Jing Baos at Kweilin
Surrounded by the distinctive karst formations found in this part of China, these barracks are typical of those used by 14th Air Force personnel stationed at the three airfields in the vicinity of Kweilin. Note the laundry hanging out to dry near the building at the right. USAF photo
After spending the summer gaining combat experience against the Japanese in Burma, men of the Chinese-American Composite Wing’s 3rd Bomb Squadron were finally on their way to China. According to the 1st Bombardment Group's Special Orders No. 89, fifteen American officers, forty-one American enlisted men, thirty-five Chinese officers, and ninety-seven Chinese enlisted men were to move from "Deragon," India, to Kweilin, China, in late August 1944.
Personnel at Dergaon were divided into three groups and alerted to be ready “at a moment’s notice” for Air Transport Command to ferry them over “the Hump” of the treacherous Himalayas, the highest mountain on earth. The first group was off on the morning of the twenty-sixth. The other two were ready to leave at 1900, but one of the transports had engine trouble and was unable to get away until the following day.
Flying the Hump took planes over rugged terrain, often through violent storms, sudden down drafts, and snow and ice at higher altitudes. It was some of the most dangerous flying in the world―so dangerous, in fact, that every flight over the Hump was logged as a combat mission.
The 3rd squadron's B-25s did not move to China at the same time as the ground crews but stayed behind with personnel sufficient to maintain them and fly them over the Hump later, when weather conditions improved.
After a brief stay in Kunming, the enlisted men continued their move about 450 miles almost due east to Liuliang, where baggage was inspected and a large amount of contraband was confiscated. Capt. George P. Wood (communication officer) and fourteen American enlisted men departed by ATC on August 30 for Erh Tong Airfield at Kweilin (now Guilin), about sixty miles farther northeast, and Capt. James C. Kelso Jr. (adjutant) and 2Lt. Paul L. Young (intelligence officer) accompanied thirteen American enlisted personnel on the thirty-first. The squadron's remaining American personnel, with thirty Chinese officers and enlisted men, completed the transfer on September 1.
Located on the Li River in Kwangsi (Guangxi) Province, Kweilin was one of the newest and most beautiful cities of Free China. It was, at that time of the war, "bloated with war refugees, informants, spies and fifth columnists.” The city was known particularly for its prostitutes, many who had fled north when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong. There were three bases south of the city among its "Mars-like, sugar-loaf limestone hills: Erh-tong, with Li-chia-chen slightly to the south and Yang-tong to the west,” according to the 1st Bomb Squadron’s Sgt. Kenneth W. Daniels. “The runways of all three were surrounded by shacks and hostels tucked in arroyos and clefts."*
"They called Kweilin 'the Paris of the Orient,’” my father, then-Sgt. James H. (“Hank”) Mills, recalled many years later. According to an article from TIME that he kept with his photographs, the "battered but glamorous Kwangsi city" was noted for its "holiday habits and friendly girls" that "made Kweilin's name blessed among US airforcemen on pass.” The big base had been "stripped and partly scorched" as the Japanese advance threatened it seven weeks earlier, but "the panic had died in a crackle of firecrackers when the Chinese Army and the Fourteenth's airmen had checked the enemy at Hengyang.”**
The men settled into hostels for their brief stay at Erh Tong. 1Lt. Donald S. Lopez, whose 75th Fighter Squadron was stationed at nearby Yang Tong, gave this description of living quarters:
The hostels at Kweilin were well interspersed among the mountains so that they were not good bombing targets. They were typical of the WASC [War Area Service Command] hostels at all of the bases. Each hostel included two clusters of buildings, one for officers and the other for enlisted men. The buildings were long one-story wooden structures divided into six or eight rooms, with a washroom at one end. Each room had eight to twelve bunks, most double decked, with crisscrossed heavy cord supporting mattresses filled with some kind of straw. The pillows were filled with rice husks and rice and were quite hard, but I suppose if we were cut off from food supplies we could always eat the pillows. Each bunk had a mosquito net, called a mosquito bar, that was tucked in on all four sides. There were a few chairs and tables and some built-in shelves for storage. The rooms were heated with charcoal stoves and had electric lights. It was often difficult to read at night, since the generators did not run smoothly and the lights dimmed and brightened continuously.
The buildings were covered with adobe on the outside and were sometimes painted. The interiors and all the furniture were unpainted raw wood. There were usually two or three ceramic water jugs, full of lin kai shwai (cool boiled water), and matching glasses. As you can imagine, it was not safe to drink unboiled water. The mess hall was in a separate building, and there were outside latrines, eight- to twelve-holers, nearby for the officers and the unlisted men.
The latrines surprisingly served as "social centers of a sort,” Lopez added. Because so many of the men who served in China suffered intermittently from dysentery, they often spent long periods of time in the latrines and had "many long and interesting discussions in these unlikely settings.”***
"To date our sleep has been interrupted for the past five nights by air raid alarms. As yet no enemy planes appear," wrote 2Lt. Young. Capt. John C. Hinrichs Jr. (supply officer) requisitioned and was issued Thompson machine guns for use in the event of actual attack. At Kweilin and other 14th Air Force bases in China, a complex air raid notification system was used to warn of aerial approach by the enemy. Devised by Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault, it depended upon lookouts on the ground who reported movements of enemy aircraft to a central control center by way of a network of hand-cranked telephones operated by peasants in small villages. These observations, in turn, were relayed to the threatened airfield and a signal was posted. One "ball" (usually a spherical red paper lantern) raised on a pole indicated that enemy planes had taken off from their base, two balls meant the actual approach of enemy aircraft, and three balls warned that attack was imminent. The men stationed at these airfields joked that no one ever saw a three-ball alert, because everyone had already taken cover by the time it went up.****
During this time, no Japanese planes struck in the vicinity of Kweilin during the day but "they did keep us in the foxholes night after night," reported Sgt. Frank W. Tutwiler, attached to a combat camera unit, in an interview published by YANK magazine. He had been assigned to cover "the strafing, bomb-spattering raids of the 'Flying Tigers' B-25s and fighters against the Japanese columns moving on Chengsha, Hengyang, Lingling, and eventually toward Kweilin itself.”
Barracks boys shouted the warning jing bao! ("air raid") as they ran from room to room, turning off lights and banging on wash basins to wake anyone who may have slept through the warning siren. In addition to the wailing of the siren was the beating of a gong, and the sleeping men could recognize the urgency of the situation based upon its tempo: a slow beat for a one-ball alert, a bit faster for two-ball, and a rapid, steady rat-tat-tat for three-ball.
At night, the B-25s were rolled into caves carved into the surrounding hills to protect them. When the alert sounded, men hurried to battle stations or took cover in slit trenches, caves, or any other place where they could find protection from the enemy's bombs. Even Chennault's command center occupied a large cave as protection from air raids. According to Tutwiler, "These jing baos didn't amount to much, but they kept people awake and tired people can't work efficiently in the daytime."*****
Sgt. Oswald Weinert, a B-25 mechanic and gunner assigned to the 4th Bomb Squadron at Erh Tong at this time, eventually got tired of falling out for air raids and stayed in the bunkhouse, explaining that he would rather die in his bed than in a muddy ditch.******
Hank preferred to err on the side of caution: "I'd always run for that muddy ditch."
By this point in the war, Japanese military forces occupied approximately the eastern third of mainland China and controlled the main railroads and highways and all the seaports. The undefeated, veteran China Expeditionary Army had launched a major offensive called Operation ICHIGO in April 1944. Utilizing 400,000 men organized into seventeen divisions and supported by 12,000 vehicles and 70,000 horses, it formed a gigantic pincer movement designed to split Free China.
By the time the 3rd squadron enlisted men reached Kweilin, the airfields at Changsha (also called Paoching) and Hengyang had been seized, effectively pushing back the reach of American air power.
The 3rd Bomb Squadron’s B-25s arrived safely at Erh Tong on the afternoon of September 8, making it the last CACW unit to reach China.
That was the same day the Japanese 11th Army overran Lingling, both the town and the airfield. That put the enemy only 125 miles farther to the northeast.
Then began their advance toward Kweilin.
* Ken Daniels, China Bombers: The Chinese-American Composite Wing in World War II (North Branch, MN: Specialty Press, 1998), 17, 44.
** “World Battlefronts: Battle of China: Another Paris,” Time: The Weekly Newsmagazine, 15.
*** Donald S. Lopez Sr., Into the Teeth of the Tiger. (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 1997), 64. (Lopez served in the 75th Fighter Squadron (“Flying Sharks”), 23rd Fighter Group, 68th Composite Wing, and in later life became the deputy director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.)
**** Carl Molesworth and Steve Moseley, Wing to Wing: Air Combat in China, 1943-45 (New York: Orion Books, 1990), photo section following 48.
***** Sgt. Lou Stoumen, "Evacuation of Kweilin,” YANK: The Army Weekly, November 24, 1944, 3-4.
****** O. H. Weinert, e-mail message to author November 19, 2013, and following.
There is far more to this compelling account. Find it now in The Spray and Pray Squadron: 3rd Bomb Squadron, 1st Bomb Group, Chinese-American Composite Wing in World War II.