OSS CBI Photobook 23, Part 2

 Part 1 is here. 

Now we take a look at the bottom half of that page of the PhotoBook.

 

The vast, empty floodplain affords no cover.

 

See that little kid in the background? My initial scan, prior to adjustments, was so dark that he was invisible. As the image got lighter, he popped out of the darkness into view and scared me half to death. Then I laughed when for sure he said Boo!  This goes to show the truth of the Longmire quotation: Sometimes you have friends you don't know in places you've never been.

 

 Berent Friele fixes that radio again. Those distinctive and sturdy chairs are still being made. 

 

Paul Cyr is at the tailor's shop, where they measure him for some new britches that will make him completely blend in just like when he was in France, and be totally inconspicuous, invisible to the Japanese.  Right? They're only 400 miles into Japanese-held territory. And there are only 20,000 Imperial Japanese troops approaching right now. And finally, those Imperial spies in plainclothes, wandering around town looking for OSS guys, will be no problem to spot. Right?

We see an interesting table base, as well as another of those chairs.

Sturdy utility chairs with pegs are still being made in China. Friends brought some back from the mountainous country of Guangdong province:

 

 Do they spot an American plane? another drop?

 The JACKAL Team Log written up by our EJZ is in the National Archives. Robert Mills kindly sent me the bound photocopy that the MMB authors had the Archives staff make for them. We can take a look at a few pages from the .pdf version that I have converted to .jpeg in Preview.

Note that the entire Team Log is in EJZ's handwriting. As he explains on his first page, the first few pages, dated May 22 to May 30 1945, while in his handwriting, are transcribed from the Zarembo's diary, reprinted in MMB 55-65. Team Log entries after May 30 are of EJZ composition.

May 23: Boris Chiu rides off to HsienHsiang to arrange a meeting of General Sun with Paul Cyr:

May 24: Cyr takes his Bride-cart ride to the meeting.  See MMB63.

May 25:  . . . Maj. Cyr and Lt. Chiu began work on the city itself. First studying a map of the city, Lt. Chiu went out into the streetsw to "rub elbows" with the Japs and find important buildings and bombing targets . . . 

 

 May 26, 27, 28, 29: see MMB 74-76.

 

When we pick this up again we will get Welo out and EJZ in.

OSS CBI Photobook 23, Part 1 - Of Arms

We have scanned about a third of this collection of photographs. When they start to seem repetitive, some detail always pops out during the post-scan image adjustments, and that little detail poses interesting new questions.

Here is the top half of Page 23. 

What are those things stacked in that niche?  Spare roof tiles?

Seems like it. So: remember Dad's wine cellar in the Marilla basement?  When he needed wine racks to line one wall down there, he got himself some loads of terra cotta drain tiles. Terra cotta was used before everybody with a wet hayfield switched over to plastic pipe with holes in it. Now that this image has come up, his choice of material seems perfectly natural!

So they are hanging around in Hsinhsiang, negotiating with KMT General Sun, checking around for Tojo's soldiers, and trying not to look conspicuous even though they obviously are conspicuous. Here we have Paul Cyr wearing his KMT outfit while spying around with his field glasses.  See page 64 of MMB.

The negotiations bearing fruit, KMT soldiers continued to be seconded to OSS. This contingent has been issued at least two kinds of weapons, as we can see if we squint at what they are holding.

 

 

 

The man at the far left, sitting in what appears to be the third row, has a Thompson submachine gun. OF the many models developed over time, the M1928A1 (with the "drum magazine" iconic of 1930s gangsters) was followed by the M1A1 (with the 30-round rectangular magazine, such as we can see by the man's right arm) and the M3 "grease gun" (cheapest and so more abundant.)

 

Thompson M1A1

 

Also from that Wiki article: 

"Thompsons had also been widely used throughout China, where several Chinese warlords and their military factions running various parts of the fragmented country made purchases of the weapon, and subsequently produced many local copies.

Nationalist China acquired a substantial number of Thompson guns for use against Japanese land forces. They began producing copies of the Thompson in small quantities for use by their armies and militias. In the 1930s, Taiyuan Arsenal (a Chinese weapons manufacturer) produced copies of the Thompson for Yan Xishan, the then warlord of Shanxi province."

To return to our photo, the man at the left end of what appears to be the second row has a different weapon, a Browning Automatic Rifle.  From its Wiki article:

Browning M1919A4

We see the distinctive holes for air-cooling, such as we can make out in our photo. We see no tripod in our photo; maybe one will show up in a future one.

Notice the ammunition box sitting on the ground to the man's left. The men worked in pairs, with one shooting and one feeding the ammo belt evenly so as not to jam it. 

The last photo at the top of this Photobook page is of this serious man - another man whose identity we will never know. Did he survive this war, and the wars after this?

 

 

 

 

OSS Special Operations in China, Close Reading 2: Chapter 1

Part 1 in this series concerns the front matter of the book, which by the way I will refer to shorthand as "MMB."

Here in Part 2 we take a look at the first full chapter, "The China Situation - Background for War."

The approach is to set the scene in Kunming, site of OSS HQ, where Mills et. al. landed to kick off operations after being briefed.

Kunming is a large, bustling, beautiful city in Yunnan, the province that occupies the southwest corner of China. Located on a plateau at an altitude of about 6,000 feet, beside a beautiful lake, it is the capital of the province, bordered by Tibet to the northwest, the Himalayas to the west, Laos and Vietnam to the south. The climate is said to be the best in all of China, and it became the location of summer palaces and a resort for Chinese royalty and high government officials. When we arrived, the province had a population of some seventeen million including farmers and refugees from war-torn areas to the east. 

(Here at Gene & Clara's, if you enter "Kunming" in the blog search utility high on the right sidebar, it will give you 13 posts having the label "Kunming." Even so, I have not been able to identify any photo in the Photobook as being of that city. Was that a matter of security policy, even in September 1945, when our EJZ was in Kunming being debriefed?)

MMB summarize the topics covered in the briefing:
          civil war between the KMT and the Communists;
          Imperial Japanese occupation of the eastern third of China;
          Japanese difficulty in moving westward, due to terrain and Chinese resistance;
          "puppet governments," i.e. Chinese localities, and their armies, set up by the Japanese and loyal to them;
          unapologetic use by the KMT of American forces and materiel to consolidate KMT position and control the Communist incursions;
          the position of the Communists:

The Communist Eighth Route Army under Mao was deployed along the western reaches of the Yellow River and in central China, and to the north and east toward Peiping. Mao's headquarters was in Yenan, about 300 miles north of Hsian [our Shian/Xian] where he sat out the war and waited for it to end so he could continue the fight against Chiang Kai-shek. When they were fighting at all, his efforts were directed against the Nationalists.

          Wedemeyer command of the China Theater from 1944;
          US Army Air Force, the 14th (successor to Chennault's Flying Tigers) and the 10th;
          complete inability of Chinese infantry to fight regular ground warfare, and the consequent reliance on guerilla warfare, for which the OSS trained contingents of them;
          Navy Intelligence operatives; SACO; Donovan getting the OSS independent of SACO;
          Tai Li, magnate of Chinese Secret Police.

Thus in a few pages we are given the background situation. Does it sound familiar to G&C readers? Well, I hope so! The R. Harris Smith papers gave us some nitty-gritty on these topics:  
  
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

This first chapter also describes forcefully what we would call the lack in China of modern infrastructure, most painfully of roads and motorized vehicles:

So, for lack of more effective transportation, OSS teams and their guerrilla fighters just had to walk, and walk, and walk! They almost always moved at night for security, carrying all their weapons, ammunition, demolitions, food and other supplies with them. It had been somewhat like that in the Burma jungle campaigns, but not so in Europe where vehicle transportation was usually available when you needed it. China was quite a change for us.

This recalls to mind a remark our EJZ made when asked straight out, on one occasion, what it was like for him in China. He paused, then said There was a lot of running.

MMB Chapter 1 also lays out some OSS organizational structure.
          Col. Richard Heppner, Commander of OSS Detachment 202, HQ Kunming;
          Functional branches, "carefully compartmented for information security:"
                    SI, Secret Intelligence, espionage;
                    SO, Special Operations, guerilla warfare and sabotage;
                    X-2, Counterintelligence;
                    MO, Morale Operations, psychological warfare;
                    MU, Maritime Unit;
                    Research and Analysis;
                    Field Photography;
                    Communications.

Finally, in this Chapter the authors emphasize that the support of Chinese people, military and civilian, made possible the success of OSS operations in China.

Remarkably, there were only five OSS personnel and several hundred of their Chinese Nationalist guerrilla soldiers killed in action during this last year of combat in China while accounting for 12,348 Japanese troops killed and the destruction of the enemy ground transportation system and logistics facilities. Reasons for the unusually low number of friendly casualties were their guerrilla tactics and most of all the wholehearted support from almost all civilian Chinese living in the areas of operations.

If you've read Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, about the 1942 Doolittle raids on Japan and the rescue and extraction of the US fliers downed in China, you have been given a full and vivid picture of the depth and universality of the Chinese civilian support of Americans there to fight the Japanese. With all the murder continuing to and through 1945, that Chinese support can only have grown.

Next up: Chapter 2, "The Ping-Han Railway."

I invite G&C readers to acquire personal copies of the book and turn this into a group read. Solving puzzles with missing pieces is not an outstanding talent of mine; fellow readers will contribute to a good time, and also catch errors!

from OSS CBI Photoboook 11

As we go along in this reading of MMB, I will point out ways to use the blog to find related matter. For example:

If you enter "OSS CBI Photobook," it will give you all posts having that phrase in the title, with the most recent at the head of the parade.

If you enter "OSS CBI Photobook 11" it will give you the first pages in the Photobook to have photos of China. Page 11 is covered in two posts: first here, and next here.

If you search for "OSS CBI Photobook 12," the results will be  then here, and finally here.

Page 12 has the CBI patch pasted on it among the photos.

Does that mean that Page 11 is not China at all, but rather a rest camp in Assam, taken prior to deploying to China? It's your turn to squint at those photographs again for clues.

Page 12 has several shots of a village, like this one, not at all Kunming-looking:

OSS Jump Instructors Near Kunming, in David W. Hogan, Jr.'s Special Ops Book; Albert Wedemeyer

U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II is an online book, in which Chapter 5 deals with Special Operations in CBI Theater.

Below is an excerpt from pages 124-126, in Chapter 5 (emphasis mine):

 "The establishment of an independent OSS branch in China and the end of the war in Europe in early 1945 greatly facilitated the expansion of OSS operations. After assuming command of the new China Theater in October 1944, Maj. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer pushed hard for control over all U.S. clandestine operations in China. His arguments before the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Donovan's constant complaints to President Roosevelt of Chinese obstructionism finally resulted in the creation of an OSS agency independent of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization and under Wedemeyer's control. Meanwhile, the end of the war in Europe enabled the OSS to shift materiel, supplies, and personnel, including trained operational groups, to the Far East. By the summer of 1945 four-man OSS teams were training and leading large groups of Chinese partisans in operations against Japanese communications in southern China.39

Even before the end of the war in Europe, OSS personnel had been attempting to organize Chinese commando forces for operations behind enemy lines. The idea apparently drew its inspiration from Wedemeyer, who, as a staff officer, had been involved in the formation of Darby's Rangers. Given the generally deplorable performance of Chiang's regular army in the field, the American theater commander hoped that smaller Chinese units, with intensive American training and guidance, might fight more effectively than the standard Chinese divisions. After some opposition, Chiang's government grudgingly agreed in February 1945 to provide about 4,000 troops, food, clothing, and equipment for a force of twenty commando units. Almost immediately, the project encountered problems. The Chinese soldiers failed to arrive at the training area in Kunming until mid-April, and the quality of those who finally came varied greatly. Not surprisingly, Chiang's generals gave little support to the effort. Nevertheless, with the Office of Strategic Services in China providing most of the supplies and equipment, the OSS instructors began a hurried eight-week course in weapons training, guerrilla tactics, and parachuting. By July three commando units, each containing about 150 Chinese and 20 American advisers, were ready for the field.40

On balance, the program was a success but came too late in the war to have much of an impact. Under the operational control of the Chinese military command, the commandos were to attack communications, to capture significant operational objectives, to gather intelligence, and to protect key facilities from destruction by retreating Japanese forces. Although the commandos later suffered severe losses in the field, they exhibited a fighting spirit rare in the other Nationalist combat units, but lack of coordination and their subsequent misuse as line infantry were major problems. For example, during an assault by three commando units and the Chinese 265th Regiment on Tanchuk airfield, the OSS-trained forces seized high ground overlooking the airfield but took heavy casualties and were forced to withdraw when the 265th failed to arrive in time to support them. An attack on Taiyuanshih by another commando unit and local guerrillas also failed for similar reasons. Nevertheless, by the time the Japanese finally surrendered in August 1945, the commandos appeared to have become an effective fighting force. The Chinese Nationalist high command, however, continued to mistrust these American-inspired units and showed little grasp of their proper employment.41"

Citations:

"39. Roosevelt, War Report of the OSS, 2: 364, 417-18, 440-47; Miles, A Different Kind of War, pp. 433-41, 455, 476; Smith, OSS, p. 266; Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Holt, 1958), pp. 252-53, 271. 

40. Roosevelt, War Report of the OSS, 2: 417, 443, 454-55; see OSS/China monthly reports in OSS, History Office Files, Entry 99, Boxes 65-66, RG 226, NARA; Memorandum of Information to the JCS, 10 Aug 45, OSS, History Office Files, Entry 99, Box 68, Folder 218, RG 226, NARA.

41. Operational group monthly reports and the Nanking Mission in Folders 207 and 208, OSS Activities China, 11 Jun 45, and Memorandum of Information for the JCS, 30 Aug 45, Sub: OSS Special Operations in China, Folder 211, all in OSS, History Office Files, Entry 99, Boxes 65-66, RG 226, NARA."

The photo below is linked within page 125, Chapter 5:

Officers and men of the OSS who instructed Chinese commandos in parachute jumping and commando tactics at the commando training camp in Kunming, China (U.S. Army photograph)

Fourth row, standing, second from the right:  Eugene Zdrojewski.
(My identification.)

Second row, seated, second from left:  Is this Frenchie?
Edit: Yes.

Third row, standing, fourth from left.

First row, seated, third from left.
This looks like Ralph Sebastian
from A.S.T.P. Chicago days.

General Albert Coady Wedemeyer pushed the Joint Chiefs
to get OSS in CBI out of the SACO.
(Widipedia photo.)

Wedemeyer on the Ledo Road.
(Source: LedoRoad site.)

Nebraska boy in China.
(Source: Romanus & Sunderland.)

Chinese Commandos in Training - Detail from OSS CBI Photobook 16 - Team JACKAL, Black Ducks, Transition to Kaifeng, Part 1

The OSS website "Primer" section has a short introductory page to Detachment 202.  This photo, from that page, shows Chinese commandos at jump training given by OSS Operational Groups instructors, using a crashed C-47 airplane.

Their hats, in particular, interest us today.  Their hats and uniforms are the same as those of the eager young soldier in Photobook Page 16, introduced in previous post.

Major Wu Ping Lin

 

The Americans and their allies taught the Chinese how to jump, how to fight hand-to-hand, how to perform reconnaissance of the sort required, and how to use plastic explosives.  The objectives were to harry the Japanese, impede their transport, keep them on the defensive in China rather than in reinforcement of their other troops defending the islands of the southwest Pacific, and gather information necessary in the event of an Allied land invasion of China to defeat the Japanese.