets of Tsingtao. He called in the press and had news photographers on hand.

The kids would have a grand feast in the mess hall, everything that American kids got at Christmas-roasted turkey, chestnut stuffing, mashed potatoes, green peas, pumpkin pie and ice cream. He bad presents flown out from the States. Jigsaw puzzles with beautiful paintings of mountains and lakes and farm yards with fat milk cows grazing. There were coloring books and crayons, pencil boxes with half a dozen pencils in each box and all kinds of weird looking paper hats, and whistles that when you blew them, long streamers of colored paper appeared. Since I spoke Chinese, I was called upon to act as master of ceremonies. Chinese children in better, more affluent families, do have a Santa Claus, of sorts, which they call Lao Kungkung. But I doubted that the kids that Motor Pool rounded up in the streets of Tsingtao ever bad beard of Lao Kungkung. To complicate matters, the CO wanted me to give a little pep talk to the kids. “Tell them about Santa Claus,” he said. “You know, that be rides on a sleigh in heaven, drawn by reindeers, and that he comes down through the chimney, and gives presents to all the good boys and girls. Ask them if they have been good little kids.”

I needed Little Lew to help me, but as soon as he heard what we had planned, he hid out somewhere and we couldn’t find him. I thought it was rather odd behavior. I imagined that he would have felt pretty proud about the party, a hero to all the kids, but he reacted very strangely when I first mentioned it to him. Like most kids his age, maybe he was getting a bit spoiled.

The chief cook was to be Santa Claus. He was a huge grumpy first sergeant who must have weighed 330 pounds. He had a permanent scowl on his face and they say he had never smiled a day, not even once, in his entire life. Even staff officers were afraid to cross him. And now the new CO told him he would make a good Santa Claus. Strangely enough, be accepted.

The mess ball was decorated with all kinds of Christmas cheer, even stuff left over from Halloween. Actually, anyone who didn’t know Christmas and Halloween, might have found it a bit spooky, and that’s exactly how the orphans felt when they arrived. Motor Pool had rounded up more than a hundred orphans, or what they thought to be orphans, cleaned them up the best they could in the parking lot, and marched them into the mess hall. They entered, to the loud cheer of “Merry Christmas” by a dozen Marines dressed like Santa’s helpers they were terrified.

I don’t know what went through their little heads. Maybe they thought they were going to be beaten, or sold, or that some other horrible nightmare would befall them. I tried to calm them down and give them my little speech, but I could see I would make it much worse to tell them about a bearded old man named Santa Claus. Besides there was too much chaos and pandemonium for anyone to do any talking. And the cook didn’t help matters when he charged into the mess hall shouting, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” He would have frightened anyone. He wore his long-john underwear, which he had died red, and had on his feet a heavy, size fourteen, pair of Army boots that telephone repairmen use. For a beard, he had wrapped the kitchen mop around his face. The kids screamed with terror when they saw him, and knocked things off the tables as they scrambled to hide underneath. It took a great deal of cajoling and coaxing to get them to be seated again, but only after the mess sergeant got out of the mess hall. It was probably the happiest, and what he considered the most successful, day in all his life.

There were no chopsticks, and Chinese kids don’t know how to use knives and forks. Then there was no rice. What is a meal in China without rice? As for the mashed potatoes, who could explain they were to be eaten, not to be thrown at the kid next to you. The hot cocoa was too hot and the ice cream too cold, so they mixed them together, and made a mess. They jumped when the kid next to them blew on a whistle and a piece of paper flew out at them. Jigsaw puzzles were a complete mystery. They had pencils, but no paper to write on, so they wrote on the tables and each other. When the meal was over and the presents opened, drivers from Motor Pool ushered them back outside into the cold and deposited them once again on the streets where they found them. The photographers got some very fine pictures that appeared in Stars & Stripes, photos showing happy kids with turkey and mashed potatoes.

There was a dance that night at the gym, and all the Marines took their dates. I went back to my room and read Toynbee’s Study of History, but I didn’t get much from my reading. I kept wondering what Ming-Lee was doing in Shanghai. I also wondered if Roger was right. Was the Eighth Route Army really coming?


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