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“Our first stop was the emperor's palace that had been opened to the public that week for the first time in many years. ” |
AT last, our month of airfield guard duty was over and our company was rotated to the British legation compound in Peking. As our truck convoy rumbled through the throngs in Tien An-men Square and down the boulevard that was packed with humanity, I was amazed at how adroitly the carts, bikes, rickshaws, and pedestrians opened up a path for us. Someone said that they learned that from the Japanese who simply ran over anyone in their way. Strangely, if one of our trucks caused a fatality, our government was billed for damages at the rate of seven dollars for a human and twenty-one dollars for a donkey!
There were many more banners and posters in view now than there had been a month ago. Of course we couldn't read them, but they were obviously intended to stir up war spirit against the Mao Tse-Tung armies in the North. Another big banner like the one we saw on Tien-An-men Square, proclaimed in English, "Marines Go Home!" It was obvious that we were among both friends and foes
A little persuasion with the company clerk got Houser and me assigned to the mortar squad, and we settled in with Horse at the little servant's hut in the back corner of the English legation compound. Horse explained that we would share two Chinese room boys for the six of us. They would do all the work of keeping our quarters neat, tend the little charcoal heater in the galley, and see to our laundry and cleaning. The "number one" boy, our comprador, would also run errands or bring us meals or anything we wanted from the city. Together they earned fifteen dollars a month that we shared. There was also a barbershop in the compound where haircuts and shaves were two cents each. One building was occupied by our enlisted men's club (the slopshoot), but received little patronage since it served only Chinese beer that tasted like a mixture of sweet cider and green beer.
However, the club did finally receive a truck load of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and we all went over to guzzle some of that long awaited treat. For some idiotic reason, the club manager refused to break out the American beer until we drank up the two remaining kegs of Chinese brew. That slopshoot was well named that night when scores of Marines chug-a-lugged two kegs as fast as it poured from the bungs -- with the taps wide open. Then we got down to the real beer drinking!
We had very few duties at the Legation. Our primary duty was to defend the compound in case of attack. I had an occasional duty watch on the gate, and an occasional work detail. We were scheduled for another month of guard duty, this time at South Field, where another Marine Air Wing was based. But we had a whole month to enjoy the city, and everything else was secondary to these sightseeing excursions. We were supposed to be learning to be mortar-men, but training had low priority for us. Horse said that the only reason he chose mortars was because he wanted to carry a pistol on liberty instead of a rifle.
One of the work details for which Horse and I volunteered was a trip to check out a warehouse used by the Japanese garrison to make sure no weapons were available to the remaining Japanese soldiers. They had been kept behind as laborers and mess boys. We found a lot of gear, a few weapons, and an old trunk full of U.S. Marine gear that must have been taken by the Japanese from the pre-war Marine legation guards. There were some dress blues and some Master Sergeant stripes that featured a big wagon wheel in the center between the three chevrons and three rockers. We decided that they must have been insignia for some kind of transport such as wagonmaster. Horse had them sewn on his greens and had fun showing them off in the bars. If he got caught, he would have been a guest in the legation brig for some time. He and I held a surprise inspection at the Japanese camp one night when we were feeling our vodka. Horse's stripes must have been enough to properly impress them because they were very obsequious in obeying our orders. We had learned to give commands in Japanese in preparation for the invasion of Japan and had been dying to try them out. While Horse checked the troops for weapons, I checked their barracks and found a beautiful matched pair of samurai swords which I liberated.
Horse, Houser and I were eager to start soaking up the ancient atmosphere of that strange city where any evidence of the twentieth century was rare. It looked to us exactly as it must have looked to Marco Polo hundreds of years before. Horse said he wanted to spend some time searching through the back streets for a shop that had a supply of Chala-Peking Cognac Brandy. Most of the shops on the boulevard sold liquor that tasted like it was made the night before. In fact we used some of it for lighter fluid.
One day our hut caught fire and we got home just as the fire company was putting it out. I had heard the expression "fouled up like a Chinese fire drill," but never knew what it meant, exactly, until I saw a dozen Chinese firemen attack the fire in that earthen roof like a bunch of ants on a burning log! Later that winter, the huge Tien An-men railroad terminal burned to the ground, and the scene at our fire was repeated on a gigantic scale. Hundreds of "ants" were running in all directions! "Gung Ho!" a favorite Marine expression, which in Chinese means "work together," was something that fire company had yet to learn.
Every Saturday we had a parade and inspection composed of all Fifth Regiment Marines and rolling equipment in Peking that was available at the time. We marched over to the polo grounds as a show of force intended to keep the Communists in Peking from getting too brave. The format was the same as on Guam -- the regimental band passing in review, the awarding of medals (only this time to the heroes of the Okinawa campaign), then the long wait standing in ranks awaiting the inspection. When I stood in the ranks of that celebrated Fifth Marine Regiment, the fourrager weighed heavily on my shoulder. It was a red and green braid with a golden spike attached, and was worn only by the Fifth and Sixth regiments. It was awarded to them by the French government during the first world war for their heroism in leading a charge directly into the German machine guns and almost certain death. This helped to break the two-year stalemate of the seesaw war in the trenches and ultimately brought victory to the allies.
Why did so many Marines freely give their lives? Did I have that kind of courage? How would I perform when ordered to charge into almost certain death? That braid which had a spike at the end and was tied in the form of a noose was intended to warn a soldier that he would be hanged from the nearest tree if his courage failed. The battle style of the Marines had always been to storm directly into the face of the enemy and to keep going, no matter what. They proved many times that it is better in the long run to accept your losses and win the battle quickly than to sit back and shell the enemy for a week before advancing. However, it does require a special motivation that most armies do not have. When the Fifth Marines stormed all of those islands on the way to Japan, and lost nearly a third of their men each time doing it, they didn't do it for their country so much as for their comrades, and for the tradition of bravery in their corps that they simply could not let down. I knew deep down that I couldn't let it down either and would have to "keep my honor clean!"
Forty-five years before, in 1900, a handful of Marines and Europeans were besieged in the British legation compound, our present home, and heroically held out for eight weeks against thousands of fanatic Boxer insurgents. Wouldn't it be ironic if we had to do the same against the fanatic followers of Mao Tse-Tung?
The worst thing about Peking that year was the famine and misery. We frequently found the sick and dying untended on the sidewalks. Anyone who touched them automatically became legally responsible for them, so no one did. Whenever we transported food to our mess hall, we always made sure a few cases "fell off" along the way. We also took sugar and flour to the Catholic nuns who ran a store front mission. They made cookies for the hungry children. It was amazing how happy and cheerful the sisters were all the time in the midst of that depressing squalor -- proof that helping others can be the key to happiness.
We had some good bull sessions in our little hut. We argued a lot about world politics of which we were kept mostly in the dark. We had heard that the Communists had taken over Manchuria and were stripping the factories of their machinery and sending it to Russia. It seemed to me that they were just daring the United States to do something about it. Our occupation force in China had obviously become a peacekeeping force to stop the civil war that was just heating up in the north. We had also heard that the Russians had taken all the Japanese weapons and equipment from those surrendering in the north and given them to the Chinese Communists. So now, instead of fighting the Japanese as allies, side by side, Chiang's and Mao's armies were fighting each other and had had no time to recuperate from the ten-year Japanese war. It seemed to me that someone had to stop the Communists and we were the only power in the world that could. President Truman still had the greatest military forces in history, plus the exclusive use of the very power of the sun -- the atomic bomb. Would he have the guts to stand up to the Russians? All we could do was wait and see. In the meantime, we had a beautiful city to explore.
Some of the Marines, officers and enlisted men alike, lived a hedonistic life for a while. A lieutenant came in one night while I was on the gate and bragged that he had been drunk and with a different woman every night since landing in China. The Chinese seemed to overlook these "ugly Americans" though, because they were used to much worse from the Japanese. They must have realized that soldiers need to blow off steam after a prolonged war that they didn't expect to survive. In fact, their own country had been at war most of the time during the thirty centuries of Peking's existence.
There were 23,000 brothels in Peking at the time the Japanese left, and they quickly switched to a clientele of Chinese and Americans. The guys in the mortar squad teased Horse and me about being virgins, both on and off the battlefield. I wondered if we'd have the same trouble when we got back home to the bull sessions in the VFW Club. Like those Goschachquenk braves, we could never sit at the war council where tales of battle are recounted.
Chen Chow was a feather merchant and an unemployed school teacher. He made his living selling souvenirs to the Marines for a price. He could get you anything under the sun. His one goal in life was to go to America -- a dream shared by most English speaking Chinese that we met. There was really nothing that Horse or I wanted to lug around China except maybe a chess set. The one that we used, given to us by the Red Cross, was worn out and besides it didn't have real men -- just cardboard discs like checkers with pictures of chessmen on them. We took a long time describing to Chow exactly what we wanted: sixteen ivory men and sixteen jade men carved in the shapes which we painstakingly described. When he presented them to us a couple weeks later, they turned out to be more discs, like checkers of jade and ivory with pictures of chessmen painted on them. He did seem to know Peking's history and geography like the back of his hand.
One day he invited Horse, Bill, and me to his apartment hotel for dinner. They lived in the "new city," the area enclosed by the new addition that was walled in during the sixteenth century. He wanted us to sample some exotic Chinese delicacies that he thought we would like. There were many dishes in those eight courses that I knew I wasn't going to like and I didn't. Chow wouldn't tell us what they were until we tried them. One dish was fried grasshoppers, and there were a couple of other insect dishes that I won't describe. There were coal-black preserved eggs that Chen swore were over a hundred years old. There were, fortunately, several pork and chicken dishes that were delicious. And once again, we were served plain white rice for the final dessert, followed by the potent white wine. He insisted that we eat the rice and said that it would violate an old custom if we didn't.
On the following weekend, we took Chen Chow to our favorite American style café where they served delicious steak dinners. We each ordered a thick steak with eggs on top. Poor Chow had trouble downing all of his. Then Horse announced that he was ordering another round. Chow protested violently, but Horse said that it would be against our custom if he refused to eat with us. I'll never forget the sight of Chow trying to force down that last bite!
One day, Chow said that he knew where there was an automobile that we might be able to rent. Would we like to drive around and see and photograph all the sights? He and his wife could be our guides. Since there was no gasoline in Peking, the few cars that were left had been converted to run on charcoal. The next day Horse, Bill, and I set out with the Chows to see the sights. The driver came with the car and would get out occasionally to stoke up the fire in the burner hanging on the back. The car was a prewar model, early thirties -- the most advanced form of transportation in all of Peking! Chow almost came to blows with the owner when negotiating the fee. When I tried to break it up, he waved me off. He later told me that I should not have interfered because that was just the normal way of doing business.
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Our first stop was the emperor's palace that had been opened to the public that week for the first time in many years. The many beautiful structures of the Winter Palace had somehow withstood hundreds of years of Peking's violent history. As we walked through that deserted Forbidden City, and into the boudoir of the Dowager Empress, it seemed as though she might have risen from her bed that day and fled with her thousands of servants. It seemed to be haunted by a spiritual presence among the belongings collected by emperors down through the centuries. There were beautifully carved furniture, fine tapestries, ornate table settings, and uncounted figurines, vases, paintings and statuary of breathtaking beauty. There was a wall with nine exquisitely carved dragons on it. The many courtyards surrounding the palaces were so spacious and peaceful that it was hard to believe that outside those forty-foot walls was nothing but dusty, smoky gray city streets full of poverty and neglect.
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Next we climbed the many steps to the top of Coal Hill where we stood in a pagoda and surveyed the city beyond the palace walls. It was a man-made hill used by the emperor to view his domain without leaving the security of his palace grounds. We could see a shining white pagoda in the distance shaped like a bottle. Chen said that it was a monument to a Dalai Lama princess who had become the wife of a Mongol Dynasty emperor. We sat and just soaked up that breathtaking view while Mrs. Chen, who was carrying a two-month old baby girl, rested from the long climb.
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The most prominent landmarks far and near were high, thick walls. We had entered the palace grounds through a beautiful archway called "The Gate of Heavenly Peace." The tower above it looked like a fort., In fact, Chow explained, there were battlements all around the wall where three thousand palace archers had been on duty at any given time. There were also twelve thousand mounted guardsmen to protect the emperor. There was another forty-foot wall surrounding the main palace buildings and main compound as a secondary defense. Of course, the city itself had forty-foot walls that were heavily guarded, plus the Great Wall of China that snaked over the mountains, twenty miles to the west of us. Chow said that it kept the Mongolian barbarians out of China for eleven hundred years, but prior to the wall's construction, Peking had been captured eleven times and totally destroyed three times. The Mongols, led by Genghis Kahn, broke through the wall, assaulted the walls of Peking and razed every building and massacred all the people. Later, his grandson, Kublai Kahn, rebuilt it almost as we saw it that day. Kublai declared himself emperor of the Mongol Empire and made Peking his capitol. His dynasty lasted nearly two hundred years during which Peking became a city of unrivaled opulence.
Chow than told us amazing stories about Kublai Kahn's great feasts that seated six thousand guests, his great parade that would include five thousand elephants, and great herds of camels as he flaunted his wealth in the faces of his hungry, over taxed subjects. Then an uprising of peasants led by Buddhist monks overthrew the Mongols and started a new dynasty that lasted nearly three hundred years.
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It was in the time of this Ming Dynasty that much of the beautiful artistic achievement that we were seeing occurred. Many multi-tiered temples of harmonious design were added and most of the beautiful artifacts that we saw that day were created during that period. Chow said that we should be sure to take a day to visit the Temple of Heaven located two miles south of the city and the Summer Palace west of the city, as well as the Great Wall. We then prevailed on the Chens to take us to all those places -- that very day -- because who knew what tomorrow would bring? Would we ever have another opportunity like this? We had one of the only cars in Peking as well as a camera and film, and the best guides in the city. There was a lot more to see in that Imperial City and in its center core, the Forbidden City, but we had a whole month to return again and again.
As we drove south through Tien An-men Square and through the South Gate into the New City, I felt like a time traveler riding in the only motorized vehicle that we saw that day. I thought how fortunate we were to have Chow as a guide to explain how all of this could endure and survive during all those centuries of violence, suffering, and privation. I was so taken by all of those sights that it was an indescribable experience. So much has been written about Peking's art treasures that I won't dwell on it. I can only say that the month we spent exploring this unique ancient city was the most exciting month of my life.
Yet that exciting day still wasn't nearly over. We stood in awe at the Temple of Heaven, an incredibly beautiful structure that dominated the scene. It stood majestically in the center of the square, with its three-tiered gilded roof supported by giant pillars made of huge tree trunks that were beautifully finished in lacquer and decorated with colorful gilded designs. This temple was believed by the Chinese to be the center of the entire universe with the exact spot indicated in the center of a large white marble plaza. Beyond, was another circular plaza surrounded by a wall that was so perfectly constructed that you could whisper and the sound would follow around the wall and be clearly heard over a hundred feet away. Beyond that was another temple and another plaza. These temples were used by the emperors to offer sacrifices and prayers for a bountiful year of crops.
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A long ride to the west of the city brought us to the Summer Palace which was also used primarily for religious rites in the summer and fall. But it was also a peaceful retreat for the royal family. A large lagoon was the focal point with the main palace buildings on a man-made hill. This big complex of buildings, courtyards, and walkways was a very serene and pleasing scene as we sat in still another open tearoom on the hill overlooking the lagoon. A tiled roof covered the walk that circled the lagoon. Each wooden support was beautifully decorated and each overhead beam had a separate prayer carved in it to assist the emperor in his evening meditations.
While we sat there with the sun setting behind the mountains enjoying that moment, we reflected on a scene that would be burned into our memories forever. Mrs. Chen excused herself and made her way through the crowded tearoom toward the restroom. Chow then loudly exclaimed, "My wife go take leak!" "No, no," I hushed him. "In America we say that she went to powder her nose!"
Chow continued with his history lessons. He told us about the French soldiers burning the Summer Palace to the ground in 1888 during the trade controversy and how the Dowager Empress levied a tax to rebuild the Imperial Navy, but spent it on the Summer Palace instead. For some unexplained reason, she included in the center of the lagoon a large marble edifice that looked like a ship. No one knows why unless she wanted to be able to say that she did build a ship for the Navy.
Occasionally we spent a day ice skating in the beautiful Ben Hai Park with its many waterways, bridges, and pagodas. This park had been the emperor's private fifteen hundred-acre playground surrounding the Forbidden City. It, too, was protected by high perimeter walls. At one time it had included exotic animals roaming around and other features, all for the amusement of only the royal family.
Horse had a brainstorm one day and announced that we were going to find a nice whorehouse. We were curious about Peking's oldest and apparently largest industry. We were sick of being teased and being called virgin Marines. We strapped on our pistol belts, picked up our liberty passes, and headed for the line of rickshaws always waiting at the main gate. I recognized a rickshaw boy whom I trusted and asked him, "Gunia, ding how?"
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He broke into a wide grin and gestured for us to sit in his rickshaw and the one adjacent to his as he said, "Gunia-Ding, ding how!" Then off we went as the rickshaw boys chop-chopped down Chien-an-men Boulevard and headed for a remote corner of the city. It seemed like miles as the rickshaw boys plodded up and down the back streets, turning this way and that. The streets all looked alike -- narrow, stone paved, with gray stone walls on either side. Each house had its own perimeter wall on all sides, so there was nothing to see. There were a million residents in the residential sections of the original city bounded by the Tartar walls that enclosed a six-by-six mile area. Much of the center city was occupied by the Imperial city, the broad expanses of public areas and the spacious grounds of the foreign legation compounds.
We finally came to a halt at a corner and the boys motioned for us to wait. My boy came back a few minutes later with two very young girls whom he introduced as Li and Ling. He motioned that he would wait for us as the girls led us around the corner to their home. It was a small stone house behind a small courtyard, just like all the others. Inside a family waited to greet us. There were parents, grandparents, and a young boy. They greeted us warmly as though we were their long lost friends. Li and Ling led us up the stairs to a small loft with one double bed in the center of the room. Anticipating my questions, Ling drew a curtain across the room, thus bisecting the bed. Horse looked at me and gave an embarrassed shrug as Li led him around the curtain. Ling playfully pulled me down on the bed and started to disrobe. She was really quite pretty in her blue silk kimono with her black hair and laughing eyes. The Chinese are really a nice race, endowed with intelligence, clever ways, and good dispositions and a sense of humor. Unlike the Guamian girls we had met, the girls here were all built like broomsticks. Those folks waiting downstairs might not have been her real family, only the owners of children sold by some starving peasant family who needed the money for survival. The current price for a child was seven dollars, including lifetime servitude. Also the Japanese had left 99% of these unfortunate girls diseased. I couldn't back out now, or Ling would lose face, and would perhaps be punished. So I decided to proceed and helped Ling remove her kimono. To my amazement, I saw two spindly little legs sticking out of a pair of huge green Marine Corps skivvy drawers that hung below her knees! At that same moment Horse exclaimed, "My God, Hursh, look at this!" I knew then that Li must be wearing the same. We shouldn't have laughed because those girls did lose face, and were humiliated right over the heads of their family.
Then I said, "Horse, why don't we just take them to chow and a movie instead?" That sounded great to him, so we sent Ling downstairs with extra money to explain to her family. A loud argument ensued, but she finally came back up and led us down to the waiting rickshaws. Li chose a restaurant just off the square, and we had an enjoyable meal in spite of the language barrier. The girls had a riot trying to teach clumsy Horse and me to use chopsticks. Just the presence of a smiling female face was enough for me that evening. It had been over a year since I kissed those high school girls good-bye.
After dinner, we went to the Peking Theater where "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" was showing to a packed house. The ushers made room for us in the front row of the balcony which made us feel as though we were flying those B-25 Mitchell bombers on their suicide mission over Tokyo. When the crews bailed out over Japanese held China there was a great reaction from the theater audience. The scenes of the peasants trying to rescue the airmen and hide them from the Japanese apparently elicited passions that had been suppressed during the occupation. These people carried vivid memories of the flyers being dragged through the streets of Peking in chains and publicly displayed and humiliated before being taken to Shanghai for more of the same. Then to Tokyo where three of the eight were shot and others sentenced to life imprisonment. A photo of these eight airmen on display was a favorite souvenir of the Japanese soldiers. As claimed on the photo, the expressions on the faces of the American boys showed eight different emotions: anguish, serenity, dejection, exhaustion, courage, hatred, and unflinching bravery.
The outrage and indignation that swept Peking at the horrendous insult by the hated Japanese to their American friends was openly voiced by that movie audience. I had never seen a movie audience carry on like that. There was no doubt that our Chinese friends held us in very high esteem. Then our rickshaw boys took the girls home as Horse and I headed for the Peking Hotel where we lied to the guys in the Crystal Room that we were no longer virgin Marines. Now if we could just manage to find some real mortal combat, we would no longer be taunted and called "virgin" Marines.
As the weeks went by, we noticed a developing chill in the attitude of the people as though it was no longer safe to be friends with Americans. Ominous war clouds hung over Peking as reports of government defeats came down from Manchuria where the Communist forces were winning. It was a gloomy outlook as mobilization for war against the Communists prevented any respite from the many long years of war against the Japanese. The Nationalist officers tended to be very brutal with suspected Communists. We saw flatcars loaded with chained prisoners being taken to excavations at the edge of the city where they were unceremoniously mowed down with machine guns and covered with earth. These atrocities would continue on both sides until millions had died.
When it was time for our March 1 troop rotation to one of the air fields, new orders were out at regimental headquarters. Horse and I would go with the Third Battalion somewhere even further north. We rejoiced because at long last we were headed for action! The entire First Division, except for a skeleton force being left behind, along with several Chinese Nationalist divisions, were being rushed north for a showdown with the Communist forces. Like those "Goschachquenk" Indian braves, we were out to earn our place at the war council!
We were heading north, where we would be between two warring armies.
