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By Root 1027 0

the American war effort in China, to which many men posted to the theatre succumbed, in this alien Oriental world where leopards and tigers were known to kill U.S. soldiers, who in turn hunted them with carbines. At the Hump airlift’s forward HQ in Kweilin, “the most lovable and abandoned town in the Orient,” some of the most skilled prostitutes in Asia had set up shop after fleeing from Hong Kong. Here, “silken clad girls420 with ivory bodies and complete devotion to their art” practiced it to the satisfaction of visiting Americans, but doubtful advantage to the war effort. Edgar Snow, no friend to either the Nationalists or the U.S., was nonetheless right to suggest that “the one abiding sentiment421 that almost all American enlisted personnel and most of the officers shared was contempt and dislike for China.” It was a rich irony of both national policy and personal behaviour that Americans perceived themselves as anti-colonialists, yet conducted themselves in wartime China at least as autocratically as the British in South-East Asia.

In October 1944, Stilwell became the most prominent casualty of American frustration and failure. Emily Hahn describes the general as “incapable—surely to an abnormal degree?422—of appreciating that there are more points of view than one’s own, and that the world is appreciably larger than America.” Stilwell refused to acknowledge that, whatever the limitations of Chiang’s regime, he must work through its agency. Rationally, of course, his view was correct. If the Nationalist army was to play a useful role in the war, it must purge itself and reform, in the manner of the Chinese divisions airlifted to India beyond reach of Chiang’s dead hand. Had the generalissimo reformed his forces as Stilwell urged, the destiny of the Nationalist regime might have been different. However, to imagine that Chiang Kai-shek could forsake absolutism and corruption was akin to inviting Stalin to rule without terror, Hitler without persecuting Jews. Stilwell’s demands represented an assault on the very nature of the Chongqing regime. It was futile to yearn for Nationalist China to be what it was not, to suppose that an American could override Chinese leaders, however base.

In the autumn of 1944, Roosevelt made one of his most bizarre, indeed grotesque, appointments. He dispatched as his personal emissary to China one Patrick Hurley, a rags-to-riches Oklahoman ex-cowboy who had risen to political prominence as President Hoover’s secretary of war. Hurley was a buffoon, loud-mouthed and verging on senility. An ardent Republican, he was also a prominent figure in the “China Lobby,” precious little though he knew of China. He came, he saw, he addressed Chiang as “Mr. Shek.” Finally, he reported to Roosevelt: “Today you are confronted by a choice between Chiang Kai-Shek and Stilwell. There is no other issue between you and Chiang Kai-Shek. Chiang Kai-Shek has agreed to every request, every suggestion, made by you except the Stilwell appointment [to command China’s armed forces].”

On 13 October, Hurley recommended Stilwell’s sacking. Roosevelt, who had earlier favoured replacing the general as director of lend-lease and chief of staff while retaining him as battlefield commander in Burma, acceded. Stilwell wrote to his wife of his delight in “hanging up my shovel423 and bidding farewell to as merry a nest of gangsters as you’ll meet in a long day’s march.” He said to John Paton Davies: “What the hell. You live only once and you have to live as you believe.” He quit immediately, without waiting even to brief his appointed successor, Lt.-Gen. Albert Wedemeyer, who had been serving as deputy chief of staff to SEAC commander Lord Louis Mountbatten. Wedemeyer arrived in Chongqing on 31 October, with a much more restricted mandate than his predecessor. He was to manage U.S. air operations out of China, “advise and assist the generalissimo,” but remain aloof from politics.

Chiang rejoiced. He perceived the removal of Stilwell as a triumph for his own authority. Yet after just ten days, Wedemeyer signalled Marshall in