The Last Empress

by Hannah Pakula

  Up until that point, Stilwell had been allotting three eighths of the Lend-Lease supplies to Chennault’s air force and five eighths to the ground forces and everything else—a division of goods to which the generalissimo objected. Claiming he could wipe out Japan’s air superiority if given the where-withal, Chennault was asking for nearly all the material coming over the Hump, while Stilwell argued that an air assault uncoordinated with a ground offensive would only spur the Japanese to bomb the airfields in China, which the Chinese army was obviously incapable of defending. But Stilwell faltered when it came to presenting his case before the president at the White House. Although he had prepared a “cogent and forceful brief,” once in the Oval Office, he hunched himself over his papers and became, if not sullen to the point of rudeness, totally inarticulate, so much so that Roosevelt thought he might be ill. For some unfathomable reason, Stilwell seemed to feel that he could not and should not lower himself to state the obvious to the president of the United States, who, he knew, did not particularly like him. After Stilwell’s miserable presentation, Roosevelt ordered that Chennault’s requests must have first priority. The president, according to Stilwell, based his decision on a “total misapprehension of the character, intentions, authority and ability of Chiang Kai-shek,” and wrote in his private “Black Book” that “The Madame put it over FDR like a tent. He’s a sucker for a skirt.”

  During the course of the TRIDENT conference, Roosevelt asked both Stilwell and Chennault what they thought of the inscrutable Chinese leader. “He’s a vacillating tricky undependable old scoundrel who never keeps his word,” Stilwell replied. “Sir,” Chennault countered, “I think the Generalissimo is one of the two or three greatest military and political leaders in the world today. He has never broken a commitment or promise made to me.”

  Since neither Roosevelt nor Churchill was anxious to put any effort into Operation ANAKIM, it was temporarily shelved, and those in attendance at TRIDENT agreed to try to get 7,000 tons of gas and munitions over the Hump for July, building up to 10,000 by September. Chennault was to be given the first 4,700 tons each month, with the next 2,000 destined for everything else—making it practically impossible for Stilwell to mount his ground campaign.

  Another factor in Stilwell’s defeat might be traced to a cable sent by T.V. to Chiang two weeks before the meeting in the Oval Office, in which T.V. said that “Sister [May-ling] will be arriving at Washington D.C. on Monday. I will ask her to join me in lobbying the President.” The Soong team was obviously convincing, because Hopkins congratulated T.V., as did Alsop, who wrote saying that “against overwhelming odds… you have succeeded in obtaining infinitely more for China and Chennault than the most optimistic of us could have hoped when we started the fight.” T.V. also bragged to the G-mo that “when Stilwell returns to China, his stance may not be as arrogant as before. If any misunderstanding occurs in the future, the Generalissimo might feel comfortable to telegraph [the president] and ask to replace Stilwell at any time.”

  T.V. did not stop there. In a conversation with Stanley Hornbeck, the chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs of the State Department, he claimed that “the Chinese find it very difficult to work with General Stilwell” and that they “feel that… an officer needs to have personal, political and diplomatic assets in addition to his qualifications as a soldier.” Just as scathing is a memorandum in T.V.’s files, dated August 1943, enumerating Stilwell’s “bad or questionable” decisions, most of which involve his not procuring enough planes for China and concluding with the following assessment: “General Stilwell is a fine man. He does not smoke, drink, or chew. He would make a typical highly-regarded Boy Scout leader in any country… there can be no doubt that General Stilwell is completely unfitted to be a major military leader in China.” A month later, T.V. wired Chiang, “It is my opinion that General Stilwell must be recalled at any cost,” and again, shortly thereafter, “General Stilwell should be replaced immediately.”

  T.V.’s friend Joe Alsop told the story of the TRIDENT decision from an entirely different perspective. According to Alsop, from the very beginning of the conference, May-ling had been trying “to persuade Hopkins, and through Hopkins the president, to communicate with her instead of with her brother [T.V.], the Foreign Minister.” Alsop was apparently at the office of China Defense Supplies when Madame burst in and “cried triumphantly, ‘I have won for China! I have got the generalissimo everything he wants!’ ” T.V. asked her to come into his office, where they remained for an hour, and when May-ling finally emerged, Alsop, who had manufactured some excuse to stay around to watch the fireworks, wrote that “the thunder clouds accompanying her were all but visible” as she walked away. Madame, according to Alsop, had been sold a bill of goods by Roosevelt, and it subsequently took some skillful maneuvering on T.V.’s part to get Chiang to cable the president that his wife “had no right to negotiate on his behalf” and to kindly return to his original request for “an increase in supply over the Hump as well as an additional 80 fighter planes and 40 bombers to operate under Chennault’s command.”

  Later, after they had all returned to China, Alsop claimed that May-ling invited him to tea for the express purpose of getting him to back up her claim to her husband that it was she, not T.V., who had been responsible for Roosevelt’s largesse: “you must remember, Mr. Alsop, how I saved the day for China when the conference [TRIDENT] was going the other way. You remember how I got the generalissimo everything he wanted?” she inquired in what Alsop characterized as “sweetly stern” tones. Alsop panicked. “I cannot,” he said, “recall feeling so trapped socially on any other occasion in my life. Fortunately, I remembered one of my mother’s… contemporaries,” a lady whom he claimed to have heard “converse at great length without using a single word. Her method was to intone ‘Mmmmm mmmmm’ emphatically or soothingly or with horror… but always noncommittally. So I borrowed this device.… I do not think that Mme. Chiang ever forgave me, and I myself came away with a deep conviction that Mme. Chiang would do in her brother T. V. Soong whenever the opportunity arose.” Alsop, who always sided with T.V. in the Soong family feud, did not like his youngest sister: “I finally came to the conclusion that Mme. Chiang was one of the most coldhearted and self-centered women I have known,” he said. “At base, she always struck me as artificial. I often had the impression that I was being purposely charmed, the purpose being to make later use of me.”

  In spite of his inability or unwillingness to try to convince the president of the necessity of ground support for the air forces, Stilwell had managed to present his point of view to a number of senators, congressmen, members of Roosevelt’s cabinet, and several leading journalists while he was in Washington. Churchill asked him to come to the British Embassy to, as he put it, “get acquainted,” and since Stilwell felt he was speaking to someone who wanted to hear what he had to say, he spoke well and impressed the British prime minister. Churchill not only agreed with him on the lethargy and defeatism prevalent at British military headquarters in India but later said that he had “great respect and liking for General Stilwell.”

  Returning to China, Stilwell still faced the difficulties of getting deliveries over the Hump up to 10,000 tons a month. One of the big problems was morale. Not only were the C-46 planes “full of bugs,” but the men knew that the Chinese were reselling on the black market much of the material the Americans were risking their lives to transport. American soldiers called the U.S. government “Uncle Chump from over the Hump” and referred to Chiang Kai-shek as “Chancre Jack.” According to one veteran of the war, “The planes were being seriously overloaded with blackmarket material to be sold on the streets of Kunming. The result was that we had an inordinately high number of crashes as time went on, and sulfanilamide [an early antibiotic] could be bought on the streets of Kunming while Chinese troops in the field were dying of infection.” According to Tuchman, there was apparently nothing “from medicine to half-ton trucks [that was] not for sale on the black mar
kets of Kunming,” and this sort of thievery “could hardly have been accomplished without American connivance.… Smuggling of gold, sulfa drugs, foreign currency, cigarets, gems and PX supplies was carried on by American Air Force, Army, Red Cross and civilian personnel for an estimated take of over $4,000,000 by the end of 1944.”

  Kunming, capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, had become the home of Chennault’s AVG after the loss of the Burma Road. Called by White a “medieval cesspool,” it was an even more primitive city than Chungking before the war—a major center of the opium trade, where rich families bought female slaves for their households and prostitutes were kept confined in a street cut off at each end by chains, called Slit Alley. Now it was riddled with black marketeers who dealt in goods stolen by the Chinese and Americans. “Some of the Chinese here are planning to co-operate with a few Americans in the Volunteer Group with the hope that they could utilise the American Volunteer Group trucks to smuggle goods into China from Burma and sell them here at market price,” Chennault was informed by his secretary in December 1941. Meanwhile, everything from raspberry jam to liquor, cigarettes, and toilet articles vanished from the depot where supplies were kept for the use of the AVG.

  Kunming was also a town of bordellos. Since the Japanese, Prussians, and French all “had whorehouses for their troops,” Chennault decided that the Americans needed one too. As he explained to White, “That whore-house of mine, that’s worrying me.… The boys have got to get it, and they might as well get it clean as get it dirty.” With only eighty planes at his disposal, half of which were too often grounded because their crews were hospitalized with venereal infections,* the commander of the American Volunteer Group sent a U.S. plane with a medical team to India, where they recruited twelve young women, who were inspected by the medics, found to be free of disease, and brought back to Kunming. Stilwell got wind of what was going on and ordered the establishment closed. “Officers pimping,” he wrote in his diary. “Hauling whores in our planes. Sent for Chennault. He knew.” Stilwell also recorded his version of the facts in his “Black Book” under a section titled “Chenault’s whore-house,” noting that on June 24, 1943, he had received a wire from Dorn saying that a Captain Reed was in India, “selecting tarts for 14th A.F. house in K.M. [Kunming]. Capt. Howard brought in 13 on transport plane to-day.… Questioned Chennault.… Admitted he knew that Chinese were setting up house for e.m. [enlisted men].… Denied that any officer was concerned.… Dorn told Glenn to investigate & ship women back.… Undoubtably [sic] Chennault knew officers were concerned. He probably sent Reed down to pick the damsels. He probably authorized the transportation. He probably lies to me about it.— Radioed G.C.M. [George C. Marshall].”

  Despite his feud with Chennault, Stilwell managed to increase tonnage over the Hump from 3,000 tons in May to an amazing 13,000 in November. The gain was accomplished at the expense of the construction of a road from Ledo in northeast India to connect with the Burma Road in China—a project started just before Stilwell’s appointment—from which manpower and equipment had to be diverted to work on the airfields. But by the middle of the summer of 1943, it was obvious that no matter what was done, the capacity of the road and the Hump together would never suffice to provide enough fuel and supplies for both the troops on the ground and Chennault’s air transport. It was therefore decided to build a pipeline from Calcutta to Kunming. It would be “the longest pipeline through the worst territory in the world” and was referred to as “Pipe Dream” by those given the task of building it.

  There was one problem, however, that amused Stilwell, who was far from the most forgiving man on the planet. It was Chennault, who, now that his demands had been fulfilled, suddenly started “screaming for help” because, in his words, “The Japs are going to run us out of China!” Stilwell laughed, noting in his diary that six months earlier, Chennault had sworn that “he was going to run them out.” The reason for Chennault’s panic was that his attacks on Japanese merchant shipping had incited Japan into bombing Chinese air bases—exactly what Stilwell had always predicted would happen.

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  My Chinese friends sometimes asked, “Why do you Americans work with a man like Tai Li?”

  —OLIVER J. CALDWELL, OSS OFFICER

  MADAME CHIANG did not return from America to China until the summer of 1943, when she had what the local newspapers optimistically called “a joyful reunion with her husband.” Although she came home in the same style as she had left—courtesy the U.S. Army Air Forces—it had taken more than a dozen letters from Harry Hopkins at the White House, the chief of the Air Staff of the War Department, and the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces to arrange her trip and the transport of her luggage with her nephew David Kung. “The President wants her to have a DC-4 take her all the way back to China,” Hopkins wrote General Arnold. “It will be necessary to have two bunks prepared in the plane.… I know this is an awful headache but I am afraid it has to be done.”

  With all the preparation—arranging to have the same TWA crew as had flown her from China to the United States, making sure the berths were surrounded by drapes and so on—the flight home turned out to be a precarious one. The plane hit bad weather over India, headed for Calcutta, and, in trying to find the Gaya airport northwest of the city, got in touch with the enemy instead. “We thought we were going to land at Gaya, but the pilots suddenly discovered that we were over Japanese-occupied territory in Burma,” Madame later explained. Asked if she had been informed of the danger, she answered that she “was feeling so sick at that moment that I did not care where we landed.” According to one of her American pilots, “The weather was rough as the devil and she was in a pretty bad way. She didn’t say a word the entire trip.” From India, the plane proceeded over the mountains at an altitude of 24,000 feet to Chungking, and during the last leg of the flight, the passengers had to use oxygen masks. It took seven days and five nights to get her home, and she arrived in Chungking complaining of being “weary and airsick.”

  “The generalissimo had flown to Chengtu to meet me,” Madame Chiang said, “as he did not know we were going to land in Chungking. I was so sick on arrival that I did not mind not being met.” Her niece Jeanette felt differently. There were only two American attendants at the airfield when they arrived. “Where the hell is everybody?” she asked as she helped Aunty May into the Americans’ station wagon, pulling one of the men (a mechanic) out by his arm and taking the wheel herself. She then put her aunt, who was by this time in tears, into the car and drove away. In true Chinese fashion, Madame’s arrival, complete with welcoming husband and appropriate fanfare, was later reenacted for the newsreel cameras.

  IN SPITE OF the fact that she was still pale from her ordeal at a news conference held six days later in the darkened drawing room of her home, May-ling had managed to be at Chiang’s side two or three days earlier, dressed in a chic sleeveless print dress, for a ceremony at which he received the American Legion of Merit. “Peanut was half an hour late,” complained Stilwell, who was furious at having to bestow the award, which Roosevelt thought would make up for a lack of supplies. “… He was ill at ease during the performance. I read the Chinese citation & made my speech in Chinese.” Stilwell later wrote his wife, “When I grabbed his coat and pinned it on, he jumped as if he was afraid I was going to stab him.” Stilwell also had a few choice words for May-ling: “Mme. present & full of herself & what she’s going to get out of the President. Said he had promised two divisions.” Stilwell was annoyed that the crew of May-ling’s plane had arrived at the ceremony with Chinese decorations around their necks, bestowed in appreciation for their performance on her trip home. “What a gag. They get decorated, but nobody in our headquarters has been except E*… for being in a plane crash.”

  Another jaundiced reaction to May-ling’s homecoming came from sister Ching-ling: “M.L. looks so Fifth Avenue and behaves so ‘400’ that we have found she has undergone a great physical change,” Ching-ling wrote a friend in New York
.

  … She seems very adaptable and takes on the colors of her surroundings easily, in that way she is remarkably like Clare Boothe. Whatever one may say, she has given widest publicity to China’s cause and as she herself remarked to a gathering of admiring throng, “I have shown the Americans that China is not made up entirely of coolies and laundrymen!” I suppose China must be grateful for that. The crew of her plane related what a lot of trunks she brought in, and the amount of tinned food, etc. But I haven’t seen a single can of baked beans or… pair of shoes. I am told that she has no room for them so my shoes will be brought on “the next plane.” Hooray!… after the war, I suppose. Seriously the immediate result of her trip was the decision by the Gissimo to start an anti-CP [Communist Party] campaign in America.

  Ching-ling’s pique may well have been based on the fact that she too had received several invitations to visit the United States but had not been allowed to go abroad. She believed that this was a result of a report she had written, published in the British Labour Party magazine, Reynold’s Weekly, and sent to various people in the States, complaining about Chiang’s blockade of Communist troops in Yennan and calling for its removal. She had subsequently endured visits from three KMT leaders who had criticized her for “washing China’s dirty linen in the foreign press.” According to U.S. diplomat John Service, she knew that her family was “very annoyed” with her, but, as she put it, “All they can do is to keep me from traveling.” Service, who served as second secretary at the U.S. Embassy, described Ching-ling’s life in Chungking as being “outside the pale. People,” he said, “were able to get in and see her, but they had to be willing to be in the doghouse.”