Last post we read the May 29 entry in the Team Log: At 0530 the trainer and six fighters arrived.
The flight in this trainer plane took several hours. So indeed it was at night, and therefore was tricky in itself. A fighter escort of six indicates awareness that additional trouble could arise from the ground en route. MMB78 has a photo of the pilot, Captain "1-B" Riley, sitting in the cockpit of that trainer plane with a pretty dark-looking sky all around. Col. Mills writes on MMB77: The air landing and pickup operation was risky. Chennault didn't say whether his Fighter/Bomber group had done it before but I gathered that it was the first time for them. I remember the pilot well who volunteered and flew our mission. He was a brave man to fly and navigate at night, even with an escort of six fighter planes. As soon as it was light enough for the pilots to see, he would fly 400 miles into Japanese territory, locate and land on a hastily prepared dirt airstrip that he had never seen, load the injured man, fill his tanks with gasoline in cans brought along for the return trip, avoid attack by the Japanese, and then fly back to the base at Hsian!
The May 29 Team Log entry continues the tale: The trainer made a beautiful landing and within a half hour the trainer unloaded its cargo of carbines, 45s, and Tommy Guns with ammunition, took Jerry Welo on board with letters and information and was up in the air and on its way back to Hsian.
(Again, note that this entry, penned by EJZ, was his transcription of notes by Zarembo and others.)
With the exfiltration of Welo done, the next day, May 30, is the day of infiltration of the rest of Team Jackal along with "44 bundles" of supplies and of arms to replace and augment those lost in the initial drop. Two C-47 transport planes made their passes over drop field AFFIX. The map symbol for AFFIX is the numeral 5 and a triangle.
"Eugene Zdrojewski, the replacement for Jerry Welo, was Field Photo trained and, as it developed, he became a writer of sorts, keeping the day-by-day Team Log all the time JACKAL was in the field. Zdrojewski was young, about twenty I guess, but at least he had been parachute-trained in Kunming and I believe this was his first combat assignment. He was impressionable and his language in the Team Log reveals thoughts that most of us had but never expressed: fear, excitement, pride in the job and in JACKAL, his team. And the same spirit of adventure that I believe motivated all of us out there.
The Team Log was always guarded and placed in a separate container with incendiary grenades that could be ignited immediately if capture was imminent and it was reasonably secure with those precautions. I didn't know that JACKAL had kept a Team Log until Paul gave it to me after the war. If I had known, I would have stopped it because, as you will see, it is revealing and would have endangered our entire operation in North China if in Japanese hands, not to mention the lives of the team members and the hundreds of Chinese guerrillas who were working directly with them and protecting Team JACKAL.
But the Log is important to this story and brings you closer to the attitudes and feelings of the team in the field. 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 they 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."
May 31 is the first day of EJZ authorship of the Team Log. That day will see them repairing and packing, and that night will see them disappear to a new location.
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