Baa Baa Black Sheep (12 page)

I’ll never forget to my dying day the words of one of our pilots whose feelings had gone beyond their breaking point. This pilot lunged over, grabbing one of these death-ill Chinese by the throat with both hands, and started screaming at him: “I warned you, you slope-headed son of a bitch, if you puked once more, I was going to kill you.” The rest of us had to drag him away from the poor Chinese.

I was learning about Chinese now, and very fast, but I was still to learn a lot more. Finally we came to a swift river
up in these mountains where the only means of crossing was by primitive barge pulled by ropes. On the banks of this river, and apparently in control of the barge, were mountain people who did not seem to care much for us. These mountain boys all had on Fu Manchu mustaches, indicating that their wearers were bandits in their spare time and did not give a damn about the Generalissimo.

We tried for half a day to get the “colonel” to coax these mountain boys to pull us across, but, he explained in sign language at various times, for some reason or other they would not do it. My own cursing and shouting at these mountain boys were about as effective as shoveling straw into a strong wind. So at last in desperation I stormed down on the barge and tied together each line I could find. Then I removed all my clothes and tied one end of the line around my waist. My idea was to swim across these swift waters and secure the line to the other shore so that we could pull across the barge ourselves. Otherwise it would have been about as easy to convince the Japs as this crowd, and we did have to get going. But as I started to get into the water, with the line around my waist, there was much shouting and brandishing of rifles.

The “colonel” stepped in then and had another parley with the mountain boys. What he said to them, or what they said to him, I do not know. But after a while they condescended to take the barge across.

Some days later we managed to reach our home base, Kunming, looking like forgotten men. Our reception was very cool, and rightly so. Because of my apparent blunder, in getting lost and so on, I volunteered to fly these planes out of the cemetery at Wenshan if they could be put in running order.

This was agreed, and I was flown to Wenshan in a light training plane. A small ground crew of our own, working with hammers, went to work straigtening the propellers and wings. And the men managed to fix up four of the six planes sufficiently to take to the air—maybe. It was up to me to find out.

From these four planes all surplus weight, such as guns and the like, was removed, and only thirty gallons of gas were put in each. And now I was confronted with the toughest flying job I ever had up to this time.

These thirty gallons would have to be enough to warm up the engine, taxi me down to one end of the tiny cemetery, and then—if I could get off before plunging over the plateau—these same thirty gallons would still have to be enough to carry me over the twelve-thousand-foot mountains and land me at the closest field, Mengtzu, sixty miles away.

I selected the first of my four planes, got in, strapped myself, and then began using every bit of knowledge I had to carry me through. After testing my vibrating engine I stood on the brakes and pushed the throttle slowly forward until the manifold pressure was well into the red.

The tail of my plane raised off the ground into a horizontal position. The ground crew waved a solemn farewell of good luck, and down the tiny strip I went for better or for worse. There was no turning back at the end of that strip. There was only that drop of a couple hundred feet, and I could not have changed my mind even if I had wanted to. Also there were the cemetery mounds and gravestones to remember.

When I reached the very last footage of the runway, and just before the drop, my plane either would or it would not. All I could do was hold the stick all the way back in my lap and then pray. The craft dropped nearly fifty feet, nose high, and I sluggishly wobbled about a mile at full throttle before getting my plane under complete control. Then I managed to turn for my climb over the mountains, something that had to be done fast, for I could not waste any gas.

As it was, when my plane did get over the mountains, and was within easy reach of the Mengtzu field, the engine gasped its last, out of gas, and I glided in with a dead-stick landing. It was up to me to do the same thing all over again. The second trip I retracted my landing gear after take-off, even though in its damaged condition it might not have come back down again, so that my gas consumption would be less.

Two down and two to go, and I was ready to go again. Our training plane and pilot and I were just in the process of taking off at Kunming to go fetch the third, when my friend Harvey came tearing out in his jeep in his usual excited manner.

Harvey was truly Asiatic, I thought, after all the time he had spent in the Orient—expressions, the works, for that matter. He motioned for the pilot to cut his engine by
dragging his fingers across his throat. I jumped out of the back seat of the training plane and said: “What’s up now, Greenlaw?”

“You are not to return after any more planes,” he said in the most authoritative voice he could muster.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like the way I’m bringin’ ’em back?” I snarled back at him.

Harvey smirked back at me and said: “That’s not it. But I’m afraid you’ll save too much face, if you do.”

One morning in Kunming I was awakened by a series of rifle blasts that sounded close by. At first I thought our own boys were having a bit of target practice upon the hostel walls again, and I was debating with myself whether to tell them to knock it off. The noise had awakened me sufficiently for me to realize that it was fairly late in the morning, so I stretched and walked out of my quarters to see just what the lads were doing.

It didn’t turn out to be our boys at all. Then I saw what I thought was some kind of war game or something going on about the cemetery next door, because there were any number of Chinese soldiers firing rifles. My thoughts were: “Gosh, but these Chinese certainly make this look a hell of a lot more realistic than our soldiers back home.”

This affair lasted for an hour at the outside. But it didn’t take me more than a few minutes after I started to watch them to see that these Chinese weren’t playing, weren’t shooting blanks; they were firing for real. With this realization I continued to observe throughout the remainder of their battle, but not as nonchalantly as when I first walked out, for I was prepared at any moment to get better cover if the action spread any closer to where I happened to be standing. Closer, did I say? It was as close as it could be, without
having some of the soldiers enter my quarters and commence firing.

One side had won over the other, because it was over almost as soon as it started, the Chinese with rifles rounding up more Chinese who had dropped their firearms. They all looked so much alike I couldn’t tell which side any of them were on.

After this was over we ran for our interpreters and started asking questions in order to get some plausible explanation for this gunplay. These interpreters of ours always appeared to play it cagey. I didn’t know for sure, but I got the idea that they told us very little more than what they were instructed to tell us.

The lowdown on this most recent affair was that one of the feudal lords, of which there were many in China, had been plotting a little revolution. We had just witnessed the squashing of an outbreak. I didn’t care to find out who was right or wrong as long as it wasn’t endangering my life, but I realized that there had to be opposite feelings if people were killing each other. I gathered that political differences were settled à la Nicaragua fashion.

One of the interpreters explained that our most recent rebellion had been interrupted in its early stage through an informer. The informer method, which I found so prevalent out in China, one person getting ahead of another by turning his compatriots in for gold or favor, made me become more and more anti-social as the years went by. Even in a minor way this method was used in our squadrons. For years I thought that my imagination on this score might possibly have played tricks, but I was to learn that it had not. I know now that an informer just can’t help himself.

Many times in recent years I have wished that I had majored in history instead of engineering, for I could have had a great deal more out of life, and maybe I would not have expected so much of people—myself included. And if I had been a history major, I would have been satisfied that I was involved in making part of history, only in a minor way. And that grade-school history books for children’s protection present everybody as a noble character, except the bad bad enemy. The actual people these books are talking about had every rotten habit and foul idea known to man, because they
were human beings also. History has its Napoleons, Cardinal Richelieus and Milady DeWinters.

Lest some might gather an impression that this story is an exposé, I wish to say I have no intention of such. If I had chosen to write an exposé, I could have taken fiendish delight in doing a dilly fifteen years ago, when even our government was not too certain about things that went on. But to make one man’s story interesting to others he must run into good and bad situations.

I have long since discovered that there is no such thing as bad people. There are just two kinds of people, because people are people. There are those who know and those who don’t know. And I don’t wish you to think I have any intention of shoving onto a few the entire blame for China becoming communistic instead of something else. In a way, even though I didn’t make a fortune like some of the others, and my main motives were not greed and power, I honestly feel that I am guilty along with them. And even though my main crime was ignorance, which is a by-product of emotional immaturity, I deserve to be included with the China gang.

My only hope is that we didn’t louse up the future generations too greatly, so that they may have a chance in the years to come.

Another one of my off-duty days in March my interpreter got around to telling me, in a rather awkward manner, about some Chinese wanting to enter my quarters and talk to me. I don’t know why, but I always thought my interpreter wouldn’t know what side he was on if one asked him real quick.

The best way I am able to describe my visitor is that there was a sort of knowing, pimp-like wiseness about his manner. By my pretending to go along with him, merely trying to draw him out, I learned a good deal more about China. Though the purpose of the call appeared to be something else, my visitor was offering me five hundred American dollars for my .38-caliber revolver and a certain number of rounds of ammunition. In pretending to dicker Oriental style, knowing also that they had no respect for anyone who settled for the first offer, I was able to find the real purpose behind this intended purchase. Thinking that I was a right guy by then, my visitor smiled slyly and said: “You don’t have to worry. I represent a province some distance from Yunan.”

Something else became clear. These yellow-skinned bums
weren’t with the United States against the Japanese. They were all fighting for power within China, standing by for an opportunity to take over. And they went for the guy they counted on giving them the most in the end.

Being one of the few ex-career officers on the setup besides Chennault, I had studied ground warfare in the Marine Corps schools. So this Chinese unknowingly explained why the Chinese accounts of valiant defenses and actions didn’t add up to the few I personally knew about. It was so obvious by then that the Chinese weren’t fighting with the supplies that were given to them.

I cannot tell you that I was clever enough to figure out the complete picture, for I doubt if but few could have done that. But I had more than a sneaking hunch that someone was making bigger suckers out of the pilots than any of them realized.

Chennault had made a speech about this time, concerning the great harm that could be done with smuggling, because a few of our ground crew had been involved in smuggling arms in an amateurish sort of way. The full meaning of this came to me during my conversation with my visitor from another province. It was a pure case of mistaken identity as far as I was concerned, for he thought I was a big shot and had access to a lot of arms smuggled in from Burma—not merely my own personal revolver and a few rounds.

I was only bothered thinking about myself at this time. But as the years went slowly by, the patient Orientals waited to unload our Allied supplies upon us in Korea, and by rough analysis I figure that only about 5 per cent of the arms and munitions, medical supplies, and the like from the Allies ended up for their intended purpose. Then, too, it was beginning to dawn that they didn’t appreciate amateurs messing up a deal that was making a few of combined nationalities multimillionaires.

By April, Burma was almost completely gone, and I had something other than China’s interior troubles to contend with. Chennault was ready to go hog wild with what remained of his little volunteer group of civilians. Joe Stilwell and another general, who both outranked our boss but were still without combat troops of their own, came into the picture for keeps. Prior to this I had always imagined that for some
reason we were more or less putting on a show of some kind.

The manner in which these three argued over control of this handful of pilots impressed me much the same as three whores would have—arguing over their virginity. The combined stars upon their own shouders were as numerous as the combat pilots they happened to be arguing about. And apparently we pilots weren’t to be consulted.

The Third Pursuit squadron, which was based in Loiwing near the Burma border, was getting the works at this time. Under the combined-command scramble the Third was being sent out on every conceivable kind of strafing mission. Jungles were strafed, mountaintops and river beds were strafed in that rugged wilderness, resulting in a few pilots being killed for nothing. All the boys seemed to be ordered to strafe some locality where the combined three might possibly dream there was a concentration of Japs, or anything, for that matter, to keep combat reports rolling back to the United States.