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Chapter 15A
THE EIGHTH ROUTE ARMY IS COMING
. . . . .

The Marines in Tsingtao hated to see the summer season come to an end. The beaches during these summer months were as crowded as Coney Island, and there was just not one beach to choose from but dozens. The waterfront began at the harbor downtown and continued for twenty miles or more up the coast to the north. The entire coastline was indented with neat little coves, and each cove had fine bathing beaches. The one nearest town was the restricted officers’ beach, and one about seven or eight miles farther north was Long Beach. It was the biggest, and often referred to as “the enlisted men’s beach.” The beach was sealed off to the Chinese, but Marines could bring their dates there. Marine lifeguards patrolled the beach from atop tall stands set back from tide level; the Seabees had constructed Quonset huts to be used for storage. Staff Marine and Navy NCOs who were married and had dependents could use the officers’ beach. Their dependents were instructed to stay away from Long Beach, but that was where all the excitement and most fun was.

At Long Beach over weekends and holidays, two Ducks were stationed and positioned next to the lifeguard stands. Various Marine and Navy outfits had beach parties on weekends, with barbecues and tubs filled with cold beer. Aside from swimming, the guys played badminton and volleyball, and when they consumed enough beer, they usually turned to gridiron football, without the padding. The games could get pretty rough. They played wild and furiously while their Chinese dates looked on. Chinese girls seldom went into the water, unless the men dragged them down to the water and threw them into the surf. Then, there would follow a lot of shouting and cursing, and threats by the women that they were going home. Some of the taxi dancers and bar girls could curse like a Marine, and this was one reason dependents were advised to stay away. If a Marine did have a Chinese girl who liked to swim, then, he had a sweetheart. Sometimes White Russian women came to the beach, and they would not go into the water. They were mostly heavy set and bulky, and they looked more like Mae West than Lana Turner in their ill-fitting bathing suits. There were some very fine-looking Russian women, but these women you’d see at the officers’ beach.

During the week when the beach was practically empty, Chinese fishermen worked the waters off shore. Their method of netting fish was as ancient as China itself and interesting to watch. On one of those lazy afternoons when I didn’t have the duty, I checked out a Jeep from Motor Pool and took Stevenson and Little Lew out to Long Beach to watch the fishermen at their trade. We arrived just in time to catch the fishermen as they began laying out the net, but what we didn’t expect was to find a party of sailors from one of the US ships in port, whooping it up down the beach. They came in three Jeeps, about a dozen enlisted men and one chief, and had cases of beer stacked up about a yard high. They seemed to be more interested in their own activities and took little notice of the fishermen, which was well and good. Chinese fishermen didn’t like it when drunken Marines and sailors attempted to help them pull in their nets.

I parked on high ground and the three of us went down to watch the fishermen. The net they used was hundreds of yards long, and no more than six feet high. On the topside of the net were floats to keep the top at water level, and along the bottom were weights to hold the bottom down. The sampan set out from the beach with the net neatly stowed aboard, and with one end of the net attached to a line held by half a dozen fishermen standing on the shore. We watched as one man sculled the sampan and two others laid out the net over the side. They made a large semicircle and came ashore about a few hundred yards down the beach, with another line attached to the net on that end. At a signal, two lines of fishermen began pulling in the net, while the younger boys coiled the line as it came in. Tending the lines, with slings over their shoulders, was backbreaking labor. The line was as thick as a man wrist.

It would take the fishermen hours to pull in the net, and wanting to see their catch, we decided to stroll down the beach to some high rocks on the far end and return in about an hour or so. We had no idea when we were climbing among the rocks that a crisis had arisen with the fishermen and the sailors. It wasn’t until we were returning, walking partly in the water, letting the incoming tide lap at our feet, when we became aware of a commotion ahead. I couldn’t believe it, but one of the Navy Jeeps was in the sea, almost completely submerged. Sailors were running up and down the beach while the fishermen were having their own problem. It appeared that one of the lines had broken, and the fishermen were struggling to pull the two ends ashore. The net was in a tangled mess.

The fishermen were too busy to explain what had happened. I went up to the Navy chief who was standing in the surf with water up to his knees, shouting orders that no one was listening to. The sailors were in a frenzy, screaming and cursing the Chinese, apparently for not giving them a helping hand. I finally got the chief to explain what had happened.

It seems one of the sailors became curious and went down to the seaside to see what the fishermen were doing. After seeing them laboring at pulling in the net, he ran back to his mates with an idea. Why not help the fishermen pull in the net? “With none of this backbreaking crap,” he said. No, they would pull in the net with one of the Jeeps.

The sailor jumped behind the driver’s wheel and three or four others piled into the back seat and off they went to help the fishermen. The driver turned the Jeep around and backed up to the line of fishermen pulling in the net. The Chinese were at first too bewildered to know what the sailors intended to do, but when they saw them making fast a cable to the fishing net line, they began protesting. But the sailors wouldn’t listen to them. If I am correct, it even got a bit violent with some shoving and pushing. But the US Navy out-muscled the Chinese, finished attaching their cable, threw the Jeep into four-wheel low gear and began to pull. What they didn’t realize was that, when fishermen pull in on the lines, they can feel the rhythm of the sea, when it’s time to apply effort and when it’s time to slack off. Before the Jeep could move five feet, the net snapped in two, about a hundred yards from shore. As the chief was relating the story, he chuckled from time to time. “It was the funniest thing you ever saw,” he said. “The chinks did everything but cry.”

The sailors returned to drinking their beer while the Chinese labored to salvage their net. But what the sailors forgot was that the tide was coming in. They had left the Jeep where it was, down by the water, and when they did take notice of it, the tide was almost up to the wheel. The driver, loosing no time, ran down to the Jeep, jumped in behind the wheel, started the engine and slowly began to pull away. He didn’t get far. The rear wheels sank into the sand. The sand was rapidly becoming water logged. He revved up the engine and let out the clutch, and the wheels only sank deeper and deeper.

Panicked now, he called his mates, and half a dozen Swabbies came running, stumbling and falling in their half• drunken stupor. They began pushing the Jeep while the driver spun the wheels, but the vehicle only sank deeper into the sand. The water was now up to the axle. “It was too late to get the other Jeeps to pull it out,” the chief said, “but then we didn’t have any rope anyway. “After that, he threw up his hands in disgust. “Those bloody chink bastards could have helped us. There were enough of them. But they just stood there with stupid looks on their friggin’ faces.” He went on to tell that a couple of sailors grabbed a few Chinese and began punching them, but still they wouldn’t help. In the end they sat on the beach and watched as the sea swallowed up the Navy Jeep.

As Stevenson, Little Lew and I drove back to the university, we wondered what the Navy men would put into their report. “Jeep lost at sea,” Little Lew said and we all laughed.

Being attached to the MPs, I could check out a Jeep from Motor Pool and drive around town at my own leisure. Sometimes, I went a step further and would drive out into the countryside. Little Lew didn’t like these long drives but if Stevenson could get away, he’d go with me. Most often I’d go alone. Out in the country it was fun to put the vehicle into four-wheel drive and cruise along the watersheds of farmers’ fields. After a few trips into the same areas I came to know some of the farmers, and I would park and talk to them. Often they invited me to sit and have tea with them in front of their mud houses and I would break open a pack of Chesterfields or Lucky Strikes and lay out the cigarettes. This was a real treat. The tea, served in bowls, wasn’t very good, but I enjoyed their company. I listened to the tales they had to tell, and they would ask me questions I could not answer. They wanted to know about the communists, but they didn’t call them communists. They called them balu, Chinese for “the Eighth Road.” The new army was coming via the Eighth Road. Soon all you ever heard talked about was the balu. The balu are coming! I picked up a little about the country’s politics while I was at the University of Peking, but it didn’t take a geo-politician to know there were great forces at play in China.

Winter came quickly that fall, like all winters in north China, without warning, and overnight we switched from khaki to greens. The smelly, round kerosene stoves came out from hiding and windowsills became our refrigerators. Terry brought cheer to the troops when he provided a ready supply of whiskey to everyone in his squad bay. Every time he returned from guard duty at the dock, he had two canteens filled with whiskey. He willingly shared his booty with the squad, but he would never tell how he got the whiskey, that is, until he had too much to drink one night, and the guys cajoled him into talking. In one warehouse guarded by the 22nd Marines, he claimed, there was whiskey for the officers’ mess stacked in wooden crates half way up to the ceiling. Terry knew if he busted into a crate there would be an investigation, and the Marines guarding the warehouse would be put on report. But, he concluded, he didn’t have to bust into a crate to get the booze out. At the maintenance shop in our compound, he rummaged around until he found just what he needed-a spike about six inches long. The next time he had guard duty at the docks, he sneaked from the warehouse he was guarding over to the one with the whiskey that the 22rd Marines were guarding. While the sentry did his rounds and walked around to the back of the building, Terry picked the lock and entered. He took one of the crates, tilted it to one side, and with a heavy blow from the butt of his M1 he drove the spike into the crate, breaking a bottle inside. The whiskey ran to one comer, and there Terry held his canteen cup, filling it up and pouring the contents into his two canteens. This went on for about two weeks, until the quartermaster came with trucks and transported the crates, some with broken bottles inside, to the storeroom at the officers’ mess. Terry’s heart broke when this happened, and so did the troops’, but he knew not to attempt to break into the officers’ mess. “That would be thievery,” he said.

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Chapter 14C
Roger’s Secret Identity
. . . . .

Next came the task of finding Roger. In spite of having been kept constantly busy since I arrived from Peking, I still bad time to think about Ming-Lee. I missed her terribly. I saw her face before me at every tum. I didn’t want to go to the Prime Club anymore, so I had Stevenson and Chandler ask around about her when they went to the club, but the answers were always the same. No one knew where Ming-Lee was, except to say she was in Shanghai. Roger would know.

I located Roger’s letter in my seabag, next to some hand-knitted doilies Mrs. Djung had given me for my mother. I never sent them. I had found some silver Chinese waterpipes I was sure my mother would like more and sent those home instead. It was disappointing; my mother wrote back and said she would rather have had the doilies. I decided to save them and give them to her on my return home, whenever that would be. I was hoping she didn’t throw out the waterpipes.

There was an address on the envelope but it was an old letter and I doubted that Roger lived there at the same place anymore, but I had to take the chance. I had no other lead. The address was that of a small hotel right in the center of town.

The hotel wasn’t hard to find. It was a dreadful rundown place, the kind you only see in Chinatown, and after seeing it there was no wonder Roger never wanted me to meet him there. He was probably too embarrassed. I really didn’t care. What were friends for if you had to worry where they lived?

There was no room number on the envelope but it didn’t matter. When I showed the envelope to the desk clerk, he told me without hesitation Roger’s room number-349 on the third floor. There was no lift. I walked up to the third floor, found room 349 and knocked. I can’t remember when I had been so excited.

I could hear voices inside, and there followed a long moment of silence. Presently the door opened, just a crack, and I could see a woman’s face peering out. That old renegade, I thought. He has a girl in his room. It was a moment of enlightenment. All the time I had known Roger, he had been a woman chaser but he never seemed to end up with one. There was always the question in the back of my mind, could he be gay? Some Marines thought that he was. They were wrong. He had a woman in his room. Hallelujah. She wasn’t bad looking either, from what I could see of her. “You there, Roger,” I called. “Is my friend Roger in there?”

The woman turned to talk to someone, and now being impatient and excited, I pushed the door partly open and yelled, “Hey, Roger, it’s me! Your old buddy, remember?”

There was no immediate response, but I could hear shuffling going on inside. I didn’t give it much thought. They were probably tidying up the room. The door then opened and there stood Roger. I was prepared to throw my arms around him in a big hug, but he merely held out his hand for me to shake. “You are back in Tsingtao,” he said, without his usual enthusiasm. This was not the same Roger I knew.

“You gonna ask me in?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

“Yes, come in,” he replied.

It was a small room, rather dimly lighted. There was a large unmade bed, and tables on both sides. The only other furniture was a clothes closet that occupied a large portion of the room. There was a long awkward moment of silence as we stood looking at one another; the woman stood behind Roger slightly to one side. She was painfully shy and obviously wondered who was this American in uniform. He saw me looking at her. “This is my wife, Li-Yuan,” he said.

“Your wife,” I said with excitement. “You got married.” “Actually, we’ve been married.”

“Been married,” I repeated.

I suddenly felt like a stranger. This wasn’t the same fun-loving man I knew before. I was at a complete loss for words. I mumbled something. “I’m trying to find Ming-Lee,” I said.

Roger was uncomfortable, and a bit edgy. Something was wrong and be kept moving back, bumping into Li-Yuan. He turned his head slightly, and then I saw it. In a pile on the floor was a uniform. It was still on a banger and had fallen from the door where it obviously had been hanging. Roger saw me looking at it, and at first tried to kick it back out of sight, and then as though giving up a fight, he picked it up and held it there for me to see. It was a white navy uniform, a Chinese officer’s uniform. I was not familiar with the epaulets, what rank it was, but I did know the red star. It was a Chinese Communist uniform. My heart sank.

“You, you’re in the navy,” I said. He nodded. “You’re in the Red Navy.” He didn’t answer. He just nodded again. “What are you, a spy?”

“A spy! What do you mean?” he snapped.

“Just what I said, a spy!” I replied. “You’ve been spying on us. All this time you’ve been spying on us.”

“Spying on you. You have to be kidding! What military secrets do you have? What do you know that we don’t?” His tone of voice was completely different than what I knew. He was now speaking in a very proper English and not in slang. He continued, “I was interested in you Marines, yes, interested in you as Americans.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“What, and then what would you have done? Me, an officer. I could never have gotten to know you men.”

“You are a traitor,” I said. “You are an enemy.”

“A traitor, an enemy? You can’t be serious, or else you’re very naive. Your country didn’t even know which side it wanted to support. Think about it. The Balu were your friends just as much as the Kuomintang was. Communists risked their lives time and again to rescue American flyers from the Japanese; crews of B-29’s bailing out on their return from bombing Japan had been smuggled to safety by villagers who are now held to be enemies.”

“But that’s different now.”

“Different, what makes it so different? You Americans couldn’t make up your minds who you would support. Even your ambassador, Mr. Hurey, he resigned his post after issuing a statement to the President and the Department of State that America was no longer the judge in the dispute; we are in a civil war. You are Marines supporting Chiang K’ai-shek, at a great price.”

My head was spinning. Maybe he was right, but I was wrong listening to him. I walked out of classrooms at the university when there was talk like this. I started to leave but Roger pointed to the edge of the bed and asked me to sit and stay awhile.

“I came here to ask about Ming-Lee,” I said and sat down

“I didn’t come prying in your business.”

“I know you’re not. But don’t think I am not in hell. I am thinking not of myself but of China. We have suffered. We have suffered from the opium wars when European powers stuffed opium down our throats and took over and divided China into their own spheres of influence. We suffered from the Japanese. The soldiers of Nippon during their occupation of Manchuria inflicted every criminal act known to man on Chinese civilians. Indiscriminate killings, beheadings, bayoneting of live victims and the vicious raping of tens of thousands of women and young girls, were the order of the day. Living with this constant terror and barbarity the civilian population could offer but little opposition. We are in a civil war and again we fear, we fear China will be split. Nothing can be worse, to split a country. It’s best to have total victory of the Kuomintang with Chiang K’ai-shek as supreme master, even with American surplus war equipment and aid.”

“But you are against the Kuomintang or you won’t have that uniform in your closet.”

“There are many such uniforms in closets in Tsingtao. No, my friend, this is not what China wants but what your army generals would want. You see all around you China as it is today-people, old people, kids, freezing to death in the streets, armies bought by foreign aid, young girls sold into sex slavery, justice where a man’s hands are cut off for stealing rice, or his head cut off because he preaches against the system. Unless there is change, these evils will not only continue but will grow worse. The cleansing of China must be complete; we must get right down to the roots.”

Every last Marine in Tsingtao agreed to this, that something had to be done, but not one of us had a solution. It’s so easy to criticize. “And what do you offer?” I asked.

“It’s not what I offer. Your country preaches democracy as the solution, but your western form of democracy in Asia cannot work. Warlords rule China. What do you think Chiang K’ai-shek is? He’s a warlord masquerading as a leader of democracy. But believe me, the beliefs and hopes of all Asians are changing. New ideas are creeping into the peasant’s village, and there are those who are telling him there is another system, a system by which not only the white masters but all the masters will be wiped out and the land will be divided, a system in which village elders no longer rule, of which their religion is no longer valid, but they are told the peasants can decide their own fate. They will tell them their religion is wrong and they no longer have to support archaic monastic systems. The peasant will believe that this new system is best and offers the most liberty which gives him the quickest solution to the troubles of his daily life. He will vote for it, and he will be willing to fight for it, and to die for it. This is what you are up against. Nothing can tum the tide.”

“I have to go,” I said and stood up.

“Please, be my friend,” Roger said. I started for the door without giving him an answer. He put a hand on my shoulder. “I will tell Ming-Lee you asked about her.”

I wheeled around to face him. “You know where she is then?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, I know,” he replied. “I have friends in Shanghai and they know where she is staying.” He could see the expression on my face change. “No, she is not involved in this struggle. She is there because Tsingtao has too many bad memories for her. She feels she was deceived by you.”

“No, no, you don’t understand either,” I said and sat down again on the bed. I explained to Roger exactly what had transpired in Peking. I asked that he understand and I confessed to him that I was in love with Ming-Lee and would do everything to get her back.

“Call me in a couple days,” he said. “I will have some word from Shanghai.” I promised that I would call.

Roger’s message kept pounding through my head on my way back to my quarters. My rickshaw driver was waiting but I dismissed him and walked. It was a long distance but it gave me time to think. Was I dealing with a force that was beyond my comprehension, a force beyond my grasp? There was this business about Chiang K’ai-shek being a warlord, and all the West being deceived by him. No one liked to think of him as a warlord. Warlord was a dirty name; the warlord era began after the Revolution of 1912 when China was up for grabs.

Warlords maintained they must unify the country, and each one uttered he was the one to do it. I remember Su Fung and Mae Chu at the university saying that with the rise of warlords no longer did common people feel that men of humble origin and little education could not rise on the basis of daring, ability and force of personality. “Military rank depended on the successful raising, training and leading of troops, rather than on high birth or classical education,” they said. The business of warlords was our constant subject of discussion at the university. The prototype of the “bad” warlord, they insisted, was General Chang Tsung-ch’ang, military governor of Shantung from 1925 to 1928. Chang’s father was a barber, his mother an exorcist. He was said to have “the physique of an elephant, the brain of a pig, and the temperament of a tiger.” He may have been a villain but I did have an admiration for him. He was known as the “dog-meat general” because of his culinary preferences, and he was also famous for his “virtual zoological garden” of wives of all nationalities. My favorite writer Lin Yutang described him as a lover of women. He would see foreign consuls with a Russian girl sitting on his knee. If he held orgies, he didn’t try to conceal them from his friends and foes. He was called a san pu-chih warlord, the “three don’t knows.” He didn’t know how much money he had, how many troops he had, or how many women he had in his harem.”

In contrast to Chang, there were warlords of polish and morality, and the students were certain to remind me about them. They told how General Yin Ch’ang-heng of Szechwan surprised the American ambassador in 1914 by his knowledge of the arts and the masters of the Renaissance. The warlord of Nanking, Li Shun, earned great prestige by his selfless labor as a mediator between rival Peking and Canton governments from 1917 to 1920.

Whether or not they were bad or good warlords, they were powerful enough in their own spheres to ignore social conventions and indulge personal whims. Chang Tsolin, the ruler of Manchuria, raised his fifth concubine to the status of first wife, and Chang K’ai-shek was not much different. He elevated his wife to such a lofty position that she was able to go to the American Congress and woo both houses to give more money to China, a China ruled by her husband’s regime.

I thought about warlords, about Roger and his wife, and about all Chiang’s problems. I thought about them all on my way back to the university, but most of all I thought about Ming-Lee. I really missed her. When would I ever see her again?

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Chapter 14B
Bully British Navy Officer
. . . . .

We could deal with these shady characters, for in the end we knew they would come running to us for help. But what we couldn’t deal with were the British Royal Marines. They bred Royal Marines in England for their toughness. You knew if you picked a fight with a British Marine it was to the end. There was no giving up. One British Marine, a Sergeant Major, had a reputation that defied all others. He was a legend in his time, and feared by everyone. He was tough, and he always wore his blue uniform with all the medals and stripes and hashmarks covering his sleeves from shoulder to cuff. He didn’t smoke cigars; he chewed them. He could out drink any man, and out fight them if they were fool enough to try. It wasn’t just hearsay, not just scuttlebutt; he proved himself many times.

The sergeant was a heated topic of discussion back at the barracks. Long after the British Navy pulled out, the sergeant was all we talked about. He was an arrogant sot if there ever was one, and there didn’t seem to be any way of defeating him. I guess we wouldn’t have minded so much, but every chance he had he put down the US Marine Corps. “You are all a bunch of pussies,” he said the last time he was in port. “Bloody hell, I must say you yanks go a bit bonkers over dentistry and shampoo rather than good whiskey and a good fight.”

We agreed, the next time the British Navy came to town we wouldn’t put up with him. Terry had a plan. It was a wild idea but we all agreed. A month passed and finally the British navy steamed back to port. We went to the EM Club and sure enough there was the British Royal Marine Sergeant Major with a couple of his hooligan mates. We put Terry’s plan into action.

We marched up to his table and asked if we could buy them all drinks. “Bloody ‘ell,” he shouted, “you ‘aveu’t got ‘er knickers down so I guess you cum to the right place. Let’s see the color ah your money.”

“You ain’t gonna drink wid these bloody yank blokes, er you?” his sidekick corporal demanded to know. He was just as arrogant as the sergeant was.

“Shut your bloody gob, ye wee bastard,” shouted the sergeant to the corporal, “before I smash me pint glass into your flamin’ face.” He then pushed the corporal away from the table. “I’ll take this piss for beer you yanks peddle.” We pulled up our chairs, Terry; Chandler, Hecklinger and me.

Sitting with the sergeant and his men was like sitting on a keg of dynamite; any spark would set it off. “We always wanted to get to know you,” Terry said, “but we didn’t know how you would react.” He was lying through his teeth, and he had to kick me under the table to let me know he was in agony to say what he did.

For the first time the sergeant smiled. He had a heavy moustache that cascaded down over his upper lip, and when he smiled he revealed teeth crooked and bent and stained brown from years of smoking and neglect. When he swilled down a can of beer he didn’t stop until the can was empty, and then he’d wipe the suds from his mouth on the sleeve of his dress blues. His breath stank of stale beer. It was disgusting sitting at the same table with him but we had already started the ball rolling. So far our plan seemed to be working.

“You bloody blokes ain’t so bad after all,” he mumbled and picked up another beer from the table. The beer was in cans but he called them pints. “Another pint in ‘er eye, you bloody loafin’ yank bastards.”

He was unreal; he was a human sieve. As fast as he could pop open a can of beer with his church key he kept on a chain attached to his belt, he swilled them down. His mates couldn’t keep up with him, try as they did, and one by one they deserted him until only the corporal was left. But even he, after a while, wouldn’t be any trouble for us; he passed out in the head. We told the sarge he had left. “Wee bastard,” he said.

It was near closing time, and somehow the sergeant till managed to hold on. He just wouldn’t go down. Hecklinger came up with an idea, got up from the table and went to the bar. He came back with a fifth of White Horse Scotch. “Y’all never ask a barber if you need a haircut,” he said, “so why y’all ask a sailor if he needs a drink.”

“They’re closing,” Terry said, “let’s drink outside.”

“You sons ah bitches,” the sergeant bellowed out. “At’s want yar doin’.” He turned up a beer can but it was empty.” Yar gettin’ me shit face, and at’s da only way you can take me.

I can whip all yar asses.”

“Hey, sarge, stay here if you wanna,” Terry butted in. “We can drink by ourselves.” We got up to leave, with Hecklinger waving the whiskey bottle much like a farmer throws corn out to the chickens to draw them into the coop.

“Nar you don’t,” the sergeant said and staggered to his feet. He stumbled and nearly fell down the steps while following us out to the street where our rickshaw boys were waiting. The boys smiled and Terry nodded. It was working. “Here’s to yah,” Hecklinger said, and pulled the cork out of the bottle with his teeth and then took a long swig. He held the bottle up to the sergeant. “Careful,” he said, “careful, this ain’t that watered down piss you’ve been drinking. I reckon this is powerful stuff.”

“Powerful shit, we were weaned on this stuff,” the sergeant replied and snatched the bottle away from Hecklinger. He put it to his lips, threw his head back and didn’t stop until the bottle was half-empty. He stood straight and tall for a full minute, and then his eyes rolled back. That was his end. He would have fallen on his face had Hecklinger not caught him and propped him up.

“When you’re throwin’ your weight around,” Hecklinger said, “be ready to have it thrown around by somebody else.” He then leaned the sergeant towards the rickshaw and let him go. He fell into the seat with a thud. “Whow,” Hecklinger said, “he’s got the breath that’d make a sow turn and run.”

“So far so good,” Chandler said with delight. “Now let’s get this over with.” Five rickshaws, with the sergeant passed out in one, bolted down the street to the waterfront. We didn’t have to tell the drivers where to go. They already knew.

The street was dark but there was a light coming from the second story window where we stopped. We grabbed the sergeant, one of us under each arm, and dragged him up a flight of steps to the second deck. The door opened and a man in a black greasy apron stood there. He pointed to a barber- like chair and there we laid the sergeant down, face up. The man with the apron unbuttoned the sergeant’s blue jacket and opened his shirt. Satisfied, he turned to us, and then picking up a piece of paper from a table, he held it up. “Zeige,” he said in Chinese.

“Zeige, yes, that one,” I replied, and the man took out his tools. He said he would need at least a half-hour, and we said not to hurry. We wanted a good job. After all, it wasn’t every British Royal Marine who had an American flag tattooed on his chest.

We sent the Sergeant Major back to his ship in a rickshaw, wondering what he would think when he stood in front of the mirror the next morning to shave. We never did find out. The British Navy sailed two days later. There were some high ranking British officers poking around headquarters the next day, and they questioned Stevenson, but he said he knew nothing. We had to keep away from the EM Club until the British navy sailed away, and then we had a big blast.

I finally found the time to visit Mrs. Djung. I bought some of the goodies she liked from the PX, but when I arrived at her house, Bee Ling, the amah, opened the door partway and said the madam wasn’t in. I asked when she would be back but I could not get a proper answer. I wanted to leave the things I bought for her but Bee Ling refused to accept them. What was going on here?

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Chapter 14A
MP Duties
. . . . .

MP duty in Tsingtao was tough. It wasn’t the long hours that was so bad, it was when we had to tum in our buddies who were breaking the rules when we had to put them under arrest. Many of the old establishments had been put out-of-bounds and this made it tough on the old hands. Some places were home to them. Even married Marines used to go to Ping-Pong Willies to sit and drink tea with the girls. They didn’t indulge and often they gave money to the girls out of sympathy. Nevertheless, we had to patrol these places and those Marines and sailors we found in them we had to arrest. It wasn’t always fair, like putting the bathhouses out-of-bounds. The guys really enjoyed a hot bath and a rubdown but the Provost Marshall put bathhouse off limits. The Provost said it was due to leprosy. But that was hard to believe. Lepers didn’t go into a bathhouse for recreation.

In time I got to know every bar and dancehall, every cabaret, every joint and every bordello in Tsingtao. I dreaded when the Seventh Fleet sailed into port. If the British Navy arrived at the same time, pandemonium was certain.

When fights in bars and dancehalls broke out, we accepted it. We knew by the time we arrived, the places would be squared away, and all we would find would be Marines and sailors with black eyes and missing teeth, sitting quietly at their tables. With the bordellos it was much more difficult. The larger, better known ones, had four floors built around courtyards. It never failed, when we walked into a courtyard, there would usually be a couple of Marines and sailors who were scrambling to make their escape. The Chinese had clever ways of assisting them. They blocked the passageways so that we couldn’t get through. Masses of people, women, kids, old men, all would appear on the stairways; pushcarts and bicycles suddenly jammed the doorways; and more often than not, mamasans decided to empty their chamber pots into the courtyards just as we were arriving. I don’t know how many times we got doused until we learned how to take cover, while the “good guys” made their escape.

Sometimes these guys didn’t quite make it and we caught them with their skivvies down. This was the case with a tall slender master sergeant from Texas. One night he stopped by Ping-Pong Willies to get some poontang, to sample the wares, so to speak. He didn’t give much thought that Ping-Pong Willies at the time was out-of-bounds. We knew someone was upstairs, but this was one of the rare instances when the Chinese couldn’t block our passage in time. We were in a dilemma. We really didn’t want to arrest him. The sergeant knew if caught, he would probably lose his stripes, but after a few drinks, and the strong urge for a woman, he decided to gamble and chance it. After making his selection, he entered a room on the third deck. Stripping for action, leaving only his field scarf (necktie) on, he began to enjoy himself. Suddenly, the mamasan burst into the room screaming, “MPs, MPs.”

The sergeant didn’t want to get busted so he opened the window, climbed out and hung on to the windowsill by his fingertips while we searched the room. We knew he was there, for his clothes were on the chair, so we just took our time. The poor sergeant. It was winter and in North China winters there are very cold, and there he was, hanging buck-ass naked from a window ledge in a whorehouse in Tsingtao. After a few more minutes we gathered up his clothes and left. We figured the sergeant must have sobered up by the time we cleared out, but none of us could imagine what he would do without his clothing.

The only article of clothing he had was his field scarf which he hadn’t bothered to remove at the start of the evening. Spying a filthy blanket in one corner of the room, he wrapped it around his body, and caught a rickshaw back to the Marine compound. Arriving at the back gate and bumming a quarter from the sentry, he paid his rickshaw boy and sneaked into the barracks. The next day we gave him back his clothes. We also saved him his stripes.

Walking through the black streets of Tsingtao at night was eerie, and yet we had to make checks on the out-of-bounds dives. We weren’t welcomed, naturally, but we did get to know the keepers. Sitting at the tables in these places were an odd mixture of humanity. Derelicts and war profiteers from the world over. Dope peddlers and smugglers. Black marketers. Russians, Frenchmen, Germans, Arabs, occasionally renegade Americans who challenged us to check their passports. Here you could buy anything you wanted, or sell anything you had to sell. We stumbled into one bar, by accident, and found it was holding an auction, much like cattle auctions you see in western cattle towns in America. The auctioneer was standing on a three-legged stool, and in one hand he had a fist full of US dollars that he waved above his head. He was Chinese, with a little round skullcap on the back of his bead and a long robe that extended down to his cotton shoes. He had a couple of hairs growing out of a mole on his chin. He was shouting in Chinese and taking bids. However, he wasn’t selling cattle. He was selling young girls. He had half a dozen girls on display. They were young maidens, maybe twelve, no more than fourteen, and I gathered they had just been brought in from the country. The auctioneer made them stand on the bar, and then prodded them to parade up and down the counter. Brothel keepers and mamasans were bidding for them. Three white men, unshaven and scruffy, who were quite drunk, were hollering and hooting to the annoyance of everyone there, but they couldn’t have cared less what others thought of them. One of the men, who spoke with a Dutch accent and wanted to get attention, went up to the bar and insisted a young girl pull up her long cheongsan so that, as he put it, he could check out the merchandise. The girl refused so he jumped up on the counter and forcefully pulled down her cheongsan. The crowd broke into laughter, for in her very innocence, the girl made a fool out of the white man. Beneath her cheongsam she wore long breeches that reached down to her knees. In a fit of rage, the man yanked down her breeches, exposing her naked body. She began sobbing, and now instead of giving her sympathy, the crowd roared with laughter. This was really hilarious, a sideshow they didn’t expect. But the show wasn’t over. Another white man sitting with his cronies at a table in the back of the bar shouted to the auctioneer.

“I give twenty dollah short time,” he called. His accent was German. He was a huge man, with jowls that hung down over his frayed shirt collar. When he spoke he coughed. A Chinese man next to the auctioneer translated the message. Pleased, the auctioneer acknowledged the bid.

“Twenty dollars,” he said in Chinese.

The Dutchman standing on the counter with the half-naked girl wasn’t happy. He wasn’t about to surrender the girl for twenty dollars, even if it was only for half an hour in a room upstairs. Without hesitation he yelled for all to hear, “Thirty dollah.”

“Fifty,” shouted the German without hesitation.

I stood with the other MPs at the entrance to the rear of the bar. The place turned into frenzy. Even those who had been sitting drinking and showed no interest in the auctioning now suddenly perked up. Everyone left their tables and pushed closer to the auctioneer. He was pleased, and like a referee at a world-boxing match, he waved his hands above his head in anticipation of who would be the victor. The room grew silent and all eyes centered on the Dutchman standing on the counter. He liked the attention he was finally getting. He reach out, grabbed the girl by her naked buttocks, and gleefully shouted “One hundred dollah!”

All heads now turned to the German. It was obvious he wasn’t pleased with the Dutchman’s outrageous bid. All during the bidding he had remained seated at his table, but now he got up and stood on a chair. He began coughing. His whole body shook like a bowl of Jell-O. “You, you-” he began, coughing and wiping his face with a towel he wore as a scarf around his neck-“you are a fool! A fool! Take her, and may she give you the bloody pox.”

A cheer rose from everyone in the room, and while they watched, the Dutchman jumped down from the counter, reached into his pocket and withdrew a hundred-dollar bill. He handed it to the auctioneer, and then reaching up he grabbed the girl, pulled her down over this shoulder, and with her bare bottom still exposed, he marched with her up the stairs to the rooms above.

My impulse was to tear into everyone in the bar with my billy club swinging, but the sergeant in charge pulled me back. “There’s nothing you can do,” he said. “Nobody is breaking the law.” Breaking the law! What idle words. Whose law? I guess this spectacle was no different than the public executions they had in Tsingtao. If you were looking for something to amuse yourself, and it was Saturday afternoon, you could go to the central prison, and there in the courtyard you could watch public executions as they lobbed off the heads of the accused. No one was breaking the law there either.

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Chapter 13F
Postwar Complications
. . . . .

When I came from the restaurant that night after being with Lt. McCaffery, the guys wanted to hear all about it. I told them that I thought the lieutenant was full of crap, and a Jap lover, but as for the Sofuku Geisha House, that was something else. It wasn’t an officers’ hangout as everyone thought, and it was well worth visiting to see how the Japanese entertained customers. Chandler didn’t agree but Terry and Hecklinger wanted to give the place a try, and I said I would take them. We agreed to go the following Friday night.

I should have known something was wrong when our rickshaw boys stopped a block before the restaurant and insisted we get out. Still not sure, I led the way up the street, and then hesitated. The street in front of the Sofuku was crowded with Chinese mulling about. They appeared to be waiting for something to happen, or for someone to appear. It wasn’t this way when I went there with Lt. McCaffery. This was different. There were no women in the crowd, only men. I was about to ask two Chinese who stood nearby what was going on, when a hush rose from the crowd and all heads turned toward the Sofuku. We too looked in that direction. Coming down the three steps that led to the street was a Japanese officer. He was the one the mob was waiting for.

He had no bars on his shoulders, no insignias, and no marks to show that he was an officer, but you knew instantly that he was. You could see where the insignias and rank had been removed from his uniform. His jacket was high-neck with a cloth belt. He wore breeches and high leather boots. He was uncovered, that is, he wasn’t wearing a hat. He hesitated, looking out over the mob, and then boldly walked down the steps to the street. The Chinese nearest him fell back.

He walked only a dozen yards when the Chinese began to close around him, first from the rear, and then in front. He stopped, and in a loud commanding voice he shouted for them to step back and clear the way. He spoke in proper Mandarin Chinese and at once you knew he was no newcomer to China. You knew immediately he had been around Chinese for a long time. The mob fell back, bumping into one another, scrambling to get out of the way of one another. After a short distance they stopped. The officer began to walk ahead again. No one moved. I was sure the man would walk away without further interruption, but then I saw the Chinese in the back ranks picking up stones. It was not over.

From over the heads of the mob, a single stone flew through the air and struck the ground a dozen yards in front of the officer. It was a signal, the needed encouragement for the mob to close in again. The officer stopped short, and shouted again to the crowd, and for the second time they fell back, but not as far this time. I thought he would begin walking again, but he only stood there, waiting. He seemed to know. Now a rain of stones came flying from every direction, striking the ground in front of him like hail. Then one of the more daring men in the mob, a man far in the rear, threw a stone, and it struck the officer on the side of the head. He stood firm. Blood trickled down his forehead. It was the impetus the mob needed. The stones that rained down now were direct. They struck the officer from head to foot. Still he did not move, nor did he cower or plead for mercy. He just stood there, defiantly, bleeding profusely from the head. His jacket turned crimson red. The first thing to give way were his knees; his legs became rubber and began to falter. He collapsed in one heap, like a wet cloth, and now the mob descended upon him in mass, throwing stones, shouting jubilantly, kicking furiously at the inert body on the ground.

Their deed done, the mob turned to us. “Come on you bastards,” Terry shouted. “Who’s gonna throw the first rock?” We quickly realized they were looking at us for praise, not in anger. They were proud, but they were also disappointed. We didn’t join in their fun.

I had no plan to see Lt. McCaffery again, but after the incident at Sofuku Geisha House I went to see him. I was looking for an answer but I didn’t even know the question. All I knew was that he was sympathetic with the Japanese and maybe he could explain, but his response was nothing that I expected. He only confused the matter more. “You hold the Japanese in contempt for their atrocities, and rightfully so,” he said, “but let me tell you another story. On August 19, 1945, four days after the Japanese surrendered, a civilian group of Chinese managed to capture 26 Japanese soldiers and executed them near the town of Hankow in northeast China. Four of them were beheaded, four were tied to posts and shot through the back of the head, another four had their arms and legs broken and then crudely amputated, four more were found minus hands and feet and had their genitals stuffed into their mouths. The remaining ten had their eyes gouged out and then they were bayoneted to death. In this act of reprisal, the past methods of killing by the ‘Sons of Heaven’ had been copied to the letter.”

I was sorry that I had gone to see him. What good did his college education and all his books do him when he couldn’t give me an answer.

There was no rest for us in the MP Battalion and I had little time to visit with Little Lew or look up Roger. I had been back more than a week and I had neglected visiting my old teacher Mrs. Djung. I was looking forward to meeting with her and her daughters, and maybe even Dr. Fenn. Mrs. Djung would be proud of my Chinese. Secretly I was hoping to get transferred to another outfit but for the time being there was no chance of that. A considerable number of dependents had been permitted to come out from the States in keeping with a new postwar policy of reuniting service families wherever possible. Duty at Tsingtao had become much like that at any overseas station, but dependents also meant more troubles for the Provost Marshall. Clashes came between officers’ wives and enlisted men’s wives. Kids also spelled trouble. Marines had not seen white women, except for nurses, in months, even years, and suddenly frustrated wives and teenage girls with agendas were fluttering around the bases and on the streets of Tsingtao. Some women were certain to cause destruction. Buxom Bonnie, a navy Chief’s daughter was one. She was sexy and knew it, and wanted everyone else to know it too. Bringing her to Tsingtao was a mistake. She should have attended high school dances back home rather than tempt combat-hardened Marines to engage with her in sack time. She was successful, and that’s where the problem began. But like the stories you hear back home, about the girl who screws the whole football team, Bonnie was taking on the whole Baker Company. Her father the chief was a drunken sod and his wife was no better. She was always causing a stir in the NCO Club. Instead of the Chief accepting conditions as they were, he was putting blame on the Marines, those “lecherous bastards.”

Tsingtao was like Stateside duty but with one critical difference. The fighting between the Nationalists and communists grew steadily more violent and bitter and the possibility of Marine involvement was always present.

There was no question about it, Marines in the north were assuming more and more responsibility for guarding rail lines and all rail bridges between Tangku and Chinwangtao. Extensive security commitments were made on the 7th Marines. IIIAC recognized the need for additional troops and they would be sent in from the States. The Marines were plagued by incidents involving blown tracks, train derailments, and ambushes. While the casualties were not great, these China dangers were particularly distasteful because the war was supposed to be over, and any casualty list in the eyes of Americans back home did not look good. Nevertheless, China duty had much of that same appeal as it did in the prewar Marine Corps. And in Tsingtao it was much different than in the north. Tsingtao was considered an R&R Center. It did have some fine beaches and good recreational areas in its favor. Indeed, China duty was good duty in our eyes, and we felt we were in the best city in China.

Most of the time Tsingtao was peaceful, until the Seventh Fleet sailed into port. When the British Navy arrived at the same time, there was always hell to pay. There was an arrogant first sergeant with the British Royal Marines whom we all detested, He never failed to give us a hard time. He was filled with self-inflated egotism and somehow he always managed to get the upper hand over us China Marines. “Not this time,” Terry said. He outlined his plan. It was outrageous, but only if it would work.

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Chapter 13E
New Marine Officer from Home
. . . . .

A letter from my mother had the news that her sister, my Aunt Liz, had a good friend whose son was on his way to Tsingtao, and she asked that I give him a “helping hand” when he arrived. “You know, kind of show him around. It’s his fir t time away from home,” my mother wrote. His name was Scott McCaffery, but I could call him Scotty. His family had something or other to do with the Universal-Cyclops Steel Company. She didn’t say it, but hinted that with that backing he would be a good contact later when I came home. The last place on earth I ever wanted to work was the Universal-Cyclops Steel Company. Just thinking of the place made me ill. I could just picture the place as I read the letter: two big chimneys pumping out clouds of greenish evil smoke, and workers wearing overhauls with suspenders, carrying lunch buckets, crossing the railroad tracks every morning at 0600, just as the second whistle was blowing. I’d rather sell radio tubes in my father’s shop. I don’t remember if I ever wrote back to my mother about Scotty McCaffery, but I do know I soon forgot about him, until I was in Fox Company office picking up my liberty pass one afternoon. Stevenson announced that someone from back home wanted to see me and would be at the office the next morning.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“A Lt. McCaffery. He wants to see you tomorrow morning at 0800,” he said. “Who you brown nosing with now?”

“I don’t know any Lt. McCaffery,” I said. “And who the hell is a brown noser, sitting behind your desk. All you need is a dress. You already don’t have any balls.”

“You wanna feel them you’re welcome,” he answered, and then added: “He said he’s from your home town.”

He didn’t have to say more. I remembered the name, but I had no idea the guy was a lieutenant. That didn’t sound very good. I pictured him now as the son of one of the company bosses at Universal-Cyclops Steel Company. “He’ll be at the Adjutant’s office,” Stevenson added.

I was at the Adjutant’s office a little before eight the next morning, and Lt. Scott McCaffery was already there, waiting.

He was a disappointment. He didn’t look much like a Marine Corps officer. He was slight of build and so mild mannered it was disgusting. Shaking hands with him was like shaking hands with a Girl Scout.

“You can call me Scott, or Scotty if you wish,” he said. I could hardly do that, but I didn’t want to tell him to his face. He was an officer in the United States Marine Corps. I could see he wanted to be friendly, but that didn’t matter. He was an officer. I don’t even think he noticed my discomfort. “I would like to take you out to dinner tonight,” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Sure, why not,” he countered.

There were regulations about officers and enlisted men socializing. I remember the nurses in the Navy Hospital on Okinawa. They were all officers, and when they had parties on Saturday night, enlisted men couldn’t attend. But Lt. McCaffery had already considered that. “I talked to the Adjutant, said you were family, and he said no problem.”

“Where we going?” I hemmed and hawed around.

“I know a great place. They told me at BOQ in San Diego that I should look it up. It’s the Sofuku Geisha House.”

Without thinking I blurted it out-“That’s for officers only.”

“No it’s not,” he protested. “Mostly officers go there I have been told, but it’s for anyone.”

I heard about the Sofuku Geisha House. It was a club for Japanese officers during the occupation, but that had changed and the place now catered to snob-appeal diners. handler was the only Marine I knew who had gone to the place to eat, and he came away pretty sore. He had a pair of black dress shoes, and, as requested, he left them outside when he went in, as was the custom. He told us how miserable it was sitting on the floor at low tables, with the waitresses sitting at your side cooking your meal in front of you over a brazier, and then stuffing the food down your throat whether you wanted it nor not. His biggest complaint was the waitresses; they wore robes with all kinds of do-dads attached; they had their hair piled up on tops of their heads; and their faces were so pasted white with powder they didn’t look well. “They looked as if they smiled their faces would crack,” he said, “and they watched you with little beady eyes from beneath their powder masks.” We all laughed at his description of Japanese geishas, but I was sure it wasn’t all as bad. Chandler had his reason for presenting the picture as he did. It seems when he entered the Sofuku he was instructed to leave his shoes on a rack in the foyer, however, finding the rack full, he put his shoes outside the door. When he was leaving, his shoes were gone. Someone had stolen his fine black dress shoes, his pride and joy. He did the only thing he could do, and that was take someone else’s shoes. He ended up with a badly worn pair of boondockers, the only shoes that fit, and from that day forth he cursed the Sofuku Geisha House.

Everything Chandler had to say about the place was right, but I found it quite amusing. It was totally un-Chinese. Chinese restaurants and tea shops are loud and noisy; this place was quiet and subdued. Even the music, harps of some kind played by two musicians hidden in a comer, was so soft you wondered if it was real. True, it was very uncomfortable sitting on the floor, but the geishas did everything possible to make us as comfortable as possible with a ready supply of pillows and cushions. There was something bewitching about their manner, their delicate smiles and their painted lips. Their lips seemed to tell a story, and you felt you wanted to gently press your lips to theirs, maybe to see if they would respond. They were more like caricatures in pictures than real people, maybe more doll-like than human. For sure, they were not Like Chinese taxi dancers. I immediately tried to wipe away the image I had of them, naked and dead in the caves on Okinawa. No, these women were lovely. How could Chandler be so wrong, but then I didn’t lose my shoes. He was right, geishas do put food in your month, but they do it with sweet care and grace.

On our way to the Sofuku Geisha House I made no pretenses to Lt. McCaffery-1 wasn’t about to call him Scotty-that I liked the Japanese. The Marines taught me to bate them. Now as we were dining, and I appeared to enjoy my sukiyaki, he asked, “Why don’t you like the Japanese?”

“The Japs!” I blurted out, disregarding all protocol. “Hell, what do you expect?” I suddenly felt I was being cornered and didn’t like it. I wished I hadn’t come. When we first stepped into the restaurant I felt I was betraying the Marine Corps by my being there, dining with the enemy, but for the sake of respect I kept putting my feelings aside. But now I felt that this officer who I hardly knew, and who had not fought in the war, was leading me into some kind of trap.

“Maybe you can tell me your experiences,” Lt. McCaffery said. Now what was he up to? Was I about to be lectured that the war is over-so let’s forget? I found it hard to trust him so instead of talking I kept silent. He began talking about Shinto, the national religion of Japan, and he explained how Emperor Meiji issued an Imperial edict in 1882 to soldiers and sailors that became holy writ and the basis for meditation for the armed forces. The lieutenant was a true Jap lover.

I didn’t want to hear any more. Emperor Meiji and an Imperial edict, it was all hogwash, and had Lt. McCaffery been on Okinawa with the 29th he would not be talking this way. I was glad when the evening was over and I didn’t have to listen to him anymore. I didn’t think I would ever see Lt. McCaffery again, and if l did, I would avoid him. Less than a month later I was seeking him out. Could he possibly have the answers to the questions that troubled many of us? We were taught to hate the Japanese. We were like those watch dogs they train to attack their victims, to tear at them viciously, not to stop until they kill their opponents or until they are pulled away. Now something very strange was happening. The Marines who were guards on the LSTs that carried the first Japanese repatriates back to Japan returned to Tsingtao with reports about how devastated the country was, and those who had been to Tokyo talked about how the city had been laid flat. The next group returned from Japan, only a few weeks later, with a different report. They had noticed progress. The rubble was being swept away and new buildings were appearing. After six months the Marines had completely different tales to tell. They were beginning to like Japan and the Japanese. Some Marines even praised them, and were prepared to defend their feelings with their fists. I didn’t have to go to Japan to see for myself that something was wrong. It started when I decided to take a couple of the guys on my own to the Sofuku

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Chapter 13D
Comforting Letters from Home
. . . . .

We kept our heads low and worked our way slowly between the pilings. It was black with only glints of light that reflected on the rippled water. Sewers from the houses above emptied into the water and the stench was terrible. It was eerie; each dark shadow was a menace and a threat. I noticed the lieutenant kept his hand on his .45. We pulled ourselves along, from one piling to the next without the boy needing to scull. The pilings were crusted with barnacles and covered with slime. The boy knew where to go. He guided us through the maze with certainty. Overhead beneath some of the buildings were trapdoors, and a few had ladders that dropped down to water level. The ladders too were covered with barnacles and slime. We worked our way around one set of pilings, ever so cautiously, when suddenly, only a few yards ahead, we heard muffled voices and the sound of wood banging against the pilings. Someone was getting into a boat. We no longer hesitated but quickly pushed ahead, and at the same time the lieutenant shouted for whomever it was to halt. The voices in the dark turned into shouts, and then an engine coughed, once, twice, and finally sparked to life. In the next instant we could hear the roar as the boat shot off into the darkness, pounding and banging recklessly into the pilings as it went. Once out into the clearing and away from the buildings the sound grew faint and was soon gone.

We worked our way to the ladder where the suspects had made their hasty exit. The trapdoor was open. The lieutenant gave the signal and stepped back as we scurried up the ladder, our weapons drawn.

The room was dimly lit and in disarray. Drawers had been emptied, clothes were scattered everywhere and the door to the walkway that led to the street was still locked. It was then that we saw Cuzzo. He was lying in a heap under a pile of rice sacks. My heart went out for poor Cuzzo. We thought he was dead and expected to find him in a pool of blood, but he was alive. The lieutenant shook him, and then slapped his face a couple of times. He moaned and opened his eyes, but they were unseeing eyes. He had been drugged.

MPs from the outside, hearing the commotion, pounded on the door and we let them in. An officer from G-2 appeared and said we were to touch nothing, and then he gave orders to his men to begin a search. We stood Cuzzo up on his feet, and with a man on each side of him we led him out the door and down the walkway to an awaiting Shore Patrol paddy wagon. He was taken to SP headquarters for custody. Two days passed before I saw him again, and that was when he returned to the brig. Ping Ping had engineered his escape, and after she directed him to the waterfront and got from him what she wanted, she and her brothers drugged him and made good their escape. By now they were probably swallowed up in Shanghai’s underworld, three very rich people, and Cuzzo faced a sentence of 20 years. It was about a month later when I was on MP duty that I learned he bad been transferred back to the States.

Mail from back home was always welcome, even when it brought bad news. “What do you expect?” Cpl. Marsden said when one of the guys got a letter about all the trikes going on in America. “The war’s over. Don’t expect any parades when you get back, for there ain’t gonna be any.”

I wondered about this. I remember precisely when we left San Diego with the 55th draft. There was a band playing John Philip Sousa’s marches like you have never heard them before, and hundreds of people were gathered there on the docks, waving and shouting, some crying, all wishing us well. I recall in particular a very attractive young lady in tight black slacks, high heels, and a low cut black blouse. I remembered everything about her. She was beaming and throwing kisses lo those of us who were lining the railing, and she called out that she would be there waiting for every single one of us to return. I never forgot that lady, and even though I knew her vow could not be kept, I still half expected that she might be there.

Cpl. Marsden was not as optimistic. I remember when we were bogged down on the southern end of Okinawa, and said something that got us all thinking. He said if they could have put a grandstand around Iwo Jima, where people could watch wholesale slaughter taking place, they could have made a fortune selling tickets to the public for a thousand dollars apiece, providing people had the assurance they wouldn’t get hurt.

“Like in the movies,” someone said.

“No, stupid, you’re not listening, not like the movies,” he replied. “They want to see it alive, when it’s happening, just like in the Roman coliseum. Human nature hasn’t changed.”

Sometimes my mother’s letters weren’t much better. She became active in some sort of women’s league and kept me informed on current events. The war had made women free from the bondage of men, she said. They had discovered they didn’t need men. She wrote to tell me that Mrs. D. Leigh Colvin, President of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, was outraged when she heard that Shirley Temple would be taking a drink in her next picture. The guys went into a rage when I told them about the Little Princess. Shirley Temple was the sweetheart of every Marine in the Pacific Theater. And now she was grown up. Why in the hell couldn’t she drink? We also started thinking, when we got back to American, many of us would be under age and not be allowed to drink in bars. The age limit in most states was 21. We had fought in the war, some guys like Whittington and Marsden from the first campaign, and we had all served a couple of years in China, but we were too young to drink. We’d have to sit on a park bench with Shirley Temple.

We all got a kick out of hearing that Margaret Truman, the President’s daughter, spent her summer taking voice lessons in Missouri. Although she had been offered radio and concert work, she had her sights aimed at a career in opera. Upon hearing tills, Terry and Chandler went around singing a duet from Don Giovanni. They weren’t bad.

My father wasn’t much of a writer but he did his very best to keep me well informed. His news about Ben Hogan got every Marine wild with envy. The world famous golfer was the sport’s top money winner for the year. No one could imagine making the amount of money that he did. Everyone got to joking about taking up golf when they got out.

The bad news was that 4-1/2 million workers went on strike, crippling the coal, auto, electric and steel industries. After 113 days, the strike at General Motors was resolved when workers settled for an 18-1/2¢ hourly wage hike. Not bad. Which one of us China Marines wanted to start making cars?

China duty was getting to be pretty good duty, especially in Tsingtao. We had the latest movies, some even before they were shown in America. My sister wrote and said the public was anxiously waiting for the opening of “The Best Years of Our Lives,” and I wrote back that we had already seen it. The new rage was detective Philip Marlowe, played by Humphrey Bogart. He gets involved with a wealthy woman, Lauren Bacall, and her headstrong younger sister in “The Big Sleep.” Although the film was made in 1944, it was held back for general release until after the war ended.

My father claimed the biggest thing on radio was Parks Johnson, host of the popular program Vox Pop. But my father was even more enthusiastic about a new medium they called television. “Television is the thing of the future,” he wrote.

The dancehalls around town picked up on the latest hit tunes. Marines and sailors swooned with their taxi dancer girl friends to the words and tunes of “Give Me Five Minutes More” and “The Girl That I Marry.” When they wanted to get sentimental the bands played “How Are Things in Glocca, Morra” and for happy tunes it was “They Say It’s Wonderful” and “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” It was amazing how the girls could mimic the words. When the bands struck the first note of any popular song, they could all sing out in unison the words to the song. It was a fun time. But ask them what the words meant and they didn’t have the slightest clue.

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Chapter 13C
A Bluff to Assert Authority
. . . . .

Gamble was in the brig office the first day l was on the job. He was an old hand from the 55th Draft days, and I knew him, but the others in the office were new to me. One was a great big brute of a Marine from Texas, and the other man was a Seabee in leg irons. There were more prisoners lined up in the hallway outside the office. I was well aware that first impressions are important, and all these prisoners were, of course, wondering who this new guy on the block was. I had to show them I meant business, but I didn’t know quite how I would do this. Beneath a rough exterior that I had to display, there was a meek side of me I always tried to camouflage. I was one of those kids who had been constantly beat up in high school. I was a farm boy and when it came time to putting on boxing gloves in gym class, I would rather get beat up than punch back. Then I joined the Marines. I carried the same philosophy with me into bootcamp, but it didn’t last long. One of the methods our Drill Instructor, those feared D Is, used to toughen new recruits up was to take broomsticks and fasten boxing gloves on each end. He then had two recruits stand face to face with one another and slug it out. My opponent kept slamming away at me and all I did was to try to ward off the blows. The DI saw what was happening, grabbed the broomstick away from my opponent and kept poking at me, shouting all the time, “Come on, come on, do something.” I kept falling back but he kept after me, jabbing away. The other recruits stopped their sparring and gathered around to watch us. The DI became more violent. “Come on, what’s the matter with you boy, you chicken?” Still I did nothing except to try to defend myself, but now I began sobbing, with tears running down my face. My nose too began running. I fell back, tripped and was sitting on the ground, thinking that now he would let up, but he didn’t stop. He kept hammering away at me, his voice growing more shrill and louder and louder. “You’re a shit bird and that’s all you’ll ever be-a chicken shit shit bird.” Something snapped. I saw fury, blind fury, and got back on my feet. I didn’t care if that son-of-a-bitch was my DI or the Commandant of the Marine Corps himself. I took hold of my broomstick and instead of holding it in the middle, I grabbed one end and began swinging it savagely at the DI. He now was the one who fell back. He tripped and fell to the ground, and I stood over top him and kept swinging, wanting to kill him now. I had become insane with rage, and felt no pity as the sergeant on the ground held his arms over his head to ward off the blows. It took a whole squad of recruits and another DI standing nearby to pull me away.

I was sure I’d be put on report, maybe kicked out of the Marine Corps, and I didn’t care. I’d do it again. The DI got to his feet, dusted himself off, and said, “Good work, Marine.” He called me Marine. We were in bootcamp, and he called me Marine. I was the proudest guy in the platoon, and no one messed with me after that.

Now I was confronted with somewhat of the same problem as I stood in the brig office that morning. All eyes were on me, studying my every move. Would I be a pushover? They waited.

A few minutes before, a chaser had been in the office before me, and as was the procedure, he checked in his .45 and placed it on the desk with the clip of ammo next to it. I saw the .45, went over and picked it up, and turned around and faced everyone. In a voice loud and clear, I said, “I’m a fair guy but I won’t take any crap from anyone.” The words alone weren’t that powerful, and, in fact, I thought they were rather weak, something you’d expect a second lieutenant to say, but what I did next startled everyone in the room, in the office, and out in the courtyard where the prisoners were lined up to go to chow. I suddenly became the most feared assistant brig warden in Tsingtao.

What I didn’t know was that the chaser had checked out from the turnkey the .45 and not one clip of ammo but two clips. When I saw the pistol I thought it was unloaded. But in the Marines we have a policy, and that is that every weapon is loaded unless proven otherwise. I did what we are trained to do. I pointed the .45 upwards, pulled back the slide, and by doing so, I put a cartridge into the chamber. When I pulled the trigger the weapon went off. The action so astounded me, instead of admitting someone had goofed, I said, “Now let that be a warning!”

“Hey, you got to take it easy,” the Brig Warden said to me later that day. Even the Exec had something to say when I saw him the next time. Like in bootcamp, no one fooled around with me after that.

The prisoner from Texas had a name that was hard for a Marine to live down-Herbert Jones. I believe he became a roustabout merely for defending himself when someone called him by his name. He was a fighter, and tough as they came. They used to joke that he made Charles Atlas look like the skinny kid on the beach. The irony was that he was mild mannered and soft spoken. It was only after he got liquored up on Hubba Hubba that he got wild. He got drunk one night and cleaned up a whole bar filled with Marines and Swabbies. When they called for the MPs, they asked for reinforcements, but when two 4×4 weapons carriers loaded with MPs and SPs arrived, Herbert was sitting quietly at a table by himself. He went without a struggle, and got 30 days in the brig on a Summary. I liked the guy from the start.

Another prisoner I quickly got to know was Ralph Cuzzo. He was a Seabee, a very likeable guy, but being likeable dido ‘t help him much. He was deeply involved in the black market. He didn’t sell cigarettes and toothpaste like most of us did from our PX rations. He sold stockpiles, like sacks of sugar, by the truckloads. He not only sold the sugar but he sold the trucks that delivered the sugar as well. The rumor was that he had a fortune hidden away somewhere in Tsingtao. The other thing they said was that he was in cahoots with Tony Stompano.

Tony was one of those guys that no one liked but whom we all envied. He liked to make us think that he was one of the West Coast Mafia, with connections, but a couple guys figured he was no more than a Detroit Zoot Suiter. Even without duck-tails and sideburns Stompano was still a greaser. What annoyed us most about him was the silk Chinese robe he wore to the shower room, a true Hollywood dandy. When you saw him in bars and dancehalls around town, you could be sure he’d have his necktie off and his shirt unbuttoned and wide open down the front, exposing a hairy chest and a heavy gold cross on a gold chain. He also wore a gold Rolex. He was quick to cover up when the SP appeared. Everyone figured Cuzzo was his fall guy. But I didn’t think Cuzzo would stoop that low.

Tony Stompano was basically a coward. He’d back off from a fight, but the guys never challenged him. They feared him, not for his strength, but for the fact that he might pull a knife and stick them. They felt he might even do it at night when they were sleeping. He fed on this type of glory and it made him even more obstinate. He got along great with the White Russians in town. They say he was a gigolo for a couple of White Russian women at Rusty Mary’s.

We were warned Cuzzo was going to attempt a breakout. He wore leg irons at all times, and it was kind of pathetic to watch him hobble along every day with a Marine chaser with a carbine at port arms following him. I never really thought that he would attempt it, for where could he go, but that was my mistake. He broke out one night on my watch.

Cuzzo had been tried by court-martial and found guilty. He was sentenced to 20 years hard labor and was waiting transfer to Leavenworth. His Chinese girlfriend Ping Ping came to visit him during visiting hours on Sunday, and that may have been when they planned his escape. She was a pretty thing, a bit voluptuous and very sexy. Any guy would chance going over the hill for one night with her. You could tell when you saw them together that Cuzzo was very much in love with her. That same night when I was on watch, after taps and bed check, Cuzzo slipped up a back set of stairs to the attic, worked his way through a roof hatch, dropped twenty feet to the pavement below and cut through the mesh fence. Being a clever Seabee, he had fashioned a key and was able to remove his leg irons. It was probably Ping Ping who had sneaked him a metal cutter to cut through the fence.

The authorities assumed Cuzzo would make contact with Ping Ping; they were aware of her connections on the waterfront. She and her two hood brothers had rented a room there. Chinese police began staking out the place the very first day Cuzzo was arrested. The moment we reported Cuzzo ‘s escape, the CO dispatched a patrol to search the place, and I was assigned to go with them. Our orders were to apprehend Cuzzo, and if he refused to surrender and resisted, we were to shoot, and shoot to kill. This wasn’t like fighting the Japs; he was one of us. I put a clip in my .45 but debated about putting a round in the chamber.

It was dark, near midnight, when we struck. An entire company of MPs cordoned off the street along the waterfront. The place where Ping Ping was reported to be holed up was in a row of low clapboard buildings that extended over the water on pilings. A squad of five Marines, with a lieutenant in charge, two Chinese police and me were to approach from the sea. We climbed aboard a sampan sculled by a Chinese boat boy.

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Chapter 13B
New Duty, MP Battalion
. . . . .

The Marines were quite content with their facilities at the university. They had everything they needed-a gym with weights and basketball court, a big well-stocked PX with Planters Peanuts and Clark Bars, movie ball, library and study room, and a barbershop with real barber chairs. No one needed to go off base if they didn’t care to, and many didn’t.

Back in my room, before I could unpack, all the old squad came to welcome me back. “You came just in time,” Smitty said. “We’ve having a party for Whittington. He’s shipping back to the States next week.”

The going-away party for Whittington was held at the EM Club in town. The guys thought of everything, including Little Lew. So that he wouldn’t feel left out, they arranged for a kid’s movie night at the movie hall. I wanted to go immediately to the Prime Club to see Ming-Lee but I didn’t have a choice. The new CO arranged for a ten-wheeler to bus us down to the EM Club. There was one problem, however. No one remembered to tell Whittington; he didn’t show up for his own surprise party.

The EM Club was roaring by the time we arrived. The whole building was vibrating like one of those machines that overweight people use when they want to lose weight. A couple of extra paddy wagons were parked outside. Burly Shore Patrolmen waited in the vehicles for calls which were certain to come. The Seventh Fleet was in Tsingtao and the US Navy had taken over the EM Club. Ming-Lee would have to wait a bit longer for me.

There wasn’t an empty table in the place, but we were able to double up with some guys from Easy Company. We scouted around and stole chairs from sailors’ tables when they got up to order more beer or go to the head. An hour after the club had opened its doors, the bar ran out of cold beer. Two hours later it ran out of beer altogether. They turned to selling hard stuff, gin and rye whisky. That’s when the trouble began. Stevenson, Ruker and I were able to sneak out, leaving Chandler, Hecklinger, Terry and Smitty behind. It wasn’t until we got back to the university that night that we learned Chandler was in the hospital.

The story we heard was that our squad suspected the club would run out of beer so they bought up a couple of cases and stacked them under their table. When the beer ran out, sailors at the next table wanted to buy some from our guys but they refused. Tension began building and remarks like “jarhead” and “leatherhead” verses “swab jockey” and “deck ape” began to fly back and forth. Chandler went to dance with Buxom Bonnie, the navy Chief’s daughter from Shore Patrol, when all hell broke out. Chandler heard a rumble coming from the direction of his table and saw that a fight had erupted between the Marines and sailors. It was getting serious. Two sailors bad grabbed Smitty and started shoving him out of the second story window. There was little Hecklinger and Terry could do to help him; four or five sailors were holding them back with chairs and threatening to beat them over the head with them. Chandler didn’t hesitate; he charged like an enraged bull to help Smitty and knocked the sailors back. The next thing Chandler knew, one sailor broke a coke bottle and came at him swinging. He struck at Chandler and slashed him across the face, tearing off half his nose. Fortunately a big Navy SP stepped in and laid the sailor’s head open with his billy club. Both men were taken to the hospital and the medic sewed Chandler’s nose back on. Stevenson, Ruker and I knew none of this, of course, when we arrived at the Prime Club.

For days I had been thinking about this moment, how I was going to arrive at the Prime Club, and now it was becoming reality. When the girls saw Ruker they dropped whatever they were doing and came running. Even those who were at tables with customers came running too. Judy saw Stevenson and rushed up to greet him with outstretched arms. Everyone came, happy as larks, everyone but Ming-Lee. She was nowhere to be seen. When things quieted down, I asked Judy where she was. She didn’t answer.

It was a hang fire, like when you pull the trigger and nothing happens. No, it was worse. It was like one of those new grenades that didn’t pop. The Corps introduced them during the last days of fighting on Okinawa. Marines had discovered that when the Japs heard the pops from our grenades, they would count the seconds, and if they had enough time they would pick them up and lob them back at us. So the engineers developed the pop-less grenade, but they didn’t tell us about them. Terry was the first to discover it. He picked up a grenade, pulled the pin and when it didn’t pop he just looked at it. Disgusted that it might be a dud, he casually tossed it aside. It exploded less than a dozen yards away, and fortunately didn’t kill anyone. Was this another dud? When I asked Judy again about Ming-Lee, she looked at Stevenson and then at me. ” She’s gone,” she said sheepishly. “I think maybe you know.”

“Gone,” I repeated. The grenade exploded. “What do you mean gone?”

“She go Shanghai. She no come back to Prime Club. She go live in Shanghai.”

My world came to an end. I didn’t feel like partying anymore that night. I had one drink of Hubba Hubba with the boys, made a flimsy excuse about having the runs and went back to the university. In the rickshaw I concluded that I had to find Roger. He might know something about Ming-Lee. The only problem was that when I had asked about Roger, no one had seen him in a couple of months. I had never been to the hotel where he lived but I did have a letter from him tucked away in my seabag, and it did have a return address on the envelope. I’d go see him on my next liberty. He would help me find Ming-Lee. I felt a little better.

There were some mighty sore heads the next morning and I was glad that I had stopped partying when I did. We had a new company commander, a 30-day wonder major who had replaced Col. Roston. He called me into his office, and as I stood at rigid attention he gave me my assignment. I could see he was going to be a miserable bastard. You would think these new officers would be pleased to have seasoned combat Marines under their command but it was usually the opposite. They didn’t like troops having more experience than they had. So I got my assignment. I would be attached to the MP Battalion, and would be carrying out Shore Patrol duty. In the past, Chinese soldiers had been attached to Marine MPs and Navy SPs to do the rounds with them. They were supposedly interpreters, but there wasn’t much they could interpret. They didn’t speak English. This would be my job, the colonel said, but first I had to help out with brig duty, the nastiest duty a Marine could get. With more old hands being transferred back to the States, the brig watch found themselves short handed, and I was to help out until replacements arrived from the States. The brig warden, a disgruntled old sergeant major, demanded that I move into the guards’ quarters in the brig. I had Chandler take over Little Lew once again until my brig duty was over.

The Marine brig was located within the university compound. It had a very tough reputation with Marines stationed in Tsingtao and sailors of the Seventh Fleet. Manned by the biggest, meanest Marines in China, it deserved the reputation it had. Sailors and Marines of the Tsingtao area who had violated the Rocks and Shoals were confined here. Being a redline brig, prisoners received harsh treatment. Redline brigs are ones in which every two feet a red line was painted on the deck, especially at every hatch. A prisoner would have to halt at all red lines and request permission from a turnkey before he could advance to the next red line. what it meant was if a prisoner had to go to the head he had to cross two or three red lines and request permission to proceed. This could consume several minutes, depending on the mood of the turnkey. Talk was that the Tsingtao brig had very few repeat offenders.

At this time Rocks and Shoals were naval laws used to control and maintain discipline in the Navy and Marine Corps. These laws dated far back before World War II. Under them it was very easy to violate an order and be confined to the brig. The law on silent contempt is a good example. Silent contempt charges were filed if a Marine or sailor even looked at an officer or NCO in a contemptuous manner. It was a violation of an article under Rocks and Shoals. Under this military system a Marine could receive punishment of anywhere from five to thirty days on “Piss and Punk,” navy slang for bread and water that meant a prisoner received nothing but bread and water twice a day and on the third day received a full meal. The prisoner then served two more days on Piss and Punk. Bread and water prisoners did not have to do manual labor. During the day the prisoners cleaned their small cell, did a few minutes of exercise, and spent the remainder of the day in solitary confinement. Not even reading material was permitted. It may sound like a good way to lose pounds but some Marines actually come out heavier than when they went in.

Prisoners sentenced to hard labor spent their days in a rock quarry just outside of town. Everyday, except Sunday, prisoners marched from the brig to the rock quarry. Each prisoner carried an eight-pound sledgehammer at right shoulder arms and a sack lunch consisting of bologna horse cock and peanut butter sandwiches. Here at the quarry they made big rocks into little rocks by swinging the eight-pound sledge all day. Prisoners received a five-minute break every hour and had thirty minutes for lunch. The first prisoner I had to deal with was Pvt. Gamble. He was Chandler’s buddy. Lt. Brandmire sent him up for five days on Piss and Punk. Chandler saw red when this happened. Lt. Brandmire still hadn’t lightened up, and he became even more chicken shit by making the troops learn their General Orders forwards and backwards, and that included even naming the commas and periods. He was getting worse every day. He got to walking the entire guard posts at the docks when he was Officer of the Day, and he demanded strict attention to duty. Chandler and Gamble were on guard duty at the docks when Lt. Brandmire was the Officer of the Day. Their posts were about a hundred yards apart, guarding two warehouses. It was that miserable night watch, the four to eight in the morning, and both men were bored and tired. It was getting light, and Gamble started sending Chandler arm signals in semaphore code, and just then Lt. Brandmire walked around the corner. Gamble reported his post and nothing- was said. When they returned to their quarters at the university, Gamble’s sack was empty and his seabag gone. Lt. Brandmire gave him five days Piss and Punk for not walking his post in a military manner-keeping always on the alert and observing everything that takes place within sight and hearing.

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Chapter 13A
Return to Tsingtao
. . . . .

One Thursday afternoon, what we feared would happen one day, did happen. Orders came from the Fleet Marine Force Headquarters that all US Marines studying the Chinese language at the University of

Peking had to return to their duty stations immediately. Gunny Wesley came to my hostel to inform me that at 0700 the following Monday morning we had to muster at George Company for further transportation to the airport where we would board a C-47 for Tsingtao.

“Things are not looking good,” Gunny explained over coffee in the restaurant. “Mao’s forces have overrun Manchuria, and the losses have been disastrous. It seems the communists have obliterated twelve Nationalist army divisions west of the key city of Mukden.” He went on to tell me in certain terms that government troops were trying to escape from the area by sea. Some had reached Yingkow, the port on the Gulf of Liaotung which was still being held by the Nationalists, but a large number of Chiang’s troops were bottled up in Hulutao on the western shore of the gulf. “It doesn’t look good,” he said again.

He was saddened that the communist’s success in Manchuria made the Nationalist troops in Northern China much more vulnerable. It meant that Chiang had lost Manchuria’s coalmines and much of her heavy industry to the communists. The civil war was getting out of control, and the safety of the Marines and military personnel in Peking was in jeopardy. The Marines alone could not take up arms against the entire Chinese communist forces. I thanked the gunny for the information; he had turned out to be a great pal and I wondered if I would ever see him again.

I hardly had time to say goodbye to everyone at the university. I was touched when Su Fung and Mae Chu burst into tears at the news of my parting. Even arrogant Lee Ann confessed she was sorry to see me go, and would you believe, Dr. Wren was there to shake my hand and wish me good fortune. But the biggest surprise was the celebration Saturday night at Mamma Georgia’s place. Fifty people must have been invited, maybe more, and Mamma Georgia cut no costs and made sure the booze was plentiful; it was the real stuff right from the officers’ mess. Her girls, decked out in their finery, looked grand. They could have matched any Philadelphia mainline society debutantes at their coming-out party. They looked absolutely ravishing, and hadn’t anyone known their vocation, they might have been taken for proper young ladies. When I arrived I thought this was a going-away party solely for Melanowski, but I soon learned it was for Monique as well. She too was going to Tsingtao, by train. She and Melanowski planned to meet once she arrived. I was completely in the dark and had no idea what they were planning but thought it best not to ask. I would find out the facts in due course. Nevertheless, I couldn’t believe Mamma Georgia was not only letting Monique go, but it was with her blessing. It wasn’t until we were aboard the C-47 en route to Tsingtao that Melanowski told me the full story.

“Gunny Wesley is helping me,” he said.

“Helping you what?” I asked, straining hard to hear what he had to say against the roar of the engines.

“Gunny told me how I can get my discharge in China,” he said, and in bits and pieces I gathered he had applied for a position with UNRA. If I was hearing right, he felt that he would be accepted. “Once I am out of the Crops and have secured my job, Monique and me can get married.” Was I going deaf? Was the roar of the engines altering what I was hearing? I was truly baffled at his next remark. “I have you to thank,” he said.

“Me, what did I have to do with it?”

“If you hadn’t convinced me to come to Peking, it would not have happened,” he said.

“You mean you wouldn’t have met Monique,” I replied. “Is that what you mean?”

“That too, but my studying Chinese is what got me the job with UNRA.”

I didn’t know if I should be pleased or feel at fault. The last thing in this world I ever thought was that Melanowski would become a linguist and remain in China. I wanted to ask him if this is what Monique wanted. I wanted to tell him about Katarina, that she was looking for a ticket to the Slates, and might Monique be the same, but we began to make our final approach and would soon be in Tsingtao.

It was a wonderful sight to watch Tsingtao unfold beneath us as we dropped down out of the clouds in our C-47. I think at that moment, upon seeing Tsingtao, I realized then that we were truly China Marines. We were coming home, not home to San Diego or LA, or Peoria or Charleston, but home to Tsingtao. I strained hard to see out the window, and finally unstrapped myself from my bucket seat and stood up to get a better view. The others soon followed and we all stood now staring out the windows. First to come in view were the miles of beaches with many coves and white sand that caught the morning rays of sun. Then came the city and the vast harbor with endless ships at anchor. There were the junks, fleets of them, and the rusted, unkept freighters at the docks, and among this vast floating panorama were the ships of the American Seventh Fleet anchored in the roads. What a sight that was! The fleet was in! There would be a wild time in the old town tonight, that was for sure. Bars and cabarets would be bursting at the seams. I couldn’t wait until I got to the Prime Club. I pictured myself charging through the front door and seeing Ming-Lee there. I didn’t care if she was sitting at a table with other Marines or even sailors. I would grab hold of her and tell her how it was all a mistake. It didn’t matter how she would react. Angry at first, certainly, but I would make her understand. I had some bard convincing to do, but she would listen. I would make her listen.

I was hoping Sammy would be there at the airfield to pick us up but it was another driver from motor pool who came to get us. Nevertheless, he was affable and swung through town to give us a tour before taking us to the university where we had to report in. I had been away only eight months but I could see that many changes had taken place. The city was progressing; it wasn’t the dilapidated city that greeted us when we arrived nearly two years before. The streets were cleaner, the shops brighter and there were more vehicles. Gone were the waving and cheering crowds that had greeted us as when we first arrived, but that didn’t really matter. The people knew we were their liberators.

Everything this time was familiar, every street, every turn. The twin towered church stood above the city as it always had, and there were the bathhouses down the street that Stevenson and I bad visited, but they were now out-of-bounds. The bars and restaurants that lined the route along the drive up the hill to the university were still there, but their names stood out bigger and the fronts were newly painted. The only disappointment was the disbandment of the 29th Marines; troops no longer occupied the Strand Hotel. I would miss that place, but I had no complaint about being quartered in the university. This too was soft living.

There to meet us in the Fox Company office was Stevenson and Whittington. They wanted to hear all about Peking, but each time we began telling them, they interrupted us with their own stories of what was happening in Tsingtao. Lt. Brandmire busted two more guys. Col. Roston finally left. There’s a new dancehall that opened and it’s better than the Prime Club and Ciro’s. Some places are charging a buck and a half for a bottle of Hubba Hubba these days. And that new bunch of green troops that arrived are real pussies. They were like a couple of Chinese lao furen trying to out-talk one another. Finally Stevenson led me out of the office and to a room on the second floor facing the main gate. “I saved this room for you,” he said. There were two bunks in the room and he saw me looking at the second one. “Another surprise,” he announced, and before he could say more, Little Lew bounded into the room. I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was at least a foot taller, and he had made corporal. He was proud of his stripes. Big tears rolled down his cheeks. He was so choked up be could hardly speak, and I wasn’t much better. I no longer needed to get down on my knees to put my arms around him. He stood we! I above my waist. He had lost his Chinese accent. In fact, he talked like a New Englander. He had been palling around with Chandler that was for sure.

With Little Lew swinging on my arm we went down to the ground floor to the laundry room to see Ruker. He had moved his bunk into the room and fixed up the place. On all the walls he had put up posters of Vargas girls in various stages of undress. He had a stuffed leather easychair with an inlaid pearl table to one side, and upon it a reading lamp made from coral. “Uh, uh,” Ruker said when Little Lew came into the room, and it was the signal for Lew to cover his eyes with one hand. “Atta boy,” Ruker said. Like a blind man feeling his way with an extended arm, but peeking through his fingers, Little Lew made his way to the easychair and threw himself down. Ruker smiled like a beaming father.

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