Mission Writeup in Saturday Evening Post, 1946, Part 4

 

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here. 

Part 3 is here.

 

First Lieutenant Tien Sen Shang, who lit the fuses as described, was on the list as member of the second echelon, or second drop - the list from the Zdrojewski Jackal diary we first saw in conjunction with our look at Page 20 of the Photobook. One of those photos is a photo of Tien. Which one?

 

 

Cyr describes Tien as having "sat down with his camera" as the fuses burned and the troop train approached. So it may be that Tien took the photograph we see on the dust jacket of MMB. 

 

Mission Writeup in Saturday Evening Post, 1946, Part 3

 Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here. 

 

 From an earlier post we bring forward this zoomed-in map of assigned areas near railroad bridges:

 

Northrup designed the P-61 "Black Widow" night fighter for the USAAF. The radar is in the nose of the airplane and the radar operator sits in a viewing area in the tail. Wikipedia has descriptions, schematic, and photos.

 

 

 

Mission Writeup in Saturday Evening Post, 1946, Part 2

Team Jackal first echelon jumped to their first field assignment in the previous post.

  

The caption reads: 'It got so cold . . . you could shiver and blame it on the temperature.' Two minutes after this picture was snapped, the men of Team Jackal took the dive - wondering what they would find below. 

 Part 1 is here. 

What happened next? Hsian sent a plane to evacuate Welo and bring out 3 Chinese officers and the next Jackal echelon: Zarembo, Robichaud, and Zdrojewski. 

 

 

 

  

Spoiler: The caption reads The mission ripped holes in Japanese communications and brought the night-traveling troop trains out into the open.  One of the seven bridges was torn apart by a thousand coolies and carried away. 

 

Back to the narrative:

 

 

 

(Note above the usual dysentery, worms, and fever. We have seen photo evidence of physical debilitation in previous posts, and we will see it again.)

 

     

. . . and?   and??  AND??        . . . bloody feet. 

 

The narrative will continue in Part 3.

 

Recall that this is scanned from the Saturday Evening Post of March 23, 1946.  If you like, you can get your own copy on ebay, and have in your possession the same issue of the magazine that our EJZ and CAMZ cut to fit in the Photobook we are going through. 

Mission Writeup in Saturday Evening Post, 1946, Part 1

Now is the point in our narrative to read Cyr's article in the Saturday Evening Post of March 23, 1946.  An earlier post on this article includes the remarkable and intriguing cover art, rendered by a skilled human being! As well, there is a brief description of the contents of the issue. It was a magazine written for and read by Americans in all walks of life - before we became, somehow, compartmentalized, and hence less familiar with each other. 

First we have the Editor's blurb, in the front of the magazine, page 4. This blurb is very blurby, jollying up the reader to be super excited about the wonderful article in this wonderful magazine. We'll see if that tone bleeds over into the article itself; we will have to distinguish author from editor as we read. 

Cyr, like Robichaud/"Frenchie," served in Europe first, then deployed to China.

 

Well, then, let us turn to page 18 and begin.

This background on Cyr, and these events occuring in the first airdrop into Hsin-Hsiang, are the subject of pages 47-66 of OSS Special Operations in China, our "MMB."  The list on page 47 of personnel in the inital drop includes a fifth man: Robichaud.

The team diary excerpt, on pages 55-66 of MMB, was written by Zarembo, who was not in the initial drop. Zarembo was part of the second drop. 

Previous posts on this subject:

Just the Right Issue of the Saturday Evening Post

OSS CBI Photobook 20 - Jump into Action 

OSS CBI Photobook 20, continued - Jump into Action, continued 

OSS CBI Photobook 21 - Hanging Out While Paul Cyr Meets with the Local Commander in Hsian

OSS CBI Photobook 22 - OSS Field Base near Hsian

We will continue the story!

Julie 

  

 

 

 

OSS CBI Photobook 22 - OSS Field Base near Hsian

 Here is the upper portion of Page 22. It looks like illustration the Field Base for the 30 six-man teams under command of Major Mills, with the base itself under command of Major Gus Krause.  This base, a walled compound formerly home to a Seventh Day Adventist mission, was located a few miles from the walled city of Hsian, as was an airfield of the 14th Army Air Force.  This Field Base is described in MMB pages 29, 30, 38, and 40.

The 200 men were flown in, from Kunming or wherever, to the airfield by transport plane. So this page is arranged to show the base compound where they prepared for team missions and trained Chinese. The team missions required transport from the airfield to a drop zone. Like his brother John said in his funeral oration, for our EJZ and his Field Photo buddies it was a matter of jumping out of an airplane and taking pictures all the way down. How many guys do you see in this photo? I see three in the air. I see one on the ground as a black dot next to his spread-out parachute.  Maybe two.

 

The two guards below carry curved hooks. Are they ready to drag open or shut a pair of large, heavy, fortified doors? This is classic guardhouse and gate design, with the narrow passageway controllable by guards at either end.

Looks like Dad. They're not eating too well. Mills describes how they found local cooks who snagged local pheasant to round out the menus. Good thing.
 

The local Chinese military commander in Hsian city provided troops. Many would then transfer to the OSS compound for training. Some Chinese troops a pictured below in the lower portion of Phtobook Page 22.

  

 

Berent Friele again, working on stuff.

 

The dark parachutes, below, were the red ones such as those pictured on the back of the jacket of MMB.

 This initial drop, May 22 1945, was to an area south of Hsin-Hsiang near the Yellow River. Map and details are to be found in the post Jump into Action.