Journey to Peking : A Secret Agent in Wartime China

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A SMALL CORNER

OF THE WAR

THE WAR did not exist in Hotien, a tired hill town about 120 kilometers up the coast from Hong Kong and inland a rough 30. The base of our operations in the Office of Strategic Services, Hotien ran about three hundred yards along a dirt pathway from the high mud wall of the school at the north entrance to the crumbling sentry tower standing guard on the path to the sea. Four hundred people, perhaps not that many, made up the population. Daily their brown feet joggled about the village, coolies burdened with caddies of rice, storekeepers tipping their short-brimmed felt hats at each other, guerrillas dressed only in coolie-blue shorts, carrying single Czechoslovakian hand grenades that resembled bowling pins.

The guerrillas, numbering about two hundred, were under the command of General Tong. They had orders from the generalissimo not to annoy the Japanese. "Do not fire on Nips," he ordered. "They will take revenge by killing our women and children. Wait." The guerrillas waited and cursed and smiled. Every harvest time, and even more often than that, the Japanese would come inland from their garrison in the sea town in small groups and forage for a few days in the river valley near Hotien. On their return to the garrison, they would bring back rice and pigs and women. Although when the rice harvest was small or had been well hidden by the farmers, the Japanese would replace the rice with women and they would eat and rape on their way back to the sea town. General Tong would notify us by courier when the Japanese were in the river valley and we would take to the hills. After the enemy left, we would return to Hotien and have a party, get drunk on rice wine and Hong Kong aerated water, and toast our victory over the Japanese.

I had volunteered to serve behind Japanese lines, to gather and transmit intelligence about Japanese troop movements inland and along the South China coast. As an agent of the Office of Strategic Services, I was now the nearest American to Hong Kong. Armed with several million dollars in Chinese money, kept in two large straw suitcases under my slat bed in the Chinese Roman Catholic mission in Hotien, my interpreter Shum and I would close the door and the windows every few days, remove one of the suitcases and open it, and take out forty or fifty thousand dollars without accurately counting it. Then we would stuff the money in our pockets, open the door, and wait for our Chinese agents to come in from the coastal towns to give us information about Japanese movements. For the information, we would give each agent about four thousand dollars. Usually we had about twenty agents working for us.

I didn't know much about intelligence. Neither did I know the Chinese language. I was ready to sit out the war behind the lines, far from Army regulations and the stupid boredom of the war in western China, but I wanted to be a hero, on my own terms, in my own fashion. It had taken me about two years to forget that I had been a student at Washington and Lee University, struggling with introductory physics, Victorian literature, and required gym three days a week, before I joined the Army. I had been determined to go on active duty and to avoid joining an Army or Navy reserve program; some of my friends were still in college under such programs. I wanted to fight. I wanted to win medals. I wanted a Purple Heart. I wanted not to be bored. After I joined the Army, I wanted to get as far away as possible from the Army, from subordination as well as command. I wanted to be exactly where I was, in China, away from the rule book of war yet immersed in a special kind of war. I could become a hero and not accept any medals. I could become a silent hero and tightly guard any distortions of the truth. If I wanted to, I could conceal myself at parade rest and pretend that my emotions were at half-mast; I might slide through the war, awake or not to the impressions and decisions that would make my mission a successful one. I wanted most to collect impressions and avoid displays of authority. I was determined to be a reasonable young intelligence agent, removed from unreasonable military situations. Molehills do become mountains when we treat them that way. China was a small corner of the war; and my corner, I hoped, would be an end in itself. I did not care to stand up and be committed for any other kind of adventure.

I wanted to be adroit and fearless, on my own terms. "Don't take any risks," my father had told me before I left home on my last leave, "and don't volunteer for anything. I was in the Army in the first World War and I know. Listen to me." Dad survived his war; I didn't believe he had followed his advice at any time. When I was six years old, he had given me his collection of medals to keep in my room. He played heads and tails with them whenever I showed them to him, never telling me exactly what he did to get them.

My OSS training had not occurred in a former country club in the suburbs of Washington; it had taken place not long ago, in China, in Hingning. Hingning was a refugee-crowded city to which I had first come after a three days' walk from a secret airfield behind Japanese lines. It was a pinched city, its streets were its seams, and poorly clad people walking hurriedly sprawled in mosaic colors on the dirt roads leading to the countryside. Penny-colored brassware hung at different heights from wooden pegs in shops and embrasures. Bordering the country roads, bamboos kept time with the winds; when the breezes came into town, they ruffled linen and cotton cloths hanging in the backs of shops. The tea shops, which served more than just tea, did a fine business, and occasionally you would meet soldiers staggering down the street, holding bottles of rice wine. The war was some other place.

Maj. Lucas Fletcher, who before the war had been a sales agent for the British and American Tobacco Company in China, was in charge of OSS operations in Southeast China. He and five American assistants lived in a walled compound just outside of Hingning. Major Fletcher briefed me: my chief concerns were to be the gathering and transmission of intelligence and meteorological data, knowing when the Japanese got too close, knowing when to give a party to obtain close cooperation, and, finally, how to make contacts for my own business ventures in China after the war.

"You'll meet generals," the major told me one morning. "They are not really so important. To them, you'll be much more important than they really are to you."

I nodded.

"If you make a good impression, Pinck, they might be able to get you into business here after the war. Export, import. Lots of money in it. What the hell?" He answered himself before I had time to speak. "By God, I wish I were in your shoes!" he bellowed.

I nodded.

"What the hell, I've got a good deal here," he said.

"Yessir," I said, trying to match the tone of my voice to his.

"You are a representative of the United States. The success of your mission depends on whether the Chinese like you. Remember first impressions are the last impressions here." He paused a moment and ran his hands through his hair. "Close cooperation," he continued. "That's it."

This was the nature of one morning's briefing. Until he could find an interpreter and a radio operator for me, I was able to take it easy in the compound or in the town and attend briefings in the morning.

Not long after this session, Fletcher called me into his office. He was examining a hole in his khaki shirt when I arrived. He looked up and said, "You'd better take a couple dozen pro-kits with you."

In Kunming, I told him, I had signed for iodine, sulfadiazine, and grosses of pro-kits. OSS headquarters in Kunming said that these were to be my medical supplies.

"Give some to the Chinese," he said. "Hard to get good ones out here, and they like them. One old general wanted me to form a contraceptive and cesspool company with him after the war. I told him no. I've already got my oil. But maybe you can run into a deal like that."

I nodded.

"You'll need those things out there." He grinned. "You'll take to wine or women. Probably both. You'll go crazy if you don't. You'll go crazy if you do."

And that was the end of that briefing.

One day Fletcher called me into his office and introduced me to a slim, intense young man. "This is Shum Hay," he said. "He's going to be your interpreter."

We shook hands. A nice looking fellow, I thought.

"My name's Dan Pinck," I said.

"Ich bin freulich Sie sind hier," he said.

What the hell is this? I wondered.

The major raised his hand wearily and said, "Nein, Shum." He looked severely at the young Chinese man. "That will never do." Major Fletcher turned to me. "Shum was a medical student in Meishan when I interviewed him for this job. His teachers were Germans. Shum knows German better than he knows English." Then he turned to Shum and said, "Speak English, Shum."

"Righto," said Shum.

The major got tired suddenly and told us to work it out for ourselves. We thanked him and left his office. Outside, I said, more or less to myself, "This is a crock."

"Do not know crock ," said Shum.

I said again, louder, "This is a crock."

"Do not know crock ," he said flatly and so scornfully that I felt he must know the innuendos which can be inherent in the tone of the English language.

I smiled stupidly.

"When you say word I do not know, I say `do not know' word you say," he said.

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Give me practice," said Shum.

"You aren't overburdened with erudition," I told him.

"Do not know overburdened . Do not know erudition . You practice me," he said happily.

Over the next days, I practiced Shum in English. Then I was jolted to learn that our radio operator, who was introduced to us soon after, knew English very well. His name was Lung Chui Wah. "My English not so good," he said when we met him. "Forget I know English. Too much work for me if I know English. I think never mind. Just operate radio. Do not speak English." Lung's chin came down to a small insignificant flattened squareness, as though an artist in making a papier-mâché mask had run out of paper near the chin. "You understand?" he asked me. "Best cooperation that way."

We left Hingning in the early morning after a monsoon week. Fletcher drove us on a winding road through pine trees and over streams to a river, about twenty kilos from Hingning. The weather was cool, the wind blowing inland from the sea. As we turned off a high hill road down to the river, we saw Hingning disappear in a valley of paddy fields. At the river Shum hired a sampan. Major Fletcher seemed to be relieved when we were ready to push off downstream. He took out a bottle of Four Roses, drank some, and gave the bottle to me. "Drink," he said ominously, as though he expected me to be fully aware that I might not return, and that this might be my last drink of Four Roses on this earth. I drank and then gave the bottle to Shum. "Drink," I said. Shum said nothing; he smelled the contents and quickly gave the bottle to Lung. "Damn good," said Lung, after drinking a lot. He gave the bottle to the major, and we stepped from the riverbank onto the sampan. The polers began their labor, trying to put us out in the main current, and the boat moved slowly from the riverbank. Shum, Lung, and I stood between two small suitcases at the stern, one full of pro-kits, the other packed with Chinese money. The major waved to us and we waved to him. As soon as he emptied the bottle, he threw it far out in the river and left. We were on our own.

Shum kept a record of our expenses during the trip. Not that it was necessary to keep a statement of expenses (the OSS had undisclosed amounts for undisclosed purposes), but I was curious to know how we spent our money, for a week or so at least. Keeping a record was, besides, good language practice for Shum. We spent $27,051 on our river journey:

Date Particular Expense

15 April sampan from Sui Mau to Sui Chai $5,000

tiffin $4,000

supper $6,220

16 April steamboat from Sui Chai to Han Lu $9,000

breakfast $275

supper $818

five coolies from Hen Lu to

Colonel An's house $1,500

tea for coolies $238

TOTAL $27,051

We were all rather happy over the suitcase full of money. The suitcase reminded me of the never-empty pitcher of wine which belonged to Greek mythology's Philemon and Baucis. The money would not only impress others, including any Chinese businessmen-in-the-Army we might meet, but, more immediately, it gave us confidence in our ability to meet anyone on our side of the war and successfully gain close cooperation. We made a solemn pact, in three languages, before we reached our destination on the river. Shum made his in German, for he said that a pact made in German could never be broken. Our wishes were that we would have good luck and that we would kill many Japanese with our intelligence (which would reach the Fourteenth Air Force). Shum said that he was sure the Chinese would like us and give us "a close cooperation." I was a friend of his bosom, he said. Lung said I was a damn good friend.

It was dusk when we reached Hen Lu, and we went immediately to Colonel An's house, where we would spend the night before starting our overland trip to Hotien. After a frugal dinner of rice and soybeans, a number of military and civilian officials came to the house for a conference. They told us how best to proceed in the hills and how to avoid the Japanese along the coast. They wanted to know how the war was going in Europe and when we would invade Japan. A civilian asked me whether President Roosevelt liked the Chinese people. I assured him that, yes, Roosevelt liked the Chinese people; in fact, he liked them more than any other of our allies in the war. The civilian smiled, shook my hand, and said that he had heard that Roosevelt had many Chinese friends. I said he had many Chinese friends. Colonel An and Shum talked a few minutes. I was silent.

"The colonel says," said Shum, the fulcrum of our verbal seesaw, "it's best for us to sleep here in his house and do not travel at night. No one travels at night in China. We need sleep. Shall I tell the colonel that we are happy to sleep in Hen Lu? Best safety."

"Okay," I said.

Continues...

Excerpted from JOURNEY to PEKING by DAN PINCK Copyright © 2003 by Dan Pinck
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.