Chopin, Christmas, and "For Our Freedom and Yours!"

Lulajże, Jezuniu, “Lullaby, Little Jesus” is a traditional Polish Christmas carol dating from the nineteenth century, or who knows, perhaps earlier. Here is a lyric in original and in translation; very homey, yes?

Lulajże Jezuniu, moja Perełko,

 

Lulaj ulubione me Pieścidełko.

 

Lulajże Jezuniu, lulaj, że lulaj

 

A ty go matulu w płaczu utulaj

 

          Hush little Jesus, my little pearl,

          Hush my favourite little delight.

          Hush little Jesus, hush, hush

          But you lovely mother, solace him in tears

Here it is sung by Stefan Witas in a 1932 recording for Columbia. It is worth the trouble to follow the link and take a listen, as it is a great recording of a nice tenor voice, plus all the scratchy vinyl versimilitude.

And here is another, recent recording, perhaps a little syrupy, but with the advantage of clarity, sung slowly enough that it is easy to listen and read the lyric at the same time.

Fryderyk Chopin incorporated this carol into his first scherzo, his Scherzo No.1 in B minor, Op. 20. Why would he do that? And for that matter, why would he set a musical joke in a minor key?

In 1830, Chopin was in Vienna.  The Polish military cadets in Warsaw launched an uprising against the Russian Tsar. This November Uprising of 1830 involved Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Belarus, and went on for 8 or 9 months until its ultimate defeat.  This was their battle flag:

                                                     IN THE NAME       OF GOD

                                                     FOR                                AND
                                                    OUR                              YOUR

                                                                  FREEDOM

This is translated as  For our freedom and yours, and has been repeated in subsequent wars, and is repeated now.

Chopin’s friends persuaded him to remain in Vienna while this insurrection raged in his homeland.  So his compatriots were fighting for independence far away; he had TB anyway; he could not fight.  I think that, obsessed with the knowledge of the fight and feeling the agony of his homeland, he must have considered a musical joke perfectly appropriate.  It was a sick joke that Fate was playing on the Poles and their allies. The music speaks of frenzy.

Here is The Taking of the Warsaw Arsenal, Marcin Zaleski 1831.

This is easily imagined on hearing the scherzo.  Here is Artur Rubenstein performing.

The structure of the thing is all there to read about, but the stunner is what happens in the very center of it.  At 3’20” in this recording, the waking nightmare pauses, and reverie takes over.  We hear the melody of Lulajże, Jezuniu.  We hear just the melody, as if we were being rocked in maternal arms, or as if we were in meditation before the Manger, or as if we were at home at Christmas.

But then we are jerked awake, startled back to the present and to war.

There are times when, after reading the news for an hour, I deliberately send my thoughts back to the security and the wholeness of my own childhood – for I was lucky to have such. My father would look at me and say Pieścidełko – little dear one.

I see the twinkling tree and all the glowing lights; I sense the dark snowy winds beyond the curtains; I hear the music; I sense the fragrances from the kitchen; I notice the rustlings of dear ones moving around the house.  Yes, I go back there in memory on purpose, but then startle awake, jerk back to the present, where there is knowledge of protracted, seemingly distant, yet decisive battle.

Australian Warrior in China Admires His Yank Counterparts

Gilbert Stuart:

The OSS operational groups were the first American military men to achieve substantial success in training Asians.  Every last OSS instructor knew his specialty from A to Z.  Each had a record of success in his subject.  Therefore, he was given considerable independence in his teaching.

Each commando soon reflected his teachers' personalities.  And oddly enough, these tough Yanks who came to teach the Chinese how to kill also brough [sic] with them more brotherly love than many do-gooders I have met on Asian soil.

This is a quote from the 1965 book by Stuart and Levy, Kind-Hearted Tiger.

The passage appears in typescript notes made by R. Harris Smith for his own book, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency.

The Harris notes are in the "China" file in the collection of R. Harris Smith papers: Box 2, Folder 1, Hoover Institution Archives.


We have read quotes from Stuart and Levy previously, here.

A New York Times book note of June 1, 1964 describes Stuart as follows:

"KIND-HEARTED TIGER. By Gilbert Stuart with Alan Levy. 375 pages. Little, Brown $5.95.

The bold adventures of Gilbert Stuart, a British-born Australian who served with Chinese forces during the Sino-Japanese War, are detailed in this fast-moving story of his life."

In this blog we have been examining events, personalities, and assessments within a particular field of interest; we are going to continue with more particulars.  For background and the big picture, which after all we all need, one place to start is good old Wikipedia:

Second Sino-Japanese War.

Kunming, Julia McWilliams Child, and Tad Nagaki

Sisterhood of Spies is an account of women in the OSS in the European and CBI theaters in WWII.  Author Elizabeth P. McIntosh discusses China in her Chapter 19, Over the Hump to China.  She notes that Julia McWilliams Child, of whom we have read mention in R. H. Smith's history, was stationed in the OSS HQ in Kunming from early1945.  From pp. 296-297 of the paperback edition:

At the same time that new OSS women were checking into Chungking's Green Gate, the OSS advance base in K'unming four hundred miles south of Chungking was also expanding.  I flew over the Hump in a storm-tossed flight with imperturable Julia McWilliams, who calmly read a book while all the rest of us were preparing to die. . . 

The OSS compound was located on the outskirts of town, surrounded by high mud walls.  Before the war K'un-ming had been a resort town the end of the rail line from Indochina where French colonials spent their vacations enjoying this invigorating mountain retreat, the sparkling sunshine, and the medieval ambience of the walled city itself.  To the north was a beautiful lake with a fleet of fishing sampans.  Towering above the city was West Mountain, the landmark for Hump and combat pilots nearing that welcome safe haven, K'un-ming Airport. K'un-ming was also the end of the Burma Road, closed from 1942 to early 1945 while the Japanese controlled that country.  Vital military supplies were now arriving aboard lubering trucks caked with red clay from Burma.

Most of the women at K'un-ming headquarters had special operational skills.  Julia McWilliams continued the important job of organizing Registry material, as she had done in Ceylon.  Reports were coming in constantly from OSS field missions that were gradually spreading out to China's coastal cities.  One priority target was the pinpointing of prisoner-of-war camp sites.  Later this specific intelligence data enabled OSS rescue teams to zero in on these camps accurately and liberate Allied prisoners held by the Japanese.

The liberation to which McIntosh refers is specifically the rescue of Allied military and civilian POWs held by the Japanese as quickly as possible after the Japanese surrender, before the POW camp commanders had time to kill them.

The mission undertaken by Tad Nagaki, a Nisei OSS commando who rescued civilian prisoners held at a concentration camp in Shantung province, provides an example.  From an account written up years later when rescuer and rescuees maintained their friendship when back in the USA:

Reports had reached American headquarters in China the summer of 1945 that Japan planned to kill all Prisoners of War (POW). To prevent the massacre, seven-man rescue teams that included medics, communications specialists, and interpreters were hastily organized to find and evacuate POWs in China, Manchuria, and Korea.  

Determined to make one last difference as World War II came to an end, especially since so many lives were at stake, Nagaki immediately volunteered for the mission. As the “Armored Angel” droned toward Weihsien Concentration Camp in the Shantung Province, he remembered how he almost didn’t get the chance. 

It's an excellent story.

Lake Dian and West Mountain; Kunming

An earlier Kunming post includes photos of OSS personnel there to train the Chinese.  One of them I think is our EJZ.

VDH Lectures

Scholar and farmer Victor Davis Hanson recorded six lectures on aspects of WWII, prepared according the same approach he took in writing his recent The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.  Instead of straight chronological narrative, he considers war in the air across the entire span of the conflict; next naval warfare ditto; next the ground wars; next artillery.  These four themes - air, water, earth, and fire - come naturally to a classicist and military historian; treating them in the context of WWII is highly effective.

Dr. Hanson's fifth lecture, People, discusses the cultures of the various combatants, how their cultures affected their thinking and induced them to act, and what were some of the results.  These ideas are helpful in trying to understand the very specific history we've been reading about here in recent posts:

Looking for Log in All the Wrong Places
Nationalist Warlords, Ambivalent Warlords, Commies, and Americans
Fighting Idealists Find Raw Cynicism
"The Chinese Puzzle" Considered With Some Source Material from the Hoover
Mysterious Letter from Chungking

The final VDH lecture, "Ends," concerns long-term outcome and assessment.  All these lectures are preceded by an introductory talk by Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, in which he gives the widest context, setting the stage for the VDH lectures.

The series is available as a free online course from Hillsdale, one of several on offer.

Mysterious Letter from Chungking

"The Chinese Puzzle" is the title of Chapter 8 in the second edition of R.H. Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency.  We've considered some quotations from that chapter here in the Cynicsm post, the Warlords post and the "Chinese Puzzle" post. 

In R.H. Smith's "China" folder of materials for his book is a typed letter, 1.5 pages long, dated "Chungking - Nov. 22, 1944.  It is unsigned. The salutation is:

                                                          Dear Mr. G.

[Chungking at this time was the Nationalist Chinese capital, the city of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, his globally-lethal Secret Police Chief General Tai Li, and their Koumintang Party.  In this letter, one "old China hand" is describing the situation to another such, the mysterious Mr. G.  An "old China hand" is a European or American, son of diplomatic, academic, religious, or commercial missionaries to China, who spent his youth in the country; for some of them Mandarin or Cantonese was the first language.  Smith discusses "old China hands" quite a bit in his Chapter 8, but as far as I can detect on very suspicious close reading, did not quote or paraphrase this letter in it.  So although it obviously must have informed Smith's understanding of the situation in China, it has remained mysterious since November 1944.  Here is a bit from the first paragraph:]

. . . There is so much that must remain unsaid and such a vast and complex field to cover-and I am so ignorant-that I hardly dare pretend to have anything to say about the China of today.  But of one thing I am sure- it is completely and radically different from the Pekin you knew and the life that was lead [sic] there when you were a young man. . .

[Here is a bit from the second paragraph of this letter of mystery.  I am looking at a scanned image of a yellowed sheet of typing paper bearing the characteristic grey typescript, output of a partly used-up typewriter ribbon:]

I don't know how to start or to end in describing the scene.  Indeed I'm not sure in can be described- that is, it is not consistent; . . . things are so fluid that they don't permit of conclusions as to pattern. . . In the first place the Chinese don't hate the Japanese and never have- they merely hope in some vague way , that the Japs will go away. . . Second, the Chinese have little, if any conception of nationhood.  And the Party [the unidentified writer here refers to the Koumintang  Party] has not appealed to the love of China, but rather insisted on devotion and loyalty to the Party and its leader- a narrow and limited appeal in any event and particularly sterile in recent years because of the "reactionary", or better, moribund leadership from the Gissimo down. . . Third, the soldier and the army are still the lowest in the social and intellectual scale.  there is no conscription; not one of the members of the government has suffered any personal loss of sons or brothers. 

[No skin in the game, and on purpose!  Contrast even the monarchs of medieval and Renaissance Europe as they went forth themselves, or sent their sons and Crown Princes, forth to battle the foe across the English Channel, for example. Whether their expeditions were defensive in nature, or venal attempts at territorial expansion, they put their own royal houses at stake.]

    On the contrary, all have profited hugely and are prosperous beyond their wildest dreams so that the great majority of government people, plus the traders, merchant and business man, doesn't [all caps, X'd over!] want the war to end. 

The young Chinese doesn't enlist; he pursues his studies.  Only coolies and forced conscripts join the army- they don't join- they are dragged off to a miserable life without enough food or clothing and with miserable quarters, etc.

[So imagine these specifically-trained Americans, come to defeat the Imperialist Japanese who had attacked their own country and also invaded, rampaging and doing murder, this ally China.  Some of these Americans descended from the Mayflower colonists, others from refugees crossing the Atlantic in steerage holds only forty years before, others, Nisei, sons of ethnic Japanese-American parents who loved their adopted country even as it did not yet love them back.  They rode, on ponies and trucks, or flew in, to find a thrall-and-warlord based feudal society enmeshed in complicated, opaque, and deadly strategic traps. Their mission was to help these guys fight the Japanese.  Okay, but. . . Just imagine it.]

Another point.  I said that the Chinese don't hate the Japanese- indeed they don't hate anybody.  Someone said here recently that there hasn't been a shot fired in anger by the Chinese since Dec. 8, 1941.  He meant merely, the Chinese decided then and there, it was our war and they would let us carry the ball.

[Those are two distinctly different points.  Some hate the murderous invader, of course: just remember Nanking.  But can they shoot back, or are they disarmed, starving, and powerless?  The Chinese who "decided" to "let us carry the ball" are  not the ones fighting, they are the ones not fighting, but protecting their localized power and commercial interests.]

          - quotations from a letter in the R. Harris Smith papers, Box 2, Folder 1, Hoover Institution Archives. 

I wonder who lent the original to our author, R.H.  Smith.  Below the last paragraph of typescript is a phrase in manuscript.  It just says Please return b 9.9.3.

"The Chinese Puzzle" Considered With Some Source Material from the Hoover

"The Chinese Puzzle" is the title of Chapter 8 in the second edition of R.H. Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency.  We've considered some quotations from that chapter here in the Cynicsm post and the Warlords post.  Here is another sample.  From Smith, p. 247:

OSS intelligence files at Chungking (conscientiously maintained by a jolly amateur chef named Julia McWilliams Child) bulged with reports about the incompetence of the Chinese military command.  In November 1944, when Japanese troops began an offensive that threatened Chennault's air bases, groups of OSS demolition teams were sent to destroy equipment that might be captured by the enemy.  A fifteen-man team commanded by a 25-year-old veteran of Detachment 101 discovered three huge ammunition dumps that held tons of arms and supplies.  They were told the equipment had been collected and hoarded for years against a crisis in east China.  With the Japanese only twenty miles away, the bungling Chinese Army commanders were still zealously hoarding the materiel.  The Americans were forced to destroy the entire stores only hours before the Japanese entered the town.

Since this entire blog is Amateur Hour, I'll give my take on this.  Bungling is a misdiagnosis.  Those commanders were not bungling, they were sticking with the program instilled in them by their entire warlord-owned culture: obey, be quiet, do not stand out; your warlord awaits his opportunity. Within that context, they performed their parts competently, according to their cultural algorithm.

A contrasting cultural algorithm can be discerned in the actions of the mechanics and farmboys in the US Army in Normandy, who on their own hook modified their tanks so they could roll right through those deadly hedgerows.

Chinese infantrymen with the Koumintang were treated like slaves.  H.R. Smith continues:

Other OSS officers were sickened by the treatment the Chinese government afforded its own troops.  An OSS doctor who helped select Chinese soldiers for guerilla training described the conditions in their army as a 'crime against humanity.'

Where could Smith have found that quotation?  Well!  We now possess scans of Smith's notes for this chapter, thanks to the work and help of the Hoover Institution Archives.  Thank you, Hoover pros!  Smith is quoting Stuart and Levy, from their 1965 Kind-Hearted Tiger:

R.H. Smith typescript described as "Stuart and Levy, 1965, p.347": 

 When OSS began to recruit Chinese soldiers for a second Commando group early in 1945,  [Note that our EJZ arrived in Kunming in early 1945, to train Chinese commandos.]   the surgeon general for the Chinese OGs (John Hamlin) found the Chinese troops from whom he was to select - "Their bodies were covered with standard thin cotton khaki trousers and tunics.  Some still had straw sandals.  Most were without footgear.  All were weak from marching and malnutrition. Many also had dysentery.

Said Hamlin, "We can't accept any of these men.  They're dying on their feet.  Even in trucks, I doubt if they'll last to Kunming. This is a crime against humanity.

In effect, selecting any of them for OSS training was saving their lives for it would mean shelter and decent food for the commandos who were to be trained.  When they reached Kunming, they were marched to their first real meal in months.  Some of them had never eaten meat before.

                            - R. Harris Smith papers, Box 2, Folder 1, Hoover Institution Archives. 

I am taking another look at this image scanned from G&C's OSS CBI Photobook, noticing the details:

That photo is included in the post OSS CBI Photobook 15 - Southwest China, 1945-Reconnaissance, Part 4.  The Photobook is here at Trove HQ.

A Familiar Face at Niagara Falls

A recent post, "A Familiar Face," we can now enjoy in connection with this photo:

Click to enlarge for lots of nice details, including coolest eyewear.

This photo is the bottom one in the post "Niagara Falls." Thanks to Tye for drawing attention to this image.

Just the Right Issue of the Saturday Evening Post

Major Paul Cyr was in command of Team Jackal in China in 1945.  After the war, he wrote up several missions, including the big one on the night of August 9, for the Saturday Evening Post. He then gave a copy of the article to Frank Mills and to R. Harris Smith.

Copies of the March 23, 1946 issue are available on eBay; mine just came.  If you shop on eBay for your own copy, make sure you are considering a "full copy" of the magazine, not merely a detached cover photo.

Skillful cover art depicts the Windy City.

Notice the font used for the issue date: military-stamp style.
At this point not all our soldiers were home yet.
The whole country, not just the US Armed Forces,
was going through a lengthy demobilization.

It is going to take some time to post the entire article of two entire 11" x14" pages plus parts of four more.  The result will span multiple posts; although I certainly will link them together for reference, some readers might have a better time with the entire article in hand.

And the entire issue is quite interesting.  For ten cents the customer got work by Irving Wallace, H. E. Bates, technically skilled artists, and highly entertaining advertising designers.  The abundant ads are aimed at men and women, country folk and city-dwellers, military and civilians, young and old, dirt farmers, cattlemen, miners, mechanics, homemakers.  Americans were not all just in our information "silos" at that time; we were more aware of each other, of the lives and concerns of our countrymen in various walks of life.

Tips on Posting Comments

This post is going to have the label "FAQ."  I don't have a section or a Page for Frequently Asked Questions, but I'll use this label for posts about how to use the site.  All the labels are listed alphabetically in a big long list in the right sidebar.  Additionally, "FAQ" can be typed into the Search box towards the top of the right sidebar.

Well, now I have had fun taking a screenshot of a Comment section.

Observe the clickable link consisting of one word, "Reply."  If you consider my comment absurd, you can click "Reply" to create a new comment text box nested under my comment to which you are responding.  This duplicates my absurd comment and sets it visually right up close to your Reply. 

Observe the grayed-out words in your new text box, "Enter your reply," rather than "Enter your comment." You have a nested text-box in which to type "That is absurd!"

This Reply option is useful when there are multiple people posting comments, perhaps about multiple topics.

However!  Do not just hit "Reply"  all the time, as a default!  "Replying" to a Reply or Replies causes the software just to keep nesting the nested, and so on, over and over.  That makes unnecessary mess for readers to wade through, and also pretty soon becomes very difficult for the software to format.  It becomes so narrow as to be unreadable.

So most of the time, avoid "Reply" and use the Comment text box always provided at the bottom of the string of extant Comments.

When you have typed in your Comment, decide how you wish to be known on the blog post.  Drop down the little menu to see your choices. You can use your real name, a nickname known only to family, or be anonymous.  You can have a photo or not. If you feel you have made a mistake, and "Published" same, write to me and I can delete your comment and help you to post it a different way. 

Notice the option "Notify me" at the bottom right.  If you check the little check box, Blogger will send you an email message to say that follow-on comments have been made.  Nice, huh?  It works; I tried it.

At the bottom left is the "Preview" button.  It is optional.  Many people notice their own typographical errors more readily when reading something in "Preview" format.

It is helpful to the Commenter to avoid the understandable temptation to enlarge the text box by dragging downwards the lower right corner.  Do avoid that, as that will obscure the "Publish" button. Such is the flawed software.

Finally, you can launch your comment by clicking the big blue "Publish" comment.

So, nobody has to live in fear here.  I am the Administratrix, all-powerful and benevolent.  Should you wish to have a comment deleted or altered, email me.

Who Is This Beautiful Girl, This Veritable Queen?

The heavy cardboard frame with folding cover is in mint condition.  The frame is glued down solidly over the photographic print;  we cannot take a squint at the back.  There are no labels.

Indications that she is a First Holy Communicant include the white gown, hose, and shoes; white veil; Missal and Rosary.  Absence of a candle, such as we have seen in FHC portraits of EJZ and JFZ and MPZ, is not a contraindication in my mind, as candle and veil are an unwise combination, so it is best to let the boys tote those big candles.

Suggestions that this might instead be a Confirmation portrait include her mature appearance:  typical age at FHC is 8 years, while typical age at Confirmation is 13 to 14 years.  Additionally, her shoes have enough of a heel for a teenager, too much for an 8-year-old.  And look at that gold wristwatch over her elbow-length gloves!  Again, it seems unlikely for an 8-year-old.

I've never heard of veils for Confirmation.  Has anyone else?

Is she my Matynka grandmother, Clara Haremska?  Our CHM was born in 1903 or 1909, depending on to which document we give our trust.  Eight years of age would then be 1911 or 1917.  Fourteen years of age would then be 1917 or 1923.  Those all seem plausible to me from the look of the portrait details.  Also, CHM and all the Haremska women have high brows like this mystery girl.

Clara Haremska married Adam Matynka in 1925.  My Mom, our CAMZ, labeled the back of this 16" by 20" photographic print with the names and the date.  Thanks, Mom!

The print is curled and tattered with age, but remains impressive.

Adam Matynka and Clara Haremska Matynka, 1925

So, again, the woman above and below is CHM, my Grandma Matynka.  Is she our Mystery Queen Girl?  What do you think?

Clara Haremska Matynka, 1925

Now let us consider the Mostkowska -Zdrojewska options.  Here is the wedding photo of our JPZ and Julia Mostkowska.  The date approximately 1920; Dad, our EJZ, was born in 1923.

John Peter Zdrojewski and Julia Mostkowska Zdrojewska, circa 1920

Julia Mostkowska Zdrojewska, circa 1920

Mayhap Mystery Queen Girl is my paternal grandmother, Julia Mostkowska Zdrojewska.  What do you think? Her face seems more square, though.  And here, alas, we have another covered forehead.

Julia Mostkowska Zdrojewska

Is Mystery Queen Girl my paternal aunt Melania Zdrojewska?  Melania was born in 1933 and died about 8 years later according to the story from Dad/EJZ.  I suppose the portrait could be from 1941, but it seems less likely.  If Melania actually lived to age 13 and this was her Confirmation photo, then the year would be 1946.  Again, just from the look of things 1946 seems too recent a date for the photo portrait.  Finally, we know that Melania died in the 1930s while Dad/EJZ was a high school student at Orchard Lake.  So, scratch the Melania/Confirmation possibility with confidence.  Melania/FHC remains a possibility, if we allow Dad/EJZ to have misremembered, and that Melania died in 1941 when he was a college student at Orchard Lake, not a high-school student.

I hope somebody actually recognizes this photo.  If so, please let me know!  If not, then I invite the spirits of my ancestors to visit me and set me straight on this.  Let's talk, OK?

Fighting Idealists Find Raw Cynicism

Last post, on the RH Smith book, we considered an extract dealing with Xi'an and points north.  Here are another couple of nuggets that have, from the perspective of a little kid growing up hearing occasional remarks at home, the ring of truth.

(Note that the page numbers are different for the two different editions of Smith's OSS.  In the 1972 edition, the paragraphs below appear on pp. 284-285.  In the 2005 edition, they appear on pp. 260-261.  In both editions, these are the concluding thoughts of his chapter "The Chinese Puzzle.")

First, a report from an OSS team way up north in Manchuria:

Another member of the OSS team in Manchuria was 26-year-old West Point Captain Roger Hilsman, a veteran of Detachment 101 in Burma.  He came to Mukden in the hope of finding his father, an Army general captured by the Japanese.  He was happily reunited with the senior Hilsman at one of the prison camps, but not before he and his teammates discovered Russian soldiers loading the entire Japanese industrial machinery of Manchuria on trains bound for the USSR.  When the OSS men began to photograph the brick-by-brick dismemberment of Manchuria's industry (supposedly belonging to China) they were arrested by the Russians and finally expelled from the area under pain of death.  By the end of September, Colonel Stevens in Chungking wrote unhappily that "the Soviet entry was received here with profound discouragement."

 So, whose allies are the Soviets, now?  Hard to tell.


Second, an assessment on the general level of suffering of the Chinese at the hands of their own warlords and political factions:

OSS became accustomed to profound discouragement in its four years in China. . . Major William Lockwood, a Shanghai-born professor and China specialist who joined the OSS Research and Analysis unit at Chennault's headquarters in 1944, later reflected: 'All around them in China our soldiers observed such poverty, ignorance, and disease as they had hardly imagined.  Most of the people had never known, nor could they hope for, anything much better.  The Chinese armies. . . [were]  miserably equipped and frequently half-starved. . . Their leaders in many areas seemed less interested in using them to kill Japanese than to jockey for postwar political advantage. . . On every hand were merchants, landlords, and poiticos sitting out the war, leaving it to their allies to finish off the Japanese.  Meanwhile, they themselves waxed fat with wartime graft and profiteering, frequently at the expense of the Americans. . . they [the OSS men] found little to praise in Kuomintang rule and didn't know whether the Communists up north were any better.'

The hunt for the Team Jackal field log will continue.

Scanning and uploading of photos from the Photobook will resume, interleaved with discussion of chapters of Mills, Mills, and Brunner as we go through that, too.

I've just found on eBay a copy of the 1946 Saturday Evening Post that includes Paul Cyr's article about the Yellow River Bridge mission.  Most of that same article is pasted into the Photobook, on Photobook pages we have yet to scan.  However, the last several paragraphs of the article are missing!  Apparently, they were discarded.  All right, so this "new" copy is due to arrive here at Trove HQ this Friday.  Let's hope it's all in there.  I'll let you know.

Love,
Julie

Nationalist Warlords, Ambivalent Warlords, Commies, and Americans

Last post concluded with a mention of the R. Harris Smith collection at the Hoover Institution. This collection is described as including

. . . research material for the book by R. H. Smith, entitled OSS : The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley, 1972).

If you search the collection for "China" it turns up one hit:  "Box 2: China."  Could that box have, after all,  anything of interest to us in pursuit of Team Jackal data?  I took a look the old-fashioned way, by consulting the Index in EJZ's old copy of the book.  Anybody else recall seeing this book lying around?  I often saw him sitting on the sofa, reading it intently, but he said nothing directly about it.

While Smith does not treat in his book the Yellow River Bridge mission specifically or in detail, he does discuss the interplay between the Communists, the Nationalists, and the Americans in the area north of Sian/Xian, where they all met increasingly often in 1944-45.  In Chapter 6 of this 1972 edition, "The Chinese Puzzle," pp. 280-281, Smith describes the Communists staking out claims to Chinese positions in anticipation of the Americans' ousting of the Japanese occupation forces, and the Nationalists protesting, though not fighting any harder:

The American position in this dispute was a model of ambiguity.  Wedemeyer ordered American forces to aid the central government armies in the reoccupation of enemy areas. They were to provide transport to Chiang's troops and were authorized to accept Japanese surrenders on behalf of the Chiang government.  But, added Wedemeyer, none of these actions should violate the basic principle that American forces were not to be used to aid the Chinese government in a civil war with the Communists!

OSS officers were the first to see the absurdity of this dream of "neutrality."   In April 1945, forty-six OSS men set up headquarters at an old Seventh Day Adventist mission at Sian in north China, some 150 miles south of Yenan.

. . .

Dad was in that contingent.

The map of Japanese occupation at that stage of the war shows "Communist base areas"  throughout the central section of the the Japanese-occupied areas, plus areas just to the west in north China.

Take a squint at an enlarged image of this map and see Kunming, in Yunnan province in the south, just east of Burma.  This is the big base where men gathered for training after coming from Burma.  See Shian/Xian/Xi'an, in Shaanxi province to the north.  See the giant red-stipple area just north of that ancient city, surrounding Yenan and with a salient headed due south toward Xian and its railroad.  That is where Jackal went.

. . . 

R. Harris Smith continues:

In early August, the German-American colonel [that must be Kraus] who commanded the group (he was selected for the post because the local Chinese warlord had been educated in Berlin) began dispatching his OSS teams into the field.  These units encountered difficulties with Japanese and Chinese troops of all descriptions.  There was a thin line, for example, between Kuomintang loyalists and Chinese puppet soldiers who had fought for the Japanese. [!] One team commanded by a 24-year-old Jedburgh

[the team is JACKAL; the commander is Paul Cyr; the source is the Saturday Evening Post article we have here in the Trove]

 parachuted to their "drop zone" to find their "reception committee" composed of a "group of Chinese who were paid by the Japs - got their arms from the Japs and might easily be loyal to them."  The local warlord "had commanded a division for the Chinese Nationalist government;  when he was captured by the Japs, he commanded a division for them with the same aplomb and good nature.  It was our information that he was still in correspondence with Chiang Kai-shek, and would help if he didn't risk his own neck."  These puppet troops were only a temporary problem.  When the war ended, the warlord generals who had been traitors to their country abruptly realigned themselves with the Chiang government.  The Chungking regime accepted their support as allies against the Communists with open arms.

OSS had also become inadvertently concerned about growing Communist strength.  In the last month of the war, two OSS teams dispatched from Sian to the guerilla zones were arrested by Communist troops,  In both cases, the Dixie Mission at Yenan secured their release.  It appeared that local Communist zealots had acted without approval of Communist headquarters. Then in August dozens of OSS intelligence officers were sent into the northern hinterland from Sian to report on the local military conditions.  Communist troops, who saw these teams as tools for the Kuomintang, deliberately harassed the Americans.  In mid-August, the OSS commander at Sian [again, that would be Colonel Kraus] anxiously wired Kunming:  "Now appears all field teams face conflict with Communists in trying to carry out orders to occupy cities on Jap surrender and seize records. . . Request instructions on what action teams should take.  Suggest that if teams must fight Reds to carry out orders they be withdrawn to Sian.  Sincerely feel teams should not risk their lives in conflict with Reds.  Feeling in North China is civil war will start immediately after Jap capitulation."

Dad said that he and his buddies met up with Russians.  Stalin's army and NKVD were advising and training the Red Chinese.  Dad told me that during one of these wary, slow-motion encounters, one of the Russians took him to one side to beg him, plead with him:

Take me with you!   Please, please, take me with you!

Dad cried telling me that he had to reply:

I can't! I can't!


More tomorrow.
Julie

Looking for Log in All the Wrong Places

Mills, Mills, and Brunner's 2002 OSS Special Operations in China introduces Team Jackal, including a subgroup, or "echelon," consisting of "Zarembo, . . . Robichaud . . . and . . . Zdrojewski."

The authors confirm that Eugene Zdrojewski, aka Dad, also kept the Team Log for JACKAL.  The first part of that record, plus his hand-drawn maps and other notes, are now in the Argyle Trove.  The records here cover the period of preparation for the Yellow River Bridges mission.  The log and other records stop when the Bridges mission begins. From Mills, et. al. pp. 84-85 :      

The Team Log was always guarded and placed in a separate container with incendiary grenades that cold be ignited immediately if capture was imminent and it was reasonably secure with these precautions.  I didn’t know that jackal had kept a Team Log until Paul [Paul Cyr] gave it to me after the war. . . 

. . . I don’t know of any other operational teams in China that kept a log with this detail.  The standard issue blue-lined paper from letter-size writing pads is now getting yellow and ragged with age, but Zdrojewski’s handwritten entries in pencil script are clear.

I can picture him, sitting in one of the mud huts or in the rooms that had later in the walled compounds, writing down the day’s events as they unfolded during the months to follow, probably just before climbing into his sleeping bag to grab a little sleep with his .45 pistol and grenades by his side and a lantern or candle or an Army issue flashlight lighting up the scene.

Eugene Zdrojewski no doubt took the photo used on the jacket of that book.

So I wondered if the Hoover might have that journal as it continues through the mission, because I saw Frenchie's grinning face on a banner photo on their website on one occasion.

My inquiry to the curators of the OSS Archives at the Hoover received a very gracious response.  One of the Archivists performed online search of all Hoover holdings listed in the Online Archive of California. This search came up bupkis for search terms Jackal, JACKAL, Yellow River Bridge, Cyr, Zdrojewski.

However, when the archivist used search term OSS China, 80 matches were found.  She sent me that page, as well as pages of search tips for Wedemeyer and for Donovan.

Just to be sure, I've now examined all 80 of those collection listings.  These are listings of the contents of 80 batches of private papers donated to various  California academic institutions.  Some of them are pretty interesting; if you go to Online Archive of California and search "OSS China" you will see them too.  

But none of the listed contents in any of them relate to or discuss JACKAL.

The archivist recommends a return to the National Archives.  I know there is a drawer there with EJZ's US Army serial number on it.  So we will pursue that next.

However, next post will feature a couple of intriguing quotes from a different book, one I often saw Dad reading on the living room sofa, and whose author's papers are at the Hoover. The listing for his collection pointed right towards them. 

We've been looking for Log in all the wrong places, but there is something interesting to show for it.  Stay tuned.

Christening Dress, 1951

Marty's Christening was in the early summer of 1951.  Look, there he is, the cutest Mr. Magoo ever, obviously, in the lap of his great-grandmother Victoria Zdrojewska.  To their left are his grandparents, John and Eleanor.  To their right are his great-grandfather Ludwig and Dad, our EJZ.  Directly behind them is his Mom, our CAMZ, with corsage.

Marty's Christening gown has ruffles in plenty, as well as blue ribbons; you can see blue ribbon on Great-grandmother Victoria's lap, right next to the gown.

                                     
What a fine day!  They photographed 4 generations of Zdrojewski gents.

Clara made that Christening gown.  After the big day, she packed it up in a box, labeled it, and put it away.  It stayed put away for more than 60 years.

Marty last summer brought it over here to the Historical Preservation Society HQ, where I've finally brought it into the photographic studio so we can take a look at it. You ready?

The overdress of gauzy material, ornamented, is worn over a plain, sleeveless undergown of white satin.

A piece of white satin gives shine and substance to the upper part of the overgown yoke; lace borders that part, as well as the collar and cuffs.  White satin bows attach the satin ribbon streamers, two blue and two white, on each side.

Now let's examine the gauzy overdress by itself, followed by a few details.

Clara handstitched lace to satin collar band.

The satin underdress is collarless and sleeveless, with plain yoke and a couple of buttons at the back.  Both pieces have a great big vertical slit in the back, for uninstalling and reinstalling Marty in greatest possible comfort to him as well as ease to the installer.  That is way better than having to draw both long garments over his head.  I hope you are grateful for that considerate detail, Marty.

The box has a top of heavy, textured paper; it is dirty and uncleanable from sitting in attics all those decades.  But not only did it keep the gown quite clean, it also is the original box, which is something, and to top that off, it is labeled in Mom's handwriting.  So we keep the gown in its box.

I've had it hanging around here for a few weeks, so now I am going to miss the sight of it.  Come visit me here at Hx HQ and we can get it out again to give it  more study and admiration.