China Hand. John Paton Davies, Jr.
I called first on the Governor’s military aide, who seemed to be not at all put out that at 4:40 p.m. I had roused him from a siesta. At tea and cakes with him and his pet gibbon, Miss Gibb, I took up with him my first piece of business— the misuse of jeeps by Chinese soldiers for private enterprise. Ah yes, the police in Mandalay had complained to the offending Chinese military on this score, only to have abuse heaped upon them. So the problem was a military one, not a civilian one.
The Governor, Sir Reginald Hugh Dorman-Smith, hospitably received me a few days later with pink gins and wide-ranging discourse. We concluded that Americans and Britons should be on guard against rumors designed to create rifts between us. The Governor made mild fun of the confused command structure in Burma, a matter on which his principal secretary, a Mr. Binns, had the day before spoken out more plainly to me. Binns had observed that General Stilwell had introduced himself as commander of the Chinese Fifth and Sixth Armies, the Chinese expeditionary force in Burma. Then General Tu, the commander of the Fifth Army, represented himself in much the same way. General Alexander, the senior British commander in Burma, of course regarded himself as in command of all the allied forces in this British colony. And finally, Binns pointed out, by the constitution of Burma only the Governor is in charge of the defense of Burma, no one else. What Binns did not know was that the Generalissimo was also in the act, regularly undercutting the authority he had conferred upon Stilwell.
By the end of March Stilwell was so wroth over the Generalissimo’s bad faith and deceptions that he flew to Chungking to seek a showdown with Chiang. He took me with him, for there was nothing constructive that I could do with the Government of Burma in a condition of rigor mortis. In any event, it was time that I reported to the Ambassador from whose embassy in Chungking I was detailed to Stilwell. En route to Chungking, Stilwell picked up Chennault at Kunming, to which place Chennault had withdrawn his badly battered AVG leaving the enemy in uncontested control of the Burmese skies.
When Stilwell was having it out with the Generalissimo, I was paying my respects to the Ambassador, my tepid admirer from days at the Department and Peking, Clarence E. Gauss. Although I respected his utter rectitude, his Puritan sense of duty, and his inquiring, precise mind, I sensed that the depressing, ingrown atmosphere of Chungking, rancid with spite and intrigue, had soured Gauss. I thought that he needed a change. The Ambassador, for his part, did not think much of my detail to the General. With a wry smile he said that I belonged behind a desk, at work in his embassy, not gallivanting around China-Burma-India.
To Chennault I passed on Currie’s advice about playing ball with General Arnold. Chennault said that his volunteers, among whom discontent and indiscipline had become rife, would willingly accept induction into the Army Air Corps provided they were first returned home to see their families, as promised in their contracts. Although he did not explicitly say so, it was evident from his presentation that he agreed with his fliers that it would be unfair to induct them—and himself—forthwith. Chennault, after all, had no desire to be subordinate to Stilwell, an old foot soldier. The airman enjoyed having, as a favorite of the Chiangs, direct access to the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang. They found most congenial his doctrine that Japan could be defeated by air power with minimal ground effort. And there was little doubt in Chennault’s mind that he was the one uniquely qualified to accomplish this feat. As he said to me, the Army Air Corps would need one thousand men to do what he could do with one hundred and fifty.
Gauss, Stilwell, and Chennault were the three dominant American personalities in China from early 1942 until late in 1944. They were, all three, strong-willed, each highly competent in his own profession, dedicated to and tireless in what he was doing, quick to take offense, and given to righteous (each according to his own interpretation) wrath. Chennault’s pretension to omnipotence and his persistent scheming to usurp Stilwell’s position created and kept going a Chennault-Stilwell feud that involved the Chiangs and the White House. Gauss felt snubbed by both generals, who rarely consulted with him. And he was too unbending to take the initiative in trying to create a collaborative relationship with at least the theater commander. As for Stilwell, his disregard of the Ambassador was not because he disliked Gauss. Rather, Stilwell was not inclined to seek counsel from others—although he would welcome practical advice when proffered. In fact, Vinegar Joe Stilwell liked the Ambassador even though he looked upon Gauss as something of a sourpuss.
* * *
With every step that the Allies retreated in Burma, India’s importance to them grew. India was a fallback position, and in depth, thanks to its size. It was the base for a vital air bridge into China, a base in which to grow and manufacture war supplies, and to prepare for and then mount a counteroffensive.
India was an area about which Stilwell and his staff were far less informed than they were about China. Not only was Stilwell a China specialist, he had then on his staff more than half a dozen exceptionally able China and Japan specialists. But he had no expert on India, an area of study that had been neglected in the American Government and academe.
I could be most useful to the General, it seemed to me, if I investigated and surveyed for him the Indian political and economic scene. I put this idea to Stilwell. He accepted my suggestion and on April 5 I left Chungking for India.
On the same day the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang flew to Burma with Stilwell. Chiang assured his American commander that he would instruct his generals to obey Stilwell’s orders. Whatever the Generalissimo may have told his principal officers, it did not halt the continuing retreat nor instill in them obedience to the foreigner. The sudden and utter disintegration of a Chinese division at the eastern end of the “line” when a much smaller Japanese force out-maneuvered and struck it, meant that the allies were outflanked. The final debacle was not long in coming. By the end of April the Chinese and British Empire forces were in demoralized flight. The remnants of the Chinese armies straggled back into China, excepting two decimated divisions, which, like Alexander’s surviving troops, staggered out over jungle trails into India.
It had taken four Japanese divisions four months to rout the larger, motley allied forces of Burmese, Chinese, Indian and British units. The climax was galling for Stilwell. Cut off from vehicular and air transportation, he, Dorn, and about one hundred others slogged over jungled mountains to India. There he snorted to newsmen, “I claim we got a hell of a licking. We got run out of Burma and it is humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back and retake it.”
What caused the humiliating licking so far as China was concerned, Stilwell told the Generalissimo in early June, was the structure and the character of the Chinese Army. It was weak for more reasons than shortage of equipment. The three hundred Chinese divisions were understrength; if they were consolidated to full strength divisions and all available materiel redistributed, the number of units would reduced, but the overall effectiveness would be greatly increased. Furthermore, only a few of the general officers were competent. They should be retrained and the others gotten rid of, “otherwise the army will continue to go downhill, no matter how much materiel is supplied for it.” Also, the Generalissimo should designate one man whose “absolute control of the troops must not be infringed upon.” And awards and punishments should be promptly administered.
Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who often participated in the Generalissimo’s conferences with foreigners, told Stilwell that his critique was similar to that received by Chiang several years earlier from his German military advisers. So the comments made by the American General were not new to the Generalissimo.
At a subsequent Stilwell meeting on military reform Madame Chiang was again present and again elucidating and expanding upon her husband’s aloof pronouncement. In sum, she told Stilwell that his recommendations could not be put into effect and that it was necessary to be “realistic.” Five years earlier, Chennault, while serving the Chiangs as military aviation adviser, had pressed the Generalissimo to take drastic action against the incompetence and corruption in the Chinese Air Force. Madame Chiang told him that her husband said that “the Chinese are the only people he has to work with, and if we get rid of all those people who are at fault, who would be left?”
The fact of the matter was that had Chiang undertaken such a sweeping purge, “all those people who are at fault” would have liquidated him before he had gotten started. While he was despotically inclined,