Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  He already had in mind a retraining program for a second 30 divisions for the coming year, and ultimately a third 30, toward his goal of a reorganized Chinese Army of 100 full-strength divisions. He continued to plan on a campaign for Hankow to follow the retaking of Burma, and after Hankow an attack on Hsuchow, scene of his eventful mission in 1927, from where an air offensive could be mounted against Japan. Far from ignoring air power, he urged in a memo to Soong that “A large increase of aviation should be secured to support the operation, and at once capitalize on it by starting an intensive and continuous bombing of Japan.”

  Support for the Burma campaign was growing among the Chinese military. They felt, according to Teevy, that Stilwell was the only one who had any faith in the Chinese Army. At the National Military Council with the big table full, Stilwell was asked serious and practical questions: “We actually did business.” Ordnance was asking for orders, divisions were being consolidated, artillery being made available, SOS taking advice. Yü Ta-wei, the chief of Ordnance, was “with us 100 percent.” Li Tsung-jen was “most complimentary and friendly…all these birds are now sold on getting Burma back.” On November 19 he wrote, “We’re rolling,” adding a knock on wood, “If we can keep a fire lit under Wavell….”

  Within two days the fire flickered. “Ominous stuff from India. Limeys thinking on limited lines. Their objective is a joke—Arakan Hills, Chin Hills, Kalewa.” Their Admiral, Sir James Somerville, and the RAF were hedging. “On the whole, they want to dig in in north Burma and wait till next fall before going after it seriously.” This renewed hesitancy reflected the uncertain progress in North Africa where Allied forces had landed on November 8 and jerked through a series of snafus, of which the only sure outcome was that the campaign would be prolonged and would preclude a major operation in CBI until late in 1943. In the Pacific two American carriers had been sunk in the struggle to hold Guadalcanal, leaving the Pacific Fleet down to its last carrier. In the Atlantic, shipping losses, especially on the Murmansk run, were heavy, with as many as 13 out of 40 ships sunk in one convoy. When every front called for strength, CBI, where strategy and aims were most at odds, was not a place where the Allies could agree to divert resources.

  The condition was made plain to Stilwell by a message from Marshall, appropriately received on Thanksgiving Day. Stilwell summarized, “For our ‘war,’ we are graciously allotted, 1) the Lend-Lease stuff we already have, 2) the personnel for training, 3) some engineer equipment, how much not known, 4) the ‘increasing effectiveness of the ferry line.’ My God. So that’s the support we get to put on a campaign. I wonder what they gave them in Africa. Am I to comfort the Chinese with this prospect?” To his wife that night he wrote, “Peanut and I are on a raft, with one sandwich between us, and the rescue ship is heading away from the scene.”

  In a wrathful reply to the War Department, intended for if not addressed to Marshall, he said he wanted no more expressions of support if this was what they came to in practice. “I read your profane message,” Marshall acknowledged by letter, “and I sympathize with you in your reaction.”

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  On December 7, the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Wavell suggested “eliminating” the north Burma offensive. This was the campaign’s quietus although it took a month to die. Wavell’s move came just as Stilwell received word from Marshall that it had been decided to increase American support for the offensive on the basis that the reopened land route through Burma would permit greater air power to operate from China. Stilwell’s requirements were to be given a priority immediately after Eisenhower’s in North Africa, including, as evidence of serious intent, 6,000 American service troops for road-building and other tasks.

  Stilwell hurried to India. British Headquarters was “extremely pessimistic and obstructionist.” Wavell mumbled every kind of obstacle: “Everything is very difficult….Can’t supply the boys during the monsoon. Japs have the road net on interior lines….Very skeptical about Chinese action of the Y-force. Wants to wait till November, 1943, before doing anything serious.” For the present Wavell had cut his original seven-division plan down to three and could promise nothing more than to take Akyab and form a line on the Chindwin.

  This time pressure by Washington on London had no effect. “They will by one means or another do everything possible to block any Chinese forces from operating in Burma,” advised Colonel Roberts, Stilwell’s former G-2 who was now at the War Department. The British maintained they lacked the naval resources to control the Bay of Bengal and support a landing at Rangoon. Since this was Chiang’s condition of action, failure to fulfill it was bound to make him withdraw. Stilwell on his return could feel a slow chill begin to numb the preparations in Chungking. Ho Ying-chin returned to the tactics of deliberately delaying and then pleading lack of time as an excuse. In the course of discussions Stilwell received a long letter from him “telling me some boxes had been broken and also a bottle of iodine! Explained the procedure he would like us to follow in such cases.” Here was a man, Stilwell raged, who combined the offices of Stimson and Marshall and “gets eloquent because a bottle of iodine is spilled in India.” It was the same order of triviality as Chiang’s call for watermelons in the midst of debacle in Burma. At the peak of his exasperation Stilwell concluded, “There must be tremendous cohesion in the Chinese people for them to survive the terrible neglect and maladministration of their so-called leaders.” It was this knowledge that kept him trying until the end of his mission.

  On December 28 Chiang Kai-shek notified Roosevelt that his original condition of sea and air superiority in the Bay of Bengal was not being met. Roosevelt, stressing the need to reopen the land supply line, urged him not to make a negative decision until he, the President, could shortly consult Churchill.*2 Marshall in anxiety radioed Stilwell that “means must be found” to enable the attack to jump off, but he had none to offer. Stilwell rained memoranda on T. V. Soong, mustering every argument of China’s self-interest, future strategy, and the possible effect of cancellation on further aid. Failing Chinese action, he tried to suggest, his Government would be bound to ask, “Under the existing conditions in China, with the present personnel, organization and policy, is it worthwhile for the U.S. to put further effort and resources into the China theater?” The weakness of Stilwell’s position was that he had no authority to presume a negative answer.

  On January 8 the Generalissimo formally declined to undertake the offensive. He did not need to wait until Roosevelt consulted Churchill. It was evident enough that they were not going to fulfill his condition and he was determined not to be pushed into fighting for Burma, even in China’s interest, unless the Allies were fully committed to the campaign. “If the navy is unable to control the Burma seas,” he informed Roosevelt, the campaign had better be postponed until autumn. Another failure in Burma would be a disaster for China and “under the circumstances, the most cautious course appears the only one open to me.” He proposed instead what he had wanted all along—emphasis on American air power according to Chennault’s thesis, almost in Chennault’s words, citing “the remarkable potentialities of an air offensive,” and the promise of a return “out of all proportion to the investment.”

  Stilwell put the date down as Black Friday. He was disgusted but not inclined to give up. There had been so many delays and frustrations already that he doubted if the target date could have been met. He recognized that Chiang Kai-shek had lined himself up behind Chennault but he evidently felt that with the War Department’s backing, confirmed by a warm letter from Stimson, his own position was stronger; and that with the heartening alliance of T. V. Soong and encouragement inside the Chinese military establishment, even the Peanut was not beyond all control. He supposed the Chinese would have to buy back American favor in order to keep up the flow of supplies and that he could use this situation to further his program for army reform and for the 30 divisions. He thought an ultimatum to Chiang Kai-shek might still be possible and drafted one “to be sent from Washin
gton if George agrees”—without reference to the Presidency. He continued exerting pressure to build up the X-force (at Ramgarh) and the Y-force. Tseng Shih-kwei came in with “The old story: ‘Stick it out for the sake of the 400,000,000.’ ”

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  On January 16 in a surprise ceremony Stilwell received the DSC for heroism under fire during the action at Taunggyi in the previous April. Met by Dorn at the entrance to his headquarters, he found the staff lined up in the courtyard in an attitude of awful solemnity. Colonel Bergin stepped forward to shake his hand and say, “Stand about there, Sir, if you please.”

  “What is this, an execution?” the victim muttered.

  Bergin read the citation describing how his “presence and personal example in the front lines of a Chinese division” had inspired the unit to the renewed effort which resulted in the capture of Taunggyi, and citing other occasions at the front. “Who brought up all this bunk?” Stilwell whispered, fidgeting. Joe Jr. stepped forward, hissed “Stand still,” and pinned the medal. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times and Theodore White of Time reported the ceremony in the tone of dry affection accorded by the press to Stilwell, and the Times added an editorial on “Decorating Uncle Joe.” The recipient was unimpressed. “The whole thing is bunk, pumped up out of a very minor incident and entirely undeserved,” he wrote to Win. “It is embarrassing but luckily time moves on and such things are forgotten.”

  * * *

  *1 The downfall of Japan, which Chennault was prepared to accomplish in six months with one air force of 147 combat aircraft, was to require three more years of war and the efforts, in air power alone, not counting combat on land and sea, of nine Army air forces operating from India, China, the Pacific and Alaska, a Naval air force which amounted in 1945 to 90 carriers and 14,847 combat aircraft, and ultimately two atom bombs. In early August 1945, a force of 801 B-29s attacked Japan in a single operation.

  *2 At the forthcoming conference at Casablanca scheduled for January 14–23.

  14

  The President’s Policy January–May 1943

  AMONG THE GIFTS sent to Mme. Chiang in care of the White House when she came to the United States in November 1942 was a letter from Mrs. Cathleen Quinn of East Orange, New Jersey, enclosing a $3 money order and a clipping of the news picture of 1937 showing the crying baby sitting on the railroad tracks in the aftermath of air attack on Shanghai. The writer asked the President to present the money order to Mme. Chiang; “It is from my three daughters and it is for the little guy on the railroad tracks somewhere in China.”

  In the public appearances during her lengthy visit, which lasted until May 1943, Madame aroused a greater outpouring of admiration and welcome than anyone since Lindbergh flew the Atlantic. As Willkie had predicted, Americans listened to her “as to no one else.” When she addressed Congress on February 18 she enraptured her audience. “Goddam it,” said a Congressman, “I never saw anything like it. Mme. Chiang had me on the verge of bursting into tears.” Dressed in black in the seductive Chinese chongsam, small, slender and calmly assured, speaking perfect English in her lovely voice and exquisite diction, she made Congress feel itself “in the presence of one of the world’s great personalities.” Members were “captivated…amazed…dizzied” by her “grace, charm and intelligence,” according to a dazzled or well-instructed reporter for Life. The burden of her speech, after a four-minute standing ovation, was that the defeat of Japan was more important than that of Germany and that the United States should enable her countrymen to fight the war in China rather than spend so much effort in the Pacific. The applause reached its height when she said that after five and a half years of resistance the Chinese were convinced that it was better “not to accept failure ignominiously but to risk it gloriously.” That Chiang Kai-shek had just opted not to risk it gloriously in Burma was, of course, not public knowledge.

  Editorial comment on the occasion stressed the friendship between two great peoples and was glad of the fact that “in the difficult present and perhaps even more difficult future” this relationship could be counted upon. Lord Halifax, the British Ambassador, reported to London in some anxiety that there was a risk of Congress being swept on a wave of public emotion into making promises to China which as he put it, “would be difficult to fulfill.” He meant a promise to return all China’s territory.

  Educated in the United States from the age of ten to nineteen and thoroughly Westernized in thought and speech, Madame conveyed to the average American a sense of China’s similarity to themselves rather than a sense of difference. She addressed a rally of 20,000 in Madison Square Garden with Willkie as a fellow speaker, and 30,000 in the Hollywood Bowl, and spoke at meetings in Chicago and San Francisco on a cross-country fund-raising tour, and in broadcasts over major networks. She received hundreds of letters a day from the American public and once, on passing through a whistle stop in the Middle West, a box of home-made cookies from the station master’s wife. Notified at 3 A.M. that the train was coming through at 8 A.M., the station master had waked his wife to tell her the news and she, wanting to show her feelings, did what she knew best. Madame touched off an immense desire in people to express goodwill and a feeling that she was somehow the symbol of this universal desire; that, as Carl Sandburg wrote in the Washington Post, “What she wants, she wants for the Family of Man over the entire earth.”

  The private scene was somewhat different. The prospect of her visit had alarmed the Combined Chiefs who feared she would bewitch the President into altering the strategy of defeating Germany first. She immediately set about the attempt, beginning with Harry Hopkins who met her when she arrived in an American plane provided by the War Department on November 27. Suffering from a periodic skin trouble, she had asked to come to the United States for treatment in a hospital and, accompanied by Hollington Tong and a nephew and niece of the Kung family, was driven by Hopkins to the Harkness Pavilion in New York where the entire twelfth floor was put at her disposal. In her talk with Hopkins she was uninterested in the war in Europe or the Pacific and “confined her interest entirely to what we are doing in China proper.” She clearly “does not like Stilwell and expressed the greatest admiration for Chennault.” She told Hopkins that Stilwell “does not understand the Chinese people and that he made a tragic mistake in forcing Chiang Kai-shek to put one of his best divisions in Burma where it was later lost.” Pursuing her second objective, the recognition of China as one of the four great powers, she discoursed at length on her views about the peace table and the postwar world, urging an immediate move by the United States to initiate talks by the “four great powers” on postwar affairs.

  Mrs. Roosevelt visited her in the hospital where she seemed so “small and delicate” that “I had a desire to help her and take care of her as if she had been my own daughter.” Madame moved into the White House early in January with two nurses and the two Kungs. The niece regularly wore men’s clothes, causing Roosevelt to address her as “my boy.” Madame brought her own silk sheets which were changed daily, or twice a day if she napped in the afternoon. She took most of her meals in her suite and angered the White House staff by clapping her hands for their attention although all the rooms were equipped with bells and telephones. When she was staying at the Waldorf in New York, the Secret Service detail, on being notified by her nephew when she was going out, would clear the corridor between her suite and the elevator and between the landing and exit, after which she would more often than not change her mind and not go out until several hours later, or not at all. When the Secret Service chief asked her to be more firm in her arrangements she demanded his removal. The two young Kungs with far less prerogative behaved with equal arrogance.

  As a ruling Soong and the partner of an autocrat, Madame had leanings toward royalty. Once she asked Colonel Dorn rather grumpily why he and his colleagues addressed her as Madam instead of Madame when it was known that the former was used in the United States to refer to the proprietress of a house of prostitution. Quick thin
king inspired the reply that the Queen of England was customarily addressed as “Madam” and the usage by the American officers was intended to suggest a quality of majesty. “You never saw a facial expression change so fast in your life.” From a complaining look her face broke into a burst of delighted sunshine and for the rest of the visitor’s errand she was on her most gracious and queenly behavior.

  Apprised of the famous charm, the President when preparing for his first interview discarded the usual arrangement of seating his guest on the sofa next to him, and had a card table placed in front of him with a chair on its far side. He just didn’t want his visitor “too close,” he explained to his daughter. On extended acquaintance, he discovered in Madame a determination “as hard as steel,” not entirely consistent with the sweet and gentle figure described by his wife. At dinner one evening, apropos of a miners’ strike called by John L. Lewis, Roosevelt asked Madame what her Government would do in such circumstances in wartime, and when she drew a finger across her throat he threw his head back and laughed aloud and called across the table to his wife, “Eleanor, did you see that?”