by Frank McLynn
The first great crisis of September arose over the battle of Lungling. Y-force was still doing well on the Salween front and massive Chinese forces blasted their way into the cities of Sungshan and Tengchung, an ancient settlement said to have been visited by Marco Polo. Even so, they succeeded only because of large-scale backing from the USAAF. To their stupefaction, the victors found dead Japanese soldiers chained to their positions.53 Lungling was another matter. There, having driven the Chinese out, 56 Japanese Division was reinforced on 26 August by 6,000 fresh troops, who pushed Y-force back so convincingly that some units retreated at once to the Salween.54 Chinese casualties were mounting rapidly, though losses were terrific on both sides. In the battles for Tenchung and Lungling, the Chinese lost 37,133 dead and the Japanese 13,620.55 Although the Japanese had no intention of penetrating any deeper into south-west China, Chiang panicked, fearing an enemy drive on Kunming and the Hump airfields. On 8 September he ordered Stilwell (or rather he told Hurley to order him) to attack with X-force southwards towards Bhamo. Stilwell refused, pointing out that his men were exhausted and they had yet to clear the route of the Ledo road south from Myitkyina, adding for good measure that he did not want to get into another row by infringing on Mountbatten’s sphere of influence.56 The entire Chiang-Hurley-Stilwell triangle was bedevilled by mutual incomprehension and failure to communicate. Chiang assumed that Hurley was Stilwell’s superior, when that was not the case at all. He also thought that Stilwell’s role as his chief of staff should trump his position as commander of all American troops in the CBI theatre; in fact Stilwell was under explicit orders from Washington to prioritise the two roles the other way round.57 Despairing of getting his own way, Chiang began to bluster. First he said he would withdraw the whole of Y-force to a defensive ring around Kunming. Then he backtracked and said he would leave it around Lungling in exchange for his having complete control of Lend-Lease. Stilwell exploded: ‘The crazy little bastard. The little matter of the Ledo road is forgotten. The only point on the whole trace we do not control is Lungling and he wants to give that up and sabotage the whole God-damn project – men, money, material and sweat that we have put in for two and a half years just to help China. Unthinkable … It does not even enter that hickory nut he uses for a head.’58
On 13 September, two of the envoys from Mao and the Red Army conferred with Stilwell and told him that their leader was quite prepared to fight under him but not in any circumstances under Chiang; still less would Mao acknowledge Chiang as head of state. Stilwell made it clear to the KMT bureaucrats that as the Reds were the only Chinese prepared to take on the Japanese in serious fighting, he would be supplying them with American arms and equipment and intended to go to Yenan shortly to finalise this.59 Chiang was now desperate, for the day was fast approaching when the Chinese Communists would get access to Lend-Lease, and then the preponderance of power, already only just to Chiang’s advantage, would shift to Mao. Fortunately, he had an ace in the hole that Stilwell knew nothing of. While Vinegar Joe thought that ‘Pat’ was an ally, the devious and scheming Hurley was advancing his own design to replace Gauss as the US ambassador to China, and letting Chiang know he was sympathetic to his problems with Stilwell. By being charming and accommodating to the generalissimo, the envoys increased his confidence that in a trial of strength with the hated Stilwell he might prevail. Chiang even tried on Nelson (he considered Hurley too smart an operator) that tired old Chinese shtick: ‘Most foreigners don’t understand us, but you do.’ It is not surprising that Slim’s biographer has referred to ‘the bone-headed Patrick Hurley’.60 Hurley was so inept he did not even send his cable to Washington through secure channels, so that the serpentine Tai-li knew everything that was going on.61
While Chiang and Hurley intrigued full-time to compass his downfall, Stilwell had a war on two fronts to attend to. Apart from the Salween front, the Japanese advance in China proper was giving cause for concern. On 14 September he flew to Kweilin, ‘the Paris of the South’, where the Japanese had just launched an offensive and were throwing back the Chinese with ease. As usual when Stilwell was not at the helm, the Chinese fought with a kind of stoical defeatism tinged with bitterness.62 Regarding as suicidal Chiang’s orders to hold the city at all costs, Stilwell ordered the evacuation of the air base and the destruction of all gasoline his soldiers could not take away – so much for the Chiang–Chennault thesis that the KMT armies could defend air bases. The situation on this front continued critical. By November both Kweilin and Liuchow had fallen and the Japanese were almost knocking on the gates of Chungking itself.63
Meanwhile, Stilwell’s strongly worded protest to Washington about Chiang’s behaviour on Lungling and the Salween front had deeply impressed Marshall. He believed implicitly the Stilwell thesis that the generalissimo did not want to fight so much as to sit out the war and watch ‘until one barbarian defeats the other’.64 When Stilwell’s latest cable reached him, Marshall was at the Octagon conference, the second conclave at Quebec between Roosevelt and Churchill on the post-war future of Germany. Primed by Marshall, an angry and exasperated FDR sent a message to Chiang saying that the withdrawal from the Salween was unacceptable and that if he persisted, he would have to take the consequences; this was a thinly veiled threat to withdraw Lend-Lease. After stating categorically that the generalissimo was obliged to play his full part in the war, FDR added that there must be no further stalling about the status and nature of Stilwell’s command; he must be given ‘unrestricted’ powers as supreme commander. The memo was nothing less than an ultimatum, and could not be construed in any other way.65 Whooping with delight, Stilwell refused all attempts by Hurley and others in Chungking to soften the message and insisted on taking it to Chiang in person.66 On 19 September he enjoyed his greatest hour of triumph when he ‘handed this bundle of paprika to the Peanut and then sank back with a sigh. The harpoon hit the little bugger right in the solar plexus and went right through him. It was a clean hit, but beyond turning green and losing the power of speech, he did not bat any eye. He just said to me, ‘I understand.’67 In a state of hubris, Stilwell went home and composed some lines of doggerel:
I’ve waited long for vengeance –
At last I’ve had my chance,
I’ve looked the Peanut in the eye
And kicked him in the pants
The old harpoon was ready
With aim and timing true,
I sank it to the handle
And stung him through and through.
The little bastard shivered,
And lost his power of speech,
His face turned green and quivered
And he struggled not to screech.
For all my weary battle,
For all my hours of woe
At last I’ve had my innings
And laid the Peanut low.
I know I’ve still to suffer
And run a weary race
But O! The blessed pleasure!
I’ve wrecked the Peanut’s face.68
The immediate impact of Roosevelt’s message was all that Stilwell could have hoped for. After the words ‘I understand’, Chiang abruptly ended the meeting and retired to his private quarters, where he burst into ‘compulsive and stormy sobbing’.69 A jubilant Stilwell heard about the lachrymose outburst and wrote to his wife: ‘Rejoice with me. We have prevailed … his head is in the dust. The dope is that after I left, the screaming began and lasted into the night.’70 Yet Stilwell’s gloating was premature. The fantasy of landing a lethal blow on ‘the Peanut’, as in Ahab’s imaginings on the death of Moby-Dick, was, sadly, just that. Nemesis followed the hubris. When Hurley went in to see Chiang on 23 September about the participation of the Red Army in a joint campaign against the Japanese, the generalissimo brushed the subject aside as of no importance; the important thing, he said, was that at all costs he had to get rid of Stilwell. Hurley reported to Stilwell that Chiang had accused him of ‘preemptorily refusing’ an order to make a feint on Bhamo from My
itkyina and said that China could no longer have two masters: it had to be either Chiang or Stilwell. By a curious coincidence, next day there was a broadcast on Japanese radio claiming that Stilwell was actively seeking to oust Chiang and set himself up as tsar or proconsul in China; from the smooth congruence of events, Stilwell suspected a set-up job. Hurley further reported that Chiang had accused Stilwell of persuading FDR to send the humiliating cable, that the President would not have done it on his own initiative.71 The generalissimo had by now divined Hurley’s ambitions and was determined to use him and Nelson. He persuaded them to contact Roosevelt and claim that recent verbal exchanges on China rested on a misunderstanding; there was no real tension between the war aims of China and the USA but only a ‘personality clash’ between him and Stilwell. Hurley added his own spin, that he had attempted to be diplomatic by delivering the President’s ultimatum himself, but that Stilwell had insisted on taking it. Roosevelt, always weak and neurotic about China, took the blame-shifting line that he had been ‘bounced’ into sending the tough telegram by Marshall when his mind was elsewhere at Quebec.72 Chiang’s sources, who had an excellent line to the White House via Harry Hopkins, told him that provided a face-saving deal could be concocted, FDR would agree to Stilwell’s dismissal; T.V. Soong and Alsop worked hard on drafting a convincing proposal. Thus encouraged, Chiang upped the ante by convening the standing committee of the KMT and telling them that unless Stilwell was sacked, China would no longer be a sovereign nation. At the end of the month FDR concluded that Vinegar Joe would have to go. Two factors weighed with him. He was beginning to grow bored with China, especially as it no longer mattered for the successful conclusion of the war; all American efforts were now going into island-hopping in the Pacific and the invasion of the Philippines. Perhaps even more importantly, the 1944 presidential election was just a month away, and he certainly did not want some cause célèbre, involving his own credibility, to erupt at a critical moment in the voters’ decisions.73
On 1 October, Stilwell began to get some inkling of the danger he confronted and wrote at length on the situation both in his diary and to his wife. The interesting thing is that, less shrewd about the evil in men than Chiang, he still had not divined Hurley’s true aims. ‘FDR proceeds to cut my throat and throw me out. Pat feels very low about it. I don’t. I don’t. They just can’t hurt me. I’ve done my best and stood up for American interests. To hell with them … It looks very much as though they have gotten me at last. The Peanut has gone off his rocker and Roosevelt has apparently let me down completely.’74 This was honest and wholly consistent with his earlier remarks. He always said he ‘was willing to be ditched … if at any time the pressure grew too heavy. It was always his secret ambition to be a sergeant in a machine gun company.’75 But his great ally Marshall was not finished yet. For three weeks he fought a bitter and protracted battle to call Chiang’s bluff and bring him to heel. He put to the President all the bitterness occasioned in US military circles by the materiel supplied to Chiang and Chennault over the Hump – which he claimed prolonged the war in Europe for at least a year because of the shortage of air transport. He begged and pleaded with the President to rescind Lend-Lease to China, but FDR would not take that final, irrevocable step, as Chiang had gambled he would not.76 By their stupid and sycophantic softly-softly diplomacy, Hurley and Nelson had given Chiang the clear impression that, as the President’s envoys, they, not Stilwell, must be expressing his true thoughts. Chiang could therefore sit down for a long poker game, confidently expecting that his opponent would blink first. As before, Marshall’s great ally was Stimson, who was particularly indignant that Chennault had corralled all those tens of thousands of tons of supplies and had achieved nothing, whereas Stilwell, the hero of Myitkyina, was now to be made the victim.77 Under pressure, FDR agreed a compromise. On 5 October he told Chiang he would agree to Stilwell’s ousting as chief of staff and director of Lend-Lease, but he insisted that he stay on as commander of Chinese forces in Burma and Yunnan; moreover, there would be no US commander in China. But compromise was the wrong ploy to use with Chiang; he read it as weakness. There was no mention in the latest message of the one thing he really feared – the end of Lend-Lease. Although the generalissimo’s face was now more than adequately saved, he sensed FDR’s weakness and pressed on for total victory. Only the complete removal of Stilwell from China would satisfy him. Absurdly, he claimed in his adamant reply that the Burma campaign had drained China’s resources, without mentioning that the USA had provided those resources in the first place; he even had the gall to suggest that it was Stilwell’s fault that the airfields in eastern China had been lost. On 11 October, Hurley finally showed his hand and told the White House that he backed Chiang completely. Marshall continued to fight hard, but FDR had essentially buckled and caved in. It was the final manifestation of his China neurosis. Contrary to all reason and a mountain of evidence, he was determined to champion Chiang, shrinking from the obvious alternative of embracing Mao. Given his premises, the only logical conclusion was that Stilwell had to be dismissed.78
On 19 October, Roosevelt formally recalled Stilwell from China and ordered him to relinquish all his roles there. Marshall sent a radio message to Stilwell to confirm that the deed was done. During these first 19 days of October, Vinegar Joe had been mournful and resigned. He wrote with great bitterness about being ‘ignored, insulted, double-crossed, delayed, obstructed for three years … The Peanut sits on his hands and watches with great glee the fool Americans who actually get out and fight.’79 Marshall informed him of the new dispositions in the CBI theatre, which itself ceased to exist because of the restructuring. General Daniel Sultan would take over his former duties in the India-Burma sector while General Raymond Wheeler would become Mountbatten’s deputy in SEAC.80 The worst blow for Stilwell was the appointment of Wedemeyer as Chiang’s chief of staff and commander of US forces in China. He had come to have an almost visceral loathing for the ‘ambitious and conceited’ Wedemeyer, with his would-be movie-star looks (tall, elegant, aquiline, luxuriantly haired) and his almost monomaniacal self-regard. In June he had noted in his diary: ‘Good God – to be ousted in favour of Wedemeyer – that would be a disgrace.’81 Stilwell fought hard not to accept this futher humiliation and, when asked by Marshall for his recommendations as his replacement, named six undistinguished officers, some of whom had already been recalled from other posts in disgrace; Marshall declared himself shocked by his friend’s irresponsible suggestions, which by their very implausibility actually strengthened the case for the detested ‘Al’.82 Wedemeyer would later complain that Stilwell made no formal handover, left him no notes or instructions and refused even to see him, but after his treachery and backstabbing he should surely not have been surprised.83 Hurley achieved his aim when he was appointed ambassador to replace Gauss, who resigned when Stilwell was dismissed; the State Department pretence that his resignation was a completely separate matter fooled no one.84
Now that he had what he wanted, Chiang tried to sugar the pill by offering Stilwell a decoration, but Stilwell abruptly declined. His diary entry reads: ‘Told him to stick it up his ass.’85 At 5 p.m. on 20 October he made a farewell call on the generalissimo and reminded him that all he had done had been for the good of China. Madame was not there, since she had left for a two-month stay in Brazil in July 1944 and then proceeded to the USA. Tired of Chiang’s relentless woman-ising, she appears to have departed with no intention of returning, giving out publicly that she needed to consult American specialists for her health.86 Stilwell stayed just 48 hours in Chungking after his recall; Marshall, knowing his gaffe-prone nature, wanted him back in Washington as soon as possible, and warned him he was not to say a word about his dismissal to anyone, especially the press.87 He left Chungking on the afternoon of 21 October and proceeded in a leisurely way to Delhi, taking three days, with stopovers at Kunming, Paoshan, Myitkyina and Ramgarh. Once back in the United States, he at first seemed under virtual arrest, being accompani
ed everywhere by Secret Service men. He was effectively gagged by Marshall and Roosevelt until after the presidential election, even though many newspapers and US public opinion were affronted by this ‘truckling’ to Chiang.88 Only when FDR returned as president in triumph for an unprecedented (and never to be repeated) fourth time did Stilwell’s plight become generally known.89
Stilwell’s Anglophobia was not forgotten. In November, a Conservative MP, Mr Reginald Purbrick, proposed in the House of Commons that Stilwell be declared persona non grata anwhere British troops were engaged. His old enemy General (by this time Field Marshal) Alexander said after the war: ‘Dear Old Joe – he could be mighty naughty at times.’90 Mountbatten used the opportunity to claim that only his intervention had kept the Stilwell–Chiang show on the road so long – another of his blatant, self-preening exaggerations. And there was more than a smidgin of humbug in his public comments. To Vinegar Joe himself he wrote: ‘Most Englishmen, as you yourself undoubtedly know, find you a difficult man to deal with, but, with the exception of the trouble over Lentaigne … I can testify that I have found you both easy and helpful in all matters which I raised in person with you.’ To FDR he wrote: ‘I was sorry to see Stilwell go not only because I personally like him, but because it meant that I lost my beloved Al Wedemeyer.’91 Yet it is significant that the only Briton Stilwell wrote to was Auchinleck, for whom he seems to have developed an unexpected fondness: ‘This is goodbye to you and Lady Auchinleck, with my very best wishes for the future. The sheriff has caught up with me and I have been yanked out, but whatever my glaring deficiencies as a diplomat, I hope you will remember me, as I remember you, as a friend and that we will meet again, as you have promised, in California.’92 The notable absentee in all this farewell correspondence was Slim, and the suspicion arises that some sort of personal Rubicon was crossed in the relations between the two men over the issue of Lentaigne and the Chindits. Certainly Slim’s comments in his autobiography are all positive: ‘When all was said and done, the success of this northern offensive was in the main due to the Ledo Chinese Divisions – and that was Stilwell … In the 14th Army and, I think, throughout the British forces our sympathies were with Stilwell – unlike the American 14th Air Force who demonstratively rejoiced at his downfall … We saw him go with regret, and he took with him our admiration as a fighting soldier.’93