"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.