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.

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

 

Pages 21 and 22 show us Hsian, I surmise, with many scenes of hanging around, spying on stuff, trying to figure out who is who at least for the moment, being unavoidably conspicuous, and taking pictures. They must have had a lot of film. Above is the top part of Page 21.

I would say that the man in the photo above is Berent Friele. In MMB his photo is on p. 52. We saw him on Photobook Page 17 ; the photo from that post is below.

 Now, what about the lady in the photo with Friele? Is that Julia Child? If so, the location would have been back southwest, in Kunming. Elizabeth McIntosh in her book Sisterhood of Spies describes the Kunming billet for the OSS ladies as bungalows surrounded by flower gardens. In that photo, I see flowers and foliage, not dust like you see in Hsian.  Below are two photos of Julia Child from Kunming time:

 The photo below is from the wonderful site Pacific Paratrooper.

 So, what say you, dear readers? Is that Julia McWilliams, later Child, hanging out with Berent Friele in Kunming? with the photo somehow sliding over to Photobook Page 21 set in Hsian?

 

  

From the jump plane, a photo of the P-51 Mustang fighter escort in close formation.

 

Chu and Friele, above.

Paul Cyr, above.

Eugene Zdrojewski, above, catching some rays. 

Bottom part of Page 21, with the crazy-quilt style of photomontage continuing. It was a popular style at the time; I first noticed it in Mom's Kensington High yearbooks. Mom put this book together in 1946-47.

The wall above could well be that of Hsian. MMB 31-32 describes Hsian as surrounded by an ancient, massive stone bastion similar to sections of the Great Wall to the north. The wall is 30 feet high, 20 feet wide and is so wide and solid that good-sized trucks could be driven on top.  It formed a rectangle two miles wide and three miles long around the city . . . 

 

Above and below we see recruits for the local unit of Chinese who hated the Japanese invaders and so would fight them with the Americans.

Yep, Dad, it's a long way from Catalina, not to mention the University of Chicago and the Lake shore.

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

 

 The second half of Page 20 includes several portraits and a jump shot.

 

Boris Chu? That's my guess. He was among the four JACKALs in the first sendoff from Hsian to near Hsin-Hsiang. MMB page 47 specifically mentions him as interpreter for that subgroup, or "echelon." The photo MMB page 52 shows them in the C-47, and "Interpreter" is second from left. Sure looks like him, 'stache and all.

Boris Chu is also described on MMB page 60 as donning a uniform of the Puppet Army to guard the closed cart sneaking Paul Cyr into and then back out of Hsin-Hsiang for that meeting with General Sun.

 Now, who are these men?

 

 

 

 

In the previous post, we referenced MMB Chapter 2 with its listing of the second echelon consisting of Zarembo, Jackson, Eisenberg, Zdrojewski. Now let's move on to MMB Chapter 3, page 87, with a different listing: 

 

Zarembo

Robichaud

Zdrojewski

Sung Cho-ching

Hsu Teh-chung

Tien San-Shang.

 

Hypothesis: Eisenberg was switched out at the last minute and Robichaud switched in. Those last three names are names of three of the men in the photos above, and in this one from the previous post:

 

 

Our EJZ writes in his JACKAL Diary, or Team Log, that The first three were the remainder of Team JACKAL. Zdrojewski came as Jerry Welo's replacement. The three Chinese officers were from the First War Area and were to work with Team JACKAL.

 

The original Team Log is in a drawer somewhere in the National Archives. Col. Mills asked the staff there for a photocopy to use as source material when writing his book with Dr. Brunner. Robert Mills has very kindly sent to us the bound copy of the Team Log. 

 

We will see more of it as we try to correlate it with the book and the photo collection, plus other things that are stacked up around here.