, @

isn’t proud of it.

J sverse guy but I’ve been
#’M as reasonable as the
thinking about the show-
job SACO did for itself and
Ive had all I can take. It’s
not too bad being a phony
hero, but it gets almost un-
bearable when it keeps you from
telling the real stories, the ones
that are twice as good as the
Navy put out, but good ina dif-
ferent way.

‘Sure, sure, we were all heroes
“Behind the Japanese Lines in
China.” When you're behind any
enemy lines, you’re a hero. It’s
automatic. We risked all kinds of
things like malaria and pink
toothbrush and maybe the Chi-
nese crud, but the worst risk we
ran was from boredom. Some

guys started hunting tigers and _

some set up establishments with
servants and routines that would
make punks out of Terry and the
Pirates. But not SACO. SACO
took itself seriously and it kept
pitching right down to V-J Day.
SACO was something special. It
still is, for that matter.

SACO was short for the Sino-
American Cooperative Organiza-
_ tion and it was a double-barrelled
outfit, half U.S. Navy and half
Chinese Gestapo, That’s right,
Chinese Gestapo.
commander was Tai Li, the guy
they used to call the “Chinese
Himmler”
of the Chinese secret police and
“commander of torture camps like

that one outside Chungking and ~

that other one at Tsung An in
Fukien. He outranked the Ameri-
can commander, Captain Milton
E. Miles, too, the guy we used to
call “Mary” Miles behind . his
back.

with Chungking to get intelli-
gence about the Japanese, The
Navy agreed’ to train and arm
guerillas for Chiang Kai-shek—
we called him “Chancre Jack’—
and he was supposed to gather
intelligence for the Navy. From
what’s come out since, the intel-
ligence should have been good.
The State” Department published
a book called the “Nazi-Soviet
Relations, 1939-41,” that tells on
page 305 how Matsuoka of Japan
was in constant communication
with Chiang Kai-shek, but I guess
Chiang kept his lip buttoned
about anything he heard from
Matsuoka because we never got it.

Just the same, the Navy kept
its part of the bargain. There
were a lot of American and Brit-
ish outfits “behind the Japanese
lines,” and they caught on pretty
soon that Chiang Kai-shek wasn’t

The Chinese |

because he was head-

From what I heard the deal was .
something the Navy arranged.

A Navy Vet recalls the time he put in with the -
Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) and
His chronicle is an unpublished
chapter of the Chinese end of World War II.

about to fight the Japanese and

‘he wasn’t about to let them do

anything that might antagonize
the “enemy.” This part of China
“behind the Japanese lines” was:
maybe as big as New England
with New York thrown in, and
there was plenty of fat living
there and no war, so those other
outfits settled down for a nice
duration, But not SACO. “Mary”

* Miles had his sights set on lots of

citations and decorations and a
big reputation, I guess he thought
he was Mountbatten, or Lawrence
of Arabia, or maybe “Chinese”
Gordon. He wasn’t any of those,
but he made his own kind of
mark, anyhow,

You got a lot of that “hero”
atmosphere from the first pitch
the Navy made for SACO in the
States. Miles’ boys went around

recruiting volunteers for “danger-

ous duty behind the Japanese
lines.” They didn’t say much—it
was too hush-hush for that—but
the way they said that little made
you think of Dieppe and Guadal
and Carlson’s Raiders. They got
a lot of wild kids all ready to
hit any beach anywhere and they
did their best to keep the kids
feeling just like that. The way
Miles’ recruiters told it, you prob-
ably wouldn’t ever get home, but
your folks would get the Navy
Cross at least and Hollywood _
would be sure to make a picture
about you. ;

The training was like that, too.
They took the kids doWn to a
secret camp in Virginia and
worked their cans off giving them
commando stuff and _ obstacle
courses, and every second word
was about security. Every first
word was about how to fight a
Japanese soldier when you woke
up‘with him pinning you to the
bed with a bayonet. Before they

ever left the States, those kids
“were ready to tackle the Kwang-

tung Army personally.

Going overseas it was the same,
There was a commander—I’ll call
him Firestone—in charge of that
first batch and he kept telling
the kids how tough they were and
how tough they’d have to be until
they were all walking around
with their shoulders hunched up
around their ears trying to pick
fights with the merchant seamen
and the dogfaces on board,

The training camps were start-
ed and the kids began teaching
Tai Li’s secret cops all the stuff
they'd learned in Virginia. The
Tai Li outfit was called the
‘Loyal, Patriotic Army,” and it
was supposed to be fighting Jap-
anese as fast as it graduated from
the SACO schools. But for a long

ot be Meee ie

ane St SS Yh AS 2k. Sys i

“| helped to train
—Chiang’s new Gestapo!

By JACK BARKSDALE

time the stuff it did was strictly
between Tai Li and Chiang Kai;
shek. The “Army” would take off
toward the east every two weeks
or so, and it would come back
later and report a lot of dead
Japanese, but no Americans were
allowed to see any of the bodies.

The Tai Li generals had a very
nice patter to hand the American
officers.

“You have done enough,” they
would say. “You have trained us
and given us weapons. We can-
not allow you to risk your lives.”

Well, bud, you can imagine how
those wild kids felt, when they
heard stuff like that!

Personally, I always took the
peasants’ word about the “Army.”

They said, “If we must be oc-
cupied, let it be by the Japanese.
They are devils and they steal,
but they have discipline. After
them, the puppets are most de-
sirable, for while they steal more,
they are still under Japanese
discipline. Next come the troops
of ‘old Chiang’ which steal.even’
more and have been less discip-
lined. But worst of all are the
Loyal, Patriotic Army whose men
steal, burn, rape and murder
without any restraint.”

e@

Which was about what you’d
expect from a bunch of trigger-
happy _ secret cops overloaded
with carbines and tommy guns
and ammo. Some of the kids were
finding out about these Tai Li
characters and the things they.
found didn’t make them happy.
One of the first of them was a
bo’sun’s mate from Baltimore,
name of Tucker, a guy that could
make a playing-card dance on the
ground with the fire of his tom-

- my-gun,

He told me, “The way I get
it, we’re just training these finks
to go out and kill other Chinese.
My father’s a union man and [I
don’t figure to spill my blood for
anything like that. I don't even
figure to give it my time.”

Then there was a couple of oth-
ers that got gassed-up one night

and left their base in Chekiang >

to go into a little town, It was
late and the streets were empty,
so these guys got to wandering

around the main .square. They -

bumped into something they first
thought was a basketball hanging
from a post, but when they looked
again they saw it was a man’s
head, still fresh and bloody from
where it had been hacked off. It
was about the same time the Tai
Li interpreter caught up with
them and they asked him about
Tt

“A bandit,” said the interpreter.
“A Communist bandit. Come on.
Let’s go back.”

There was a Navy supply of-
ficer, name of Morgan, that found
out a couple of things, too. He.
was turning over a bunch of car-
bines to the “Army” when the
Tai Li general asked him not to

take them out of the cosmoline,

because in their original packing
the carbines could be stored
longer. The general was fighting
a different war from the one we
were fighting, just like Chiang

‘Kai-shek, He was fighting the

war that’s in China today.
Toward the ,end of the war,
things changed a little bécause
the kids kept yammering soi much
for some of that “dangerous

SEE 5 LAR!

duty” that the Tai Li generals let
a few of them go along on some
of the operations. The reports the

kids. brought back were different
from the ones the Tai Li generals
had been bringing back before.
& a

According to the kids, what
they did was to sneak up to some
place about a mile from a Jap-
anese position, open fire, and then
run like hell when the Japanese
fired back. One guy, an officer,
went along on a bridge-blowing
expedition because he was sup-
posed to be an expert with explo-
sives but he never asked to go
again.

He said he gave a lecture on
the proper way to set the ex-
plosive against the bridge and
set it off, but when they got to

_ the bridge, the Tai Li officers

used a method of their own, He
said they caught a dog and tied
the explosive around it and then
lit the fuse and chased the dog
out on the bridge. The blast blew
the pooch all over the country but
it didn’t even scratch the —
on the bridge.

It was quite a while earlier that
“Mary” Miles made his big trip
to Foochow back before the Jap-
anese ‘occupied the city. He was
just as security-conscious as
Firestone and just as smart, He
disguised himself as an American
missionary and took a sampan
down the Min River because he
thought it wouldn’t be safe for
him to ride the passenger-boat

“that went down every day. When

he got there, he took a little house
outside town and started playing
cloak-and-dagger. He’d been there
about a day when the Foochow
garrison commander visited him.
The Foochow general was unpop-
ular with Tai. Li, so he didn’t
know about the security angle. A
guy told me he asked Miles,
“Why, Captain, why don’t you
come on into the city? We've had
a banquet prepared for you since
yesterday and we want to enter-
tain you.”

The Foochow general had heard
that Miles was coming long be-
fore “Mary” even stepped into
the sampan,

In 1944 the Japanese occupied
Foochow, but in the Spring of
1945, they decided to move out

“again and SACO got orders from

Chungking to stage a real show.

Miles must have pressured Tai’

Li into letting his kids get some

» action, for a bunch of them were

assigned to go along with a couple

.of thousand of the “Army” troops

to re-take the city for Chiang
Kai-shek. Of course, the word
had been around a month before
that the Japanese were going to
withdraw ‘anyhow.

But the Tai Li generals weren’t
taking any chances. The Japanese
started out the north side of the
city, so the “ y” osted itself
on the south ‘side and let the
Foochow general do the fighting.
Then, while the Foochow general
was engaged, the “Army” march-
ed in from the south and “liber-
ated” Foochow. I got in Foochow
the evening of that day and the

_ kids with the “first wave” told

me they hadn’t seen a single Jap-
anese. Later, some of them found
five or six Japanese stragglers
and killed them. The kids didn’t
like to talk about it afterward

and they said they wouldn’t have
killed the Japanese if they hadn't
been all tensed up.

Se

Whatever the kids thought
about it, the Foochow “campaign”
was the biggest operation of
Miles’ Rice-Paddy. Navy and up
in Chungking he made the most

of it. He held an off-the-record

press conference to make sure
everyone heard about it, and he
recommended for citation all the
American personnel who had
been there, He must have figured
that if all the kids were heroes,
the Navy would understand that
their commander was a real big-
time operator.

Then the war ended before any-
one expected it
descended on Shanghai. Decora-
tions and promotions were flying
around till hell wouldn’t have
them. and. “Mary” Miles, now a
rear-admiral, became the fair- —
haired boy with all the foreign
correspondents who flocked in
from the Pacific because he could
give them more wolf-stories about —
adventure among the “guerillas”
than anyone else. The Tai Li
characters knew a good thing and
they backed up Miles’ wolf-stories
with figures and “facts.” SACO
issued a compilation of the
bridges it had blown up and, I'm
telling you, if there'd been any
truth to that list, the civil war
wouldn’t be going on in China
today, Nobody would be able ake
go anywhere.

The whole atmosphere of

Shanghai during the first couple © __

~ of weeks after V-J Day was some- :
thing you wouldn't believe. Of
course, everyone knew the war
had been won out in the Pacific,
but somehow there were so many ~
Pictures of Chiang Kai-shek in —
the streets and so many stories —
of Chennault and SACO in the
newspapers, that you might get
the idea they had won the war.
You might, that is, if you hadn’t
been doing “dangerous duty be-
hind the Japanese lines.”

After two weeks, though, the
show was over for “Mary” Miles. |
Admiral Kincaid brought the 7th
Fleet into Shanghai in the middle
of September and sent Miles
home. The correspondents were
broken-hearted because the SACO
Public Relations Officers had —
been doing most of their work for —
them. One of them asked about
Miles at one of Kincaid’s press
conferences. I was jawing with

this correspondent in a bar when

he told me what Kincaid said.

3k ;
“He didn’t leave any doubt,”
the correspondent told me, “that
he’thinks Mary is nuts. He said
Miles had gone back for trent .
ment in a sanitarium.”

There were guys in SACO who
could have saved the Navy the
price of a psychiatrist.

Would think ai thint weil aededel

have sawed SACO off at the

pockets for good, but according
to what I hear, they’ve still got
SACO in China today, bigger than
ever, operating with the “Loyal,
Patriotic Army” against the Chi-

nese Communists. Well, if they

ever start asking for volunteers
for “dangerous duty” behind
somebody’s lines, take a tip from
me bud, and stand silent and
steady in the ranks. If you’re go-
ing to be a clown, get on the radio
where they pay you for it.

EACIEIO TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 10, 1948—PAGE 5

Rigen

and SACO