‘It’s okay, though,’ Johnson said cynically. ‘When you get used to it.’
General Clinton R Loomis, the American officer running things in Chungking, seemed bewildered and indignant that he was wasting his time. ‘Those guys in Washington have gone off their nuts,’ he said firmly.
He was a large man who was built like a brewery dray, with a deep chest and square shoulders. He liked the British, always called Foote by his civilian title, ‘Judge’, and most of the time had a cigar like a telegraph pole sticking out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Sending all this aid, all this goddam money, and that slimy bastard, Chiang, the Generalissimo, is just using it to make sure of his hold on the country.’
He tried to explain. ‘Before Pearl Harbour,’ he said, ‘he decided that if he just held on, Japan would be bound to collide with the US eventually and when she did China could just retire from the fight and leave it to fresher forces – us. The bastard isn’t doing a thing! It’s just one lousy snafu. Tell ’em, Johnny. You know it as well as I do.’
Johnson added his mite. ‘The performance of the Chinese troops,’ he said dryly, ‘so far has been unmemorable.’
‘That goddam Chiang’s always threatening that China’s on the point of collapse,’ Loomis snorted. ‘He says his position’s calamitous. And the more he makes of it the more effort those guys in Washington make for him. They fancy America taking the place in China of the old imperial powers.’ He looked at Dicken and grinned.
‘Your
outfit. But the bastard’s using all the material and money we send him to blockade the Communists, who
are
fighting the Japanese.’
‘Aren’t they
both
fighting the Japanese?’ Foote asked.
‘They’re supposed to be, Judge, but only the Communists are achieving anything. They’re penning the Nips into the towns in the north but they don’t trust Chiang and won’t work with him. Can’t say I blame them. It’s a bit like a civil war with the Communists trying to spread their influence and Chiang trying to stop them. Each side’s got its own territory and if one moves into the other’s they’re driven out by force. In 1941 the communist Fourth Route Army was ambushed. It was sheer treachery and there was a lot of fighting and the Commies lost seven generals. Chou En-lai was here in Chungking at the time, too, trying to keep things on an even keel. Now Chiang’s using 200,000 of his best just troops to keep the Communists out of his territory because he knows they’re dangerous to his goddam régime.’
The general lit a fresh cigar, blew out smoke, waved his hand and sighed. It seemed to diminish him from a military man to a worried executive. ‘General Stilwell, who’s running the show out here,’ he pointed out, ‘hates old Dogleg Chiang, but he likes China and keeps trying to get the Chinese to fight, when any goddam halfwit can see they don’t have to, because even by not doing anything they’re tying down whole Japanese armies. And the reports he’s sending on the Communists, because they
do
fight, are so goddam glowing, those guys in Washington are now beginning to think they’ve got roses growing all over ’em.’
‘Does Chiang want to make peace?’
Loomis’ cigar circled in the air. ‘He daren’t. The country wouldn’t let him. He couldn’t, anyway, and you guys have got to produce proof that his men aren’t a romantic army fighting against odds but a military rabble that in some parts of the country have even started trading with the Japs.’
‘Stilwell’s all right,’ he went on. ‘But he’s got some lousy subordinates and he and Chennault hate each other, while some of the guys they send us might just as well have stayed at home. They think this place’s Minnesota or Nevada or Missouri, they call the Chinese “Slopeheads” or “Slopeys”, and the US Government “Uncle Chump from over the Hump”. Chiang Kai-shek’s “Chancre Jack” and Sun Yat-sen’s “Sunset Sam”. Those people back home have no idea what it’s like out here.’
‘Do we know anything about a man called General Lee Tse-liu?’ Dicken asked.
The general’s head whipped round. ‘I sure hope you’re not goin’ to ask any favours for
him
.’
Dicken laughed. ‘Not on your life. I’d like to meet him with a Lancaster with a full load of bombs.’
Loomis smiled. ‘There are some bastards in Chiang’s outfit,’ he said. ‘But I’d say Lee was the biggest of the lot. He sits on his ass and uses his soldiers to collect rice to sell to the Nips. He’s made a fortune out of the Chinese peasants and he’s now making another. But he’s Chiang’s favourite general and he’s here in Chungking at the moment. He’s always ass-licking in Chungking. He leaves his troops to his chief of staff, a guy called Colonel Kok, while he organises his loot for the time when he can bolt for somewhere safe. I’ll fix you an interview with old Dogleg. You might meet him there. What do you intend to do? Spit in his eye?’
The meeting was organised for the following day. The Generalissimo was fixedly calm, his pate clean-shaven – ‘So there’ll be no tell-tale grey fuzz,’ Johnson whispered – and he wore a spotless tunic bare of decorations tightly buttoned to his throat. He greeted them in a clear high voice.
‘They say,’ Johnson murmured, ‘that he lives pretty frugally and that he’s incorruptible, but that’s because by Chinese standards he’s got everything he needs. They say he’s slipping, though, and that some of his supporters are beginning to turn against him. Twenty-seven of his generals went over to the Japs, thinking they’d get a better deal.’
Madame Chiang was very different. She was small and beautifully dressed, speaking English with an American accent acquired during her schooling at an American college. Johnson was as unimpressed with her as with her husband. ‘They say she’s as ruthless as hell,’ he murmured. ‘They say she signs death warrants with her own hand.’
The meeting produced nothing. Chiang remained poker-faced throughout, saying little and offering nothing, while his wife, chattering gaily, produced only charm.
General Lee Tse-liu, who had grown plump and well-fed and had not lost his strange affected English manner of speaking, clearly failed to recognise Dicken as the man he’d once held prisoner with the American priest, Father O’Buhilly.
‘I was studying in England in 1914,’ he said as they were introduced. ‘I tried to join the British army, don’t you know? But, by Jove, they felt they shouldn’t enlist Chinese in a British squabble.’
It was a different version from the one he’d told Dicken in 1927 when he’d bitterly described how his enthusiasm for the British Empire had been turned to hatred by a fool in red tabs who’d told him they ‘didn’t want wogs in the British army’.
‘Those were jolly difficult days,’ he went on. ‘Everybody was jolly well against China then. Now they’re friendly because they know we’re holding the fort against the Japanese.’
‘That the guy?’ Foote asked as he moved away.
‘That’s him,’ Dicken agreed. ‘It’s a pity Diplock didn’t make it. They were two of a kind.’ He turned to Johnson. ‘So far,’ he said, ‘we’ve learned a lot about Chiang Kai-shek. How about telling us something about the Chinese army?’
Johnson grinned. ‘You know what Ludendorff said about the Austrians in the last war – “We’re allied to a corpse.” It’s the same with Chiang’s army. It’s tired, discouraged and not even wanted by its own people. The guys are brave enough but they’ve been neglected, they’ve got no transport and no leadership, and only the poorest and the stupidest get drafted. The relations between the top officers and the men are goddam terrible and most of the soldiers don’t see their families for years. They have nothing to fight for, and for most of them being in the army’s just like being dead because the guys at the front live entirely on rice and vegetables – supposed to be twenty-four ounces a day but usually less – with a few beans or mouldy turnips. Meat comes occasionally. At first our guys couldn’t understand why Chinese regiments always seemed to be carrying dead dogs. They soon learned when they lost their own pets. Dogs were food to the Chinese and the mutts our guys keep eat as much as a Chinese soldier.’
Foote was listening quietly, clearly a little shaken. ‘And what the hell can we do about all this?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, sir,’ Johnson said. ‘It’s a waste of time. Senior officers are incompetent or corrupt and the campaigns are nothing but foraging expeditions; and when the Nips aren’t lashing out, the result’s stalemate, in a belt of No Man’s Land fifty to a hundred miles deep right up the middle of the country, because the Chinese have destroyed every road, bridge, railway and ferry and burned the villages and towns. And the blockade’s useless anyway, because the Chinese get cloth, rubber, tyres, medicines and petrol from the Japanese in the same way the Japs get Chinese tungsten, tin and other things.’ Johnson shrugged. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘a hell of a way to fight a war.’
Though the air raids on Chungking had long since died down, in their place had come hunger and discomfort and thousands of people were living in a nightmare of inflation. But the profiteers were being very discreet and there was no bright plumage visible, though they heard of officials’ wives having new dresses flown over the Hump from India and of offers being made to Western Transport officers to use their vehicles to make a fortune. Meanwhile, it was startling to find the Chinese press attacking the United States and painting a picture of the riotous life being lived by American soldiers.
The city was notorious for its climate which produced fog and rain for months, and as the year progressed epidemics began to breed in the alleyways that ran down the slopes, twisting and tumbling over steps polished smooth by centuries of straw-sandalled feet. Sewage and rubbish lay in the same stream from which drinking water was taken and when people became ill they went to herb doctors who organised cures from musk and children’s urine. Even when the summer came and the heat poured down, moisture remained in the air, and everybody started rashes of prickly heat, and there were swarms of insects swimming on the drinking water or clinging to the walls. Then the mosquitoes came.
‘The bastards work in threes,’ Foote claimed. ‘Two lift the mosquito net and the third zooms in for the kill.’
Meat spoiled and there was still never enough water for washing. Dysentery spread and the city was full of drifting odours.
It was known now that the Americans, pressing in the Pacific, were beginning to cause the Japanese to look over their shoulders, while in Burma the British were preparing for an offensive to reopen the Burma road. In addition, an excellent airfield had been constructed at Kweilin where the remains of the American Volunteer Group under Chennault had regrouped. Ever since 1941 this grab-bag bunch of young volunteers had been tearing at the Japanese bombers, and when the Burma retreat had ended and the RAF had retired to India, the Americans had retreated to China. They had searched Calcutta, Cairo and the States for new machines, spare parts, fuel and ammunition, and with a few ancient Russian Tupolev bombers, which the Chinese were using, had even talked of bombing Tokyo until Jimmy Doolittle had got there first.
But there was little sign of gratitude from the Chinese government, even to a large extent obstruction, as if the wish were to stop them finding out what happened to the goods that were lifted over the Hump with such heavy losses in men and machines.
‘Makes you wonder what the hell we’re doin’ here,’ Foote complained.
Because the electricity was off, the lift wasn’t working so they trudged slowly up the stairs to their rooms, puffing a little by the time they got to the top.
‘Shows our age,’ Foote grinned.
As Dicken opened his door, he noticed the light was on and wondered if some government spy had been searching his room. Then, sitting bolt upright in a straight-backed chair, he saw a great bear of a figure in the shadows. As he entered it rose quickly.
‘Dicken, me boy, do you not recognise me?’
‘Sure I do,’ Dicken said. ‘The only thing as big as you on two legs is King Kong. Father O’Buhilly, by all that’s holy! What are you doing here?’
‘Still hoping to make you a believer, my son.’
Dicken laughed. ‘Father, in all my flying time I’ve never encountered a single angel.’
‘Ah, the pity of it! Doubtless they were lurking behind a cloud!’
For a moment they hugged each other delightedly. As they drew apart, Dicken grinned.
‘It’s wonderful to see you, Father,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘The same as always, me boy. Spreadin’ the word of the Lord and the Holy Catholic Church. There are always too many Presbyterians and Baptists pushin’
their
version.’
Remembering the old priest’s tastes, Dicken gestured. ‘There’s no Irish whiskey here, Father. But there
is
a little American rye.’
‘A barbarian drink to be sure. But for once I won’t turn me nose up at it.’
Sloshing a good helping into a glass, Dicken handed it over. The priest smacked his lips.
‘I have cigarettes, too, Father. Do you still smoke?’
Father O’Buhilly fished out a blackened old pipe, its stem bound with twine. ‘A pipe these days, me boy. Mind,’ he added, ‘I smoke cigarettes when I can get ’em. Especially other people’s.’
As Dicken offered his case, the priest drew the smoke down with a dreamy look on his face. ‘Do you remember, boy, how we shared them in prison, you and I? A puff each alternately to make ’em last.’
They were silent for a moment, remembering the shabby little cell in the village where they’d been held prisoner.
‘’Twas only the absence of somethin’ to smoke that drove me to escape,’ O’Buhilly went on. ‘But for that you’d never have got me into that contraption you called an aeroplane.’ He paused again. ‘He’s still around, y’know.’
‘I’ve met him.’
‘When the Japanese came he contemplated going over to them, but in the end he changed his mind and he’s now one of Chiang’s most trusted men. Which goes to show how bad Chiang is at pickin’ his subordinates. He’s Methodist like Chiang, o’ course – if he’d been a Catholic I might have made something of him. His army’s north of Changjao, where I’ve come from, but, sure, ’tis a skeleton army padded with the names of dead men whose wages and rations he continues to draw. It’s dyin’ on its feet, boy, sufferin’ from dysentery, malaria and starvation. The Americans offered quinine tablets – I distributed ’em meself – but he sells ’em to the Japanese. Half of ’em have scabies and the rest have the itch. On their hands, legs, bodies, everywhere. They wear the same uniforms day and night all year round, and there’s no bathin’ because there’s no soap. There’s beriberi – you can push your thumb into the leg of a Chinese soldier and the mark’s there ten minutes later – leg ulcers, tuberculosis, typhus, influenza and worms. The only thing that’s missing is venereal disease and that’s because their morals are good and they can’t afford a prostitute, anyway. Sure, this place’s nothing but a cess pool. I pray, of course, but in China you have to shout to be heard. But that’s no reason why we should give up. There are still souls who need help, and the strength of me religion isn’t in the way it’s preached or the way it’s offered in books. It lies in the way we apply it.’