Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

  A rough flight of another two hours with “Chinese passengers all puking” brought the party into Chungking. They came down onto the 2,000-foot concrete landing strip on the edge of the Yangtze. Stilwell took the “same old tough climb” up 365 stone steps to the residence assigned to him, a Western-style house built by T. V. Soong, formerly occupied by Lattimore who had now gone home. Chungking occupied a rocky promontory jutting into the junction of the Yangtze and Chialing rivers and Stilwell’s house was on the Chialing side with one story at street level and three stories overlooking the river, like a house in San Francisco. It had a roof terrace with dusty flowers and a pool, a magnificent view of the busy river, and came equipped with servants supplied by Tai Li, China’s combination of Himmler and J. Edgar Hoover.

  Chungking had a heroic legend earned through three seasons of relentless bombing with no RAF to defend its citizens or to punish the enemy. All that the people had were bomb shelters dug in rock caves and the warning system relayed by watchers stationed along the edges of Free China. They held out during the years in which they fought alone with pride in resistance, but miseries and weariness were mounting. With its extra wartime population stuffed into meager overstrained facilities, Chungking was more uncomfortable, unsanitary and ill provisioned than ever—and the climate was still the same: humid heat in summer, rain and mud the rest of the time. Bomb-shattered houses were leaky and shaky, filth and smells were increased by the crowding, rats came out at night, clerks and workers were underpaid and undernourished, giving rise to the article of belief among American correspondents that “no one ever saw a fat Chinese under the rank of Minister of Finance.” Inflation was soaring (“coolies go around with $50 bills,” Stilwell noted), officials were eating well and making fortunes while the Government operated by issuing bank notes without controls or a plan. Beaten by circumstance, long since helpless to accomplish its original purpose, the Kuomintang like the last Manchus had settled for one thing—retention of power—without the strength or capacity to cope with multiplying troubles.

  Loss of the chief cities and the industrial base to the Japanese had ruined many of the business class, including the most modern and Western-oriented group, who had been strong supporters of the regime. As their influence waned, that of the extreme right wing within the Kuomintang Party grew. Loss of capital and the means of production produced the inflation that ruined the salaried class and drew them into a swelling contagion of black markets and graft in order to live. The long string of defeats and retreats left the army weakened in morale and leadership as well as in arms and equipment, and ate into popular support for the regime. Unrelenting rents, taxes and conscription pauperized the countryside. Armed outbreaks against landlords and officials were increasing. First signs of what was to become a devastating famine appeared in Honan. Discontent provoked repression and repression more discontent, nourishing opposition and turning many minds toward the Communists. The regime was haunted by a sense of insecurity. Concrete machine-gun emplacements on street corners in Chungking and Kunming were not designed for use against the Japanese. The great patriotic surge of 1937–38 that had frustrated the Japanese had petered out in fatigue, oppression and profiteering. Held together by Chiang Kai-shek’s aura and his superlative political skill (“The most astute politician of the 20th century” was one of Stilwell’s dicta; “he must be or he wouldn’t be alive”), the Kuomintang carried on by ignoring spreading sores and sheltering in escapism.

  Some Americans in Chungking, especially those who had shared the hopes of the early days, developed, in the words of one, “an intense distaste, even hatred,” for Chiang Kai-shek and his Government. Others, like Ambassador Gauss, as Stilwell found when he called on him, were merely “fed up.” Formerly Consul-General in Shanghai where he had made a reputation for standing up to the Japanese, Gauss after 30 years of consular service in the country was not a Sinophile with strong feelings one way or another. By virtue of a staff many of whom spoke and read Chinese, traveled widely and often, and had many contacts, he made his Embassy the best informed in China—and was regularly bypassed by policy-makers and special envoys from Washington. He had none of the diplomat’s professional suavity and cheer, and owing to his consular background and not very agreeable personality, lacked the entree to the White House of ambassadors like William Bullitt and Joseph Grew. He was businesslike, unremarkable in appearance, a chain smoker of cigars, impatient of the indirect ingratiating methods of the Orient, “hard to fool, hard-thinking, straight-speaking.” His persistent refrain was that China “is only a minor asset to us” but could become a “major liability.” The Chinese, who found this Westerner inscrutable, called him the Honest Buddha and were not happy with him, as a colleague said, “because he is cold and says No.”

  Stilwell found old acquaintances in Chungking including Jack Belden, who accompanied him back to Burma as correspondent for Time, and General Ho Ying-chin, the Minister of War and Chief of Staff on whom he paid a formal call. Ho had accompanied Chiang from the time they had been fellow students at the military academy in Tokyo before the Revolution, had served with him at Whampoa and had been his Chief of Staff in the Northern Expedition (during which he was nicknamed Grandma by the troops) and ever since. Short and stocky, smooth in manner, with a smiling round face, a small round mouth and round glasses, he was loyal only to Chiang and considered his task as Chief of Staff to be a matter of keeping the army loyal through manipulation of cliques and control of supplies and funds. Having concentrated his energies on this occupation for 15 years with considerable success, he had not acquired much modern military knowledge, in the Western sense, to put at the disposal of his chief. Conferences with him, which were necessarily to be many, were a round of “double talk and tea,” as described by Dorn, against a blank wall of courtesy, protocol and delay. Stilwell on March 5 found him “very pleasant” and they talked in Chinese.

  Carrying a “hell of a mental load” about the question of command, he reported to Chiang Kai-shek on March 6. He believed Burma could be saved by offensive action and he saw the campaign as a chance to restore Chinese confidence in themselves and make good his own lost command of GYMNAST as well as accomplish an essential military objective. He discovered to his relief that Chiang did intend to give him command in Burma and that he seemed willing to fight. Chiang was “extremely suspicious” of British motives and intentions and “fed up with British retreat and lethargy.” Stilwell told him that “we were his gang and would do what he said.” He likewise assured Madame that Chennault would not be pushed aside. She was anxious about Chennault’s status and told Stilwell that he resigned regularly. The conference ended with Chiang’s promise to set up a joint staff for the Burma command the next day; Stilwell left believing he could go back to Burma and fight. “Now I don’t have to wake up in a blue funk every morning and wonder what the hell I can do to justify my existence….I’m still not sure what I am but Shang Chen says it’s No. 2 in China.”

  But the next day and the day after were blank, summed up in the word which in one exasperated form or another was to follow every conference with the Chinese—“waiting.” While waiting Stilwell wrote down his own plan for strategy in Burma and activity in China. If Rangoon were lost (on the day he wrote, March 7, the Japanese entered the city), he contemplated a strong counterattack by the Chinese Fifth Army combined with British forces to recapture it. In the event of failure, the Allies should fall back on the high ground east of Mandalay from where they could threaten the flank of any Japanese drive to the north and could hold upper Burma. The important thing was to “formulate plans that the British will accept” but the difficulty was that plans were being made in the dark. No one knew what forces the Japanese had committed to Burma, whether they were building for an offensive or were too weak to launch one. Estimates were mere guesses.

  In China the main endeavor should be to get the Thirty Division program under way for which the divisions were still not designated. After Burma was made safe S
tilwell wanted an offensive to be launched in China to clear the Hankow area and “put us within striking distance of Japan.” He planned to take Hankow by a double envelopment with American air power acting in support of Chinese ground troops. His plan for long-range strategy, deposited with Marshall before he left, stated, “First priority, prompt build-up of air support.” An equal priority was the need to create an effective military arm on the ground.

  To weld a fighting force from the sprawling feeble collection of Chinese armies was a task which had only the uncomplaining hardihood of the men in its favor. Every other factor in the Chinese military system was resistant. The country was divided into twelve war zones with control decentralized so that the Japanese could not finish off the war at one blow. The result was to augment local power and perpetuate use of the armies as political counters and as virtually the property of the area commander. It also caused dispersion of the best divisions leaving no strong force available for use against the Japanese, even had the will to action been present. The will was lacking partly because the Chinese believed they had fought the Japanese long enough and it was now someone else’s turn; partly because of the tendency to hoard the armies for local power, or in the case of the Central Government, for use against the Communists; and finally because of lack of confidence. “Chinese could not believe Chinese troops could fight the Japanese,” Stilwell wrote.

  A total of just under three million men were nominally under arms, organized in some 300 divisions and other formations. Organization was based on multiples of three, with three regiments to a division, three divisions to an army, three armies to a Group Army and usually three Group Armies to a war zone. Divisions varied widely in quality, with those favored by the Generalissimo given the best in arms and equipment and uniforms. These units had boots and leg wrappings, but the Central Government supply system did not reach to all and the average Chinese soldier marched in straw sandals and slept under one blanket for every five men. He carried two grenades in his belt and a long blue stocking around his neck stuffed with dry rice, his only field ration. Recruitment was by press gang, draining the villages and farms of their manpower. Men could escape induction by payment of CN (Chinese Nationalist) $100 and rice contributions at regular intervals. In the march to the base camp recruits were tied by rope. Basic training was three weeks. Divisions were generally understrength because payment was made by lump sum to the commanding general and the fewer troops he had to pay—up to a certain self-limiting point—the greater his profit. A division’s manpower did not represent all armed strength because a large proportion was coolie labor necessary for transport.

  Losses due to malnutrition and disease were very high, sometimes reaching 40 percent or more in a year, so that a division of about 7,000 might require 3,000 new recruits annually. Due to low and irregular pay officer desertions were frequent. The food ration was 25 ounces of rice per day plus some pickled vegetables with salt or red pepper, but the nutritive value was even less than supposedly supplied because pickling destroyed vitamins and both vitamins and proteins were absent from the two-to-three-year-old rice normally issued. Average pay for the men was CN $16–$18 a month from which $8–$10 was deducted for food. Rising inflation made what cash was left over valueless for purchasing the bean curd, fats, green vegetables or occasional fish or meat by which soldiers had formerly supplemented their diet. Even captains and majors at CN $145–$175 a month could not afford adequate nutrition. The men ate their two meals a day from a common pot, often with only three minutes allowed for eating. Food was bolted and ill digested, and the stronger individuals took the most while the weaker grew weaker. Hunger edema along with other complaints afflicted 60 to 70 percent of patients in military hospitals, and deaths from starvation, especially in the transport companies, were frequent. “I have no pain but I have no strength,” was the usual complaint. The worst cases were generally hidden before inspection tours. When a unit moved, the roads were lined with bodies along the way.

  Epidemics of dysentery and smallpox and louse-borne relapsing fever and typhus recurred. Though delousing stations for recruits were mandatory, commanders often dispensed with them because the fuel, and the extra time requiring extra food, was an added expense. For the same reason the order to cultivate vegetable plots was often ignored because a commander was unwilling to spend money to plant for another unit to harvest in case he had to move. Medical care organized by the Chinese Red Cross under one of China’s great men, Dr. Robert K. S. Lim—who was to be forced out by political pressure in 1943—could barely treat the surface of the problem. Most of the men had never practiced sanitation or hygiene and together with many of the noncoms and even officers were unaware of the connection between sanitation and disease. The reason for digging latrines was not understood; fuel for boiling water was just another expense.

  Military hospitals were understaffed and ill equipped. In the absence of roads and ambulances the wounded were carried from the scene of combat by stretcher-bearers, to the extent of their capacity, or left to fend for themselves or die where they fell. Red Cross medical units served with divisions in the field, often having to battle the ignorance or resistance of commanders who saw no urgency about saving men when, as one expressed it, “The one thing we have plenty of in China is men.” This was the comforting myth but in fact the “plenty” was not enough to serve both the insatiable maw of the armies and the labor needed for agriculture. Some commanders were genuinely concerned for the welfare of their units. A certain General Lo of the 18th Division on the Ichang front discovered that his losses in four years without fighting had amounted to the full strength of his division and decided that he did not want the parents of the men who had died without meeting the Japanese to “curse me as an enemy.” He summoned medical help and gradually reduced his death and disease rate by 60 to 75 percent. When he began he had not known that relapsing fever, a scourge in his area, was louse-borne. It was this kind of effort plus increased food, regular pay and provision of arms and training that Stilwell wanted for the Thirty Divisions.

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  At the end of the third day of waiting in Chungking the plan of command was delivered and proved to be “just stooge stuff, no authority.” It put Stilwell on a level with the Chinese commanders. From that moment a struggle began that was never to be resolved until the final crisis. The staff plan seemed to indicate Chiang Kai-shek’s real intentions, yet at the same time he talked as if Stilwell’s command of the Chinese expeditionary force was understood. Stilwell acted on the verbal evidence, although doubt of its reliability lurked in a corner of his mind.

  Discussion continued at a dinner in his honor at the Generalissimo’s residence at Huang Shan, a wooded height ten miles to the south with a view over the city and the two river valleys. Among the guests besides Shang Chen and Ho were Yü Ta-wei, the cultivated and thoughtful graduate of Harvard and Heidelberg who was Minister of Ordnance, and Li Tsung-jen and Pai Ch’ung-hsi, the two Kwangsi Generals whose allegiance to Chiang Kai-shek had been variable for many years. They were “very quiet, thinking their own thoughts.” Pai was now Deputy Chief of Staff in charge of training, and as a general without an army was increasingly identified with Chiang Kai-shek, but the antagonism between Chiang and Li endured. The guests sat stiffly on the edges of their chairs, talking in whispers and avoiding the glimpse of secret-service boots peeking below red curtains. After the Generalissimo and Madame made a formal entrance, toasts were drunk and Stilwell replied in Chinese, repeating President Roosevelt’s message.

  During a two-hour discussion of the campaign after dinner Stilwell listened with inner contempt to a discourse of “amateur tactics by CKS” of which the gist was “caution.” It was clear that Chiang regarded the Fifth and Sixth Armies as his best divisions and hesitated to risk them because the British might “run away.” Further, he said, it required three Chinese to one Japanese division to hold a defense and five to one for attack and he wanted no attack until it was known whether the Japanese
were reinforcing. “Let’s go before they build up,” Stilwell proposed but this was vetoed. Let the enemy take the initiative; if “the Japanese do not move, we can move.” Concentration of forces must be avoided because several divisions might be defeated at once, but if only one is wiped out the others remain. Maintain chung shen p’ei pei (“defense in depth”), meaning a column of divisions strung out 50 miles apart. These were Chiang’s principles, exactly contrary to Stilwell’s.

  Chiang insisted that he would not take British orders and that he was going to wire Roosevelt to tell Churchill that Stilwell must command the Allied forces. Stilwell reminded him that it was in “our” interest to regain Rangoon whereas “all the British need is a wall in front of India,” but Chiang refused to be hurried. He wanted Stilwell to return to Burma, ascertain British intentions, study terrain and rely on chung shen p’ei pei.

  “What a directive. What a mess. How they hate the Limeys and what a sucker I am,” Stilwell wrote, and added with some foresight, “Maybe the Japs will go at us and solve it for us.” In a further talk next day he acknowledged that Chiang made “a lot of good sense” on the subject of Chinese temperament and military limitations. Stilwell did his best to be diplomatic: “I repeated instructions and went over all the points he made.” In spite of restrictions he felt the Chinese were “doing a big thing from their point of view in handing over this force to a lao mao tze they don’t know very well.” Chiang did in fact on the day after the dinner telegraph Roosevelt proposing Stilwell as Allied Commander in Burma. Caught between the Chinese and British, Roosevelt replied that it was a matter of “extreme delicacy” and suggested the possibility of dividing command between Stilwell in north Burma and the British defense further south.

  On March 11, the day Stilwell left, Chiang assured him verbally that “this morning I have issued orders to place the Fifth and Sixth Armies under your command.” Their commanders, Generals Tu Li-ming and Kan Li-chu, and General Lin Wei representing the General Staff, had been told “to take orders from you absolutely.” Stilwell realized that his command was “under wraps, of course, which I may or may not be able to cast off. In all probability not.” It was his habit to write down the most pessimistic case but, like most of humanity, not to believe it.