Chapter I
New Commanders in a Split Theater

As in January 1942, so again in October 1944, the United States of America ordered one of its general officers to act as a chief of staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, then Supreme Commander of the China Theater in the war between the United Nations and Germany, Italy, and Japan. On both occasions, Japanese successes in the field alarmed the U.S. Government and preceded the step. But events had not been static during the intervening thirty-four months, and so the two officers concerned, Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell in 1942-1944, and Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer in 1944-1946, faced situations whose differences are as enlightening as their similarities.

The Japanese in December 1941 and January 1942 had overrun American and British possessions in the Far East with a speed that appeared to the United States to spread gloom and despondency in China and aroused anxiety that China might make peace with Japan. On the positive side, the U.S. War Department hoped that a revitalized Chinese Army might offer a defense of China effective enough to ease pressure on the United States and the British Commonwealth in the Pacific. So General Stilwell was sent to China to be chief of staff to the Generalissimo in the latter's role as Supreme Commander, China Theater; to reassure the Generalissimo of United Nations' interest in and support for China; and to carry out the specific added mission of improving the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army.

After he took up his mission, Stilwell found it difficult to persuade the Chinese Government to undertake those steps which he thought essential to create a potent Chinese force, such as reducing the number of divisions to a total within China's ability to support, bringing the remainder to strength, providing them with professionally qualified officers, and giving them the bulk of China's arms. Stilwell's task of persuading the Chinese--for he could not order them--was complicated by the Japanese seizure of Burma, which lent force to the argument that China could do nothing for itself until its Allies broke the Japanese blockade. Among those who opposed Stilwell's plans was Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault, the senior American air officer in China, who believed that by stressing reform of the Chinese Army, and devoting

his meager resources to it, Stilwell--with his superiors in the War Department--was missing the chance to defeat Japan from the air. Winning the support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and of the Generalissimo, Chennault received priority on supplies flown into China by the U.S. Air Transport Command. This greatly hindered Stilwell in his efforts to rearm and reform 60 Chinese divisions--5 in India-Burma, 25 in Yunnan (Y-Force), and a projected 30 in east China (Z-Force).

In the winter of 1943-44 the Japanese grew concerned lest the Americans base their newly developed long-range bombers in east China and resolved to take the airfields there, from which Chennault operated.¹ The Japanese offensive opened in April 1944, and as it drove ahead revealed grave weaknesses in the Allied command structure in China. The Generalissimo refused to give arms to the Chinese commanders in east China, while some of them sought Japanese and American support for a revolt against him. General Chennault threw his every resource into supporting the east China commanders and later charged Stilwell with ulterior motives when the latter would not ship arms to them, in part because of the Generalissimo's injunction, in part because of a developing crisis over command.

Since the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to give land-based air support from east China's airfields to American operations in the western Pacific, they were anxious to hold those bases. They believed that if Stilwell took command of all forces in China Theater, both Nationalist and Communist, he might be able to keep the Japanese from seizing the American airfields in China. The President agreed, and from July to September, through his special representative, Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Hurley, tried to persuade the Generalissimo to make Stilwell the field commander in China Theater. First in principle agreeing to accept Stilwell, the Generalissimo later reversed himself, charged that Stilwell had shown himself unqualified, and asked that he be recalled. The President acknowledged Chinese sovereignty in the matter and recalled Stilwell, but he refused to accept the Generalissimo's request that another American take command of the Chinese forces in China.

During the last phases of these negotiations, the strategic situation in the Pacific altered in a manner that greatly lessened the dependence of the United States on Chinese co-operation in the Pacific war. The U.S. Navy decisively defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and General Douglas MacArthur firmly re-established U.S. power in the Philippines. Meanwhile, on 15 October, Marshal Joseph V. Stalin told the American Military Mission to Russia and Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill that the Soviet Union would employ sixty divisions against Japan beginning about

MAJ. GEN. ALBERT C. WEDEMEYER ARRIVING AT CHUNGKING, 31 October 1944. At the airfield to greet him are, from left: Lt. Gen. Adrian Carton de Wiart, His Majesty's Special Representative in Chungking; Mr. T. V. Soong, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs; Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Hurley, President Roosevelt's Special Representative to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek; Maj. Gen. Thomas G. Hearn, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army Forces, China Theater; General Wedemeyer, new Commanding General, U.S. Army Forces, China Theater, and Chief of Staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek; and General Ho Ying-chin, Chief of Staff, Chinese General Staff.

three months after Germany's defeat. Two days later he described the projected operations of those forces as involving a thrust from Lake Baikal to Tientsin, thus separating the Japanese forces in Manchuria from those in China. Thenceforth, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were aware that whatever might happen in China sixty Russian divisions were promised for operations against Japan, and these operations would sweep south and east below the Great Wall.²

Chinese bases were no longer considered essential in the war against Japan, but there remained the problems that would be created if the Generalissimo's

government signed a separate peace, or if Chiang himself were to be removed through a coup by pro-Japanese elements that might choose to ignore the signs of accelerating disaster in Germany and Japan. Either event would raise the possibility that substantial Japanese forces, given a peace in China, might be withdrawn to reinforce the Japanese homeland garrison.

General Wedemeyer, then a major general, was nominated by the President and accepted by the Generalissimo to be the senior U.S. officer in the China Theater, and a chief of staff to the Generalissimo. His orders from the War Department and the resources at his disposal were very different from those given Stilwell in January 1942, yet his problems as he himself saw them were very similar to those which faced Stilwell: "A. Create conditions for the effective employment of maximum U.S. resources in the area. . . . B. The Chinese must be required to play an active role in this war. . . ."³

In late summer of 1944 the War Department, in planning for the new situation that would result were General Stilwell to become field commander of the Chinese armed forces under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, had contemplated splitting the China, Burma and India (CBI) Theater in two. Though Stilwell was recalled, such a move still seemed advisable, and Wedemeyer assumed command in a separate China Theater on 31 October 1944, Lt. Gen. Daniel I. Sultan in India-Burma on 24 October 1944.⁴ (Map 1) For a few days, General Chennault, senior American officer in China Theater, acted as the first U.S. theater commander.

While Deputy Chief of Staff, Southeast Asia Command, Wedemeyer had had ample opportunity since October 1943 to observe the workings of the United Nations effort in Asia from behind the scenes. Before taking up his post in Southeast Asia, Wedemeyer had been in the Operations Division, War Department General Staff, and so was intimately familiar with the wartime plans and policies of the United States. On 29 October 1944, two days after his predecessor flew from Karachi to the United States, Wedemeyer left the headquarters in Ceylon and flew to Chungking, arriving there 31 October.⁵

Nor was Dan Sultan, as the U.S. Army knew him, a stranger to the Asiatic scene, for he had been Stilwell's deputy theater commander. In his various peacetime assignments, Sultan had made a name for himself as an engineer and administrator, developing talents that would be eminently serviceable in his new post.

Map 1
India-Burma Theater, 1944-1945

The Political and Economic Scene in China

The political and economic scene that Wedemeyer faced in China Theater placed as many obstacles in his path as did the Japanese themselves. Dissension among the Chinese sharply limited the strength that China would devote to facing the Japanese. In north China, the Chinese Communists had set up a state within a state that controlled its own territory and had its own forces. Its boundaries were indeterminate, its relations with the Japanese ambiguous, its finances in part sustained by taxes levied on trade with the enemy. But the embryonic Communist state controlled a considerable body of troops, and the Chinese Nationalists feared both its present power and its future intentions.⁶ Nor were the Nationalists united among themselves. When the Japanese drove south from Hankow in the spring of 1944, the Chinese troops they faced were those of the local commanders. The Generalissimo refused to let arms of any sort, Chinese or U.S. lend-lease, be sent to the Chinese defending the airfields.⁷ There were many and detailed reports that the east China commanders bitterly resented the Generalissimo's failure to support them. When Heng-yang fell on 8 August, Chinese claiming to be emissaries of these men presented to American authority a plan for a separatist regime and pleaded for American support. Unknown to the Americans, Chinese making identical representations had been negotiating with the Japanese since the winter of 1943-44. Intelligence reports were received at U.S. headquarters to the effect that the Generalissimo's attitude toward the east China campaign reflected an understanding between him and the Japanese under which they would leave him undisturbed in southwest China if he in turn would not interfere while they took the airfields that presented so obvious a menace to the Japanese homeland.⁸

These were grave charges. Supporting them were three relevant circumstances: (1) the Japanese garrisoned their great Hankow supply base, which

supported their drive in east China, with the equivalent of two divisions, though sixty Chinese divisions lay within striking distance; (2) Nationalist officers close to the Generalissimo objected to shipment of arms to the Chinese forces defending the east China airfields; and (3) the Generalissimo himself embargoed shipment of arms to General Hsueh Yueh, principal defender of east China, and kept the embargo until February 1945.⁹

In 1951 a group of senior Japanese staff officers of China Expeditionary Army were interrogated on the question of Sino-Japanese relations in 1944. They denied that there had been any understanding between the Japanese and the Chinese Central Government. Two of them, Lt. Cols. Yoshimasa Okada and Yoshio Fukuyama, stated that an agreement was reached between the Japanese 23d Army at Canton and the local Chinese commander, General Yu Han-mou, in February 1944 under which General Yu agreed not to disturb Canton when the Japanese marched north from it. Yu kept his word, according to Okada, even though the Generalissimo was ordering him to attack Canton.

The Japanese officers agreed among themselves that there had been extensive contact with dissident Nationalist commanders in southeast China, and stated that through many channels they had sought to inform the Chinese that the east China drive offered no threat to them, but only to the U.S. airfields.¹⁰

It may be that the truth of this complicated matter lies in the Generalissimo's appreciating that the Japanese drive was directed toward the east China airfields, rather than on Kunming and Chungking, as can be seen by a glance at the map. These airfields lay within the domain of Chinese leaders whose loyalty to him he doubted. The Generalissimo may not have been sorry to see their power diminished and may have felt that there was no need to weaken his regime by rushing to their support, the more so since, very plainly against his will, he had recently, in April 1944, joined in the North Burma Campaign. The reports that reached American headquarters may well have been echoes of these matters.¹¹

When Wedemeyer took command these issues had yet to be settled. The Generalissimo still would not permit shipment of arms to the east China commanders, who seemed to at least one senior U.S. officer to be contemplating revolt, and it was impossible to tell where the Chinese would make their

stand or where the Japanese would stop. As of late October their leading elements were before Kweilin and Liuchow. It would be no mean achievement if Wedemeyer could stop the centrifugal tendencies of the Chinese and thus deprive the Japanese of the diplomatic triumph that would be theirs if China fell into a group of openly warring factions. As for the Generalissimo, he faced a domestic situation requiring the fullest exercise of his diplomatic talents.

Economic distress within China limited the resources that could be devoted to war, put still further strain on the Generalissimo's internal political arrangements, and placed increasing demands on tonnage flown into China. Very simply stated, by fall 1944 the Central Government was growing weaker because the Chinese dollar was losing value faster than Chinese fiscal agencies could accumulate currency from either the tax gatherer or the printing press. In concrete terms, in 1944 the Central Government was buying only one third of the goods and services that it bought in 1937. One Chinese authority estimated that the national budget was but 3 percent of the national income. At the same time, the United States was able to devote 47 percent of its national income to war.¹² It was therefore advisable that Free China have an army no larger than it could support, for every man taken from productive labor meant added inflationary pressure, while poverty of the resources at the disposal of the Central Government suggested that they should be used with the greatest attention to thrift and efficiency. However, the Central Government budget did not represent the ceiling on China's war-making capacity. The decentralized system of command, under which war area commanders acted as semi-independent provincial governors, plus the lack of internal transport facilities suited to the movement of quantities of goods and masses of troops, meant that the local resources of Kwangsi Province, say, stood behind Kwangsi Province divisions, supplemented by whatever subsidies the local authorities could obtain from the Central Government. Nevertheless, the national budget reflected the resources at the direct command of the Generalissimo and limited his power to govern.

The transportation situation in that part of China unoccupied by the Japanese made it very difficult to move goods and people. The U.S. Foreign Economic Administration estimated that at most 10,000 trucks were on hand, the number in operation at any one time limited by poor maintenance and bad fuel. Water transport was the classic resort in China, but unfortunately a mountain range lay between the Hump terminus at Kunming and the east

TERRAIN IN THE KUNMING AREA

China front. On the east side of the range use was made of water transport, but at a high monetary cost which the U.S. Services of Supply headquarters attributed in part to the steady rise in the boatmen's wages and in part to the "squeeze" the boatmen paid to officials at the numerous inspection points in order to get their cargoes through.

The weakness of Chinese internal transport greatly affected the military situation. The Chinese divisions, national and provincial, were spread out all over unoccupied China. Each Chinese war area contained a fair number of divisions that lived off the local countryside; great quantities of supplies simply could not be moved in Free China, for the Japanese had seized, in 1937, most of what rail net existed. The difficulty was further compounded by the fact that the Chinese had not set up an efficient services of supply. Consequently, troop movements could not be supported by a steady flow of rations. As a result of all these factors, even if Chinese domestic politics had permitted it, moving large numbers of divisions from one province to another was not within Chinese capabilities, while feeding them after their arrival

a province already strained to support the troops at hand would offer more and possibly insoluble problems, both economic and political.

The accelerating inflation in China directly affected the U.S. forces there, for the Japanese blockade of China forced them to depend upon local procurement for the necessities of everyday life since Hump tonnage had to be reserved for gasoline, oil, ammunition, ordnance, spare parts, and the like. Food, clothing, construction materials, all had to be obtained in China. The prices of these items in Chinese currency rose much faster than did the exchange rate for the U.S. dollar on the open market, so much so that in December 1944 the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar in China was but one sixth of what it had been in 1937. Plainly, the mere expenditure of U.S. currency in China would not provide resources for Wedemeyer's command, and would only aggravate an already bad inflation. Supplies would have to be brought in from the outside.

After allowance was made for the steady rise in prices and the high costs in transporting goods, the Services of Supply (SOS) still had to recognize the steady drain of commodities to the Japanese-held portion of China. Trade between occupied and unoccupied China was legal save for a limited number of items that could not be exported to Japanese-held areas without permit from Chungking. As a result, rice, tung oil, wolfram, timber, paper, sugar, hemp, vegetable tallow, hides and leather, resin, tea, and alum were exported in quantity to Japanese-held China. Moreover, SOS learned from intelligence reports that medicines available in unoccupied China through Red Cross and International Relief grants were shipped by parcel post from Chungking to villages near the China coast, where the writ of the Central Government did not hold, and were then shipped to the Shanghai market.¹³

The major constructive elements in the scene that confronted Wedemeyer were two--first, the Air Transport Command and China National Aviation Corporation were carrying supplies into China at a rate never approached before, and, second, on 15 October 1944 the Allied forces in north Burma opened an offensive with six divisions to clear the last Japanese from north Burma and open a new supply route to China. In October 1944, 35,131 tons were flown into China, four times the tonnage which entered China to support Stilwell in October 1943.¹⁴ (Chart 1) When Wedemeyer assumed command on 31 October, the Chinese 38th Division, Chinese Army in India, was probing the outer defenses of Bhamo in Burma, and was thus about seventy miles from the old Burma Road. Such was Allied power in north Burma and so battered were the Japanese that the end was a matter

C-46 OF THE AIR TRANSPORT COMMAND over the Himalaya Mountains.

of weeks. Time was on Wedemeyer's side, for every day that China remained a belligerent Wedemeyer's hand would be strengthened by the ever-nearing prospect that American supplies on a considerable scale would soon be ready for distribution in China.¹⁵

To sum up, when Wedemeyer took command of the U.S. forces in China Theater, there was extensive evidence of serious dissension among the Nationalist commanders, in addition to the highly publicized and generally known state of latent civil war between Nationalists and Communists, while the economic situation was an adverse factor that would weigh heavily against any American effort exerted in China. Under these circumstances, preventing the dissolution of China into a group of warring factions--some supported by the Japanese, some by the Soviet Union, some by the United States and the British Commonwealth--in order for the nation to reach the end of the war as a state rather than a geographic expression would be a major achievement.

Chart 1
Tonnage Supplied to China From India-Burma:
October 1944-September 1945

Gradually, the appreciation of these circumstances molded Wedemeyer's interpretation of his mission.

Wedemeyer's Missions and Roles

On 24 October 1944 the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Wedemeyer:

1. Your primary mission with respect to Chinese Forces is to advise and assist the Generalissimo in the conduct of military operations against the Japanese.

2. Your primary mission as to U.S. Combat Forces under your command is to carry out air operations from China. In addition you will continue to assist the Chinese air and ground forces in operations, training and in logistical support.

3. You will not employ United States resources for suppression of civil strife except insofar as necessary to protect United States lives and property.

This directive stood unchanged until August 1945.¹⁶

The problem that confronted Wedemeyer from the beginning was that of the content and the goal of the advice he was to give the Generalissimo. On 3 November, his G-3, Col. Thomas F. Taylor, suggested that the first mission of China Theater was "To aid and support the main effort which is being made in the Pacific," then listed the missions given above. In practice, Colonel Taylor advised, this meant securing the line of communications that led from the India base to Kunming and containing as much of the Japanese strength within China as possible. Taylor's concepts appear frequently in later studies, and were a step along the way of China Theater's continuing appraisal of its mission.¹⁷

The directive to Wedemeyer was significantly different from that given to his predecessor, which had been "to increase the effectiveness of United States assistance to the Chinese Government for the prosecution of the war and to assist in improving the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army." The old hope of reforming the Chinese Army was not suggested in the directive to Wedemeyer, possibly because the Operations Division of the War Department had come to doubt that it could be accomplished in time to assist in Japan's defeat; Wedemeyer was simply to assist the Chinese.¹⁸

The Joint Chiefs, in establishing Wedemeyer's position in China, told him that he was Commanding General, United State Forces, China Theater, which made him the U.S. theater commander, and they then "authorized [him] to accept the position of Chief of Staff to the Generalissimo." In so doing, the Joint Chiefs did not refer to the Generalissimo in his role as Supreme Commander, China Theater, and make Wedemeyer Chief of Staff to

him in that capacity alone, which would have limited Wedemeyer, as it had Stilwell, to assisting the Generalissimo in the conduct of combined operations in China.¹⁹ Rather, they made Wedemeyer's potential sphere of activity coextensive with the Generalissimo's, and left Wedemeyer free to advise the Generalissimo on any topic of interest to the Chinese leader, whether as Allied Supreme Commander or Chinese Generalissimo. The role of a chief of staff is what the commander chooses to make it. As matters developed, Wedemeyer found himself advising the Generalissimo on such Chinese domestic concerns as daylight-saving time, traffic regulations, the treatment of collaborators, and policy toward foreign holdings in Shanghai. But these aspects took some months to evolve, and in December 1944 Wedemeyer's personal summary of data on his theater described the relationship as not clearly defined.²⁰

An intangible but constructive influence in the relationship may be found in the impression, shared by several members of Wedemeyer's staff, that Wedemeyer and Chiang Kai-shek quickly established an easy and pleasant personal relationship. Wedemeyer's tact, his disarming personality, and his regard for the amenities made his advice palatable; the Generalissimo, as will be seen, was able to consider Wedemeyer's proposals on their merits.²¹

The Generalissimo's other chief of staff was General Ho Ying-chin, who was chief of the Chinese General Staff, which limited Ho's role to the Chinese Army as against Wedemeyer's concern with all regular forces present in China. In practice, Ho proved co-operative, and in retrospect the relationship between the two men seems to have been easy and amicable.

Wedemeyer's relationship to his American superiors was different from Stilwell's. Because General Hurley was now in China as the President's personal representative, Wedemeyer was not called upon to deliver messages from the President to the Generalissimo, a task which had sometimes embarrassed Stilwell in his relationship with the Generalissimo and ultimately precipitated his recall. From November 1944 until his death the President rarely addressed the Generalissimo, in contrast with the twenty-three messages of 1944 and the twenty-two of 1943 that were sent through Army channels, to which must be added the unknown number sent through the Chinese Embassy or the Navy.²²

ANCIENT CHINESE VILLAGER posing with General Wedemeyer in Kweichow Province during the latter's inspection trip through southeastern China.

Wedemeyer's relationship to the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, was not that of Stilwell to Stimson. Writing his memoirs in 1947, Stimson spoke of the "Stimson-Marshall-Stilwell" policy, noting that with Stilwell's recall he had "surrendered for good his bright hopes for a real rejuvenation of the Chinese forces," and wrote that he had had "no important part" in Wedemeyer's activities.²³

A certain liaison between Wedemeyer and the President was created by General George C. Marshall's practice of sending portions of Wedemeyer's correspondence to the President. This was consistent with the Army Chief of Staff's policy; he had done the same with Stilwell's radios.²⁴

An interesting aspect of the command structure in China Theater was the large number of American organizations in China which were completely or partly independent of the U.S. theater commander. The press and public would hold him responsible for sunshine or rain alike, yet his authority was greatly diminished by special arrangements which press and public would ignore as being dull military details not worthy of note. Thus, the XX Bomber Command was directly under the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The Air Transport Command was independent of control either by India-Burma or China Theater. Navy Group, China, reported to the Navy Department. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) reported to its headquarters in Washington. The Joint Intelligence Collection Agency was under the JCS. In addition to these American organizations there were the large number of Allied missions and clandestine organizations, the bulk of them British. As one of the Generalissimo's chiefs of staff, Wedemeyer could with Chiang's consent assert authority over these latter in the name of the Generalissimo as Supreme Commander, China Theater, yet each Allied organization might claim that the original agreement under which it entered China freed it from any attempts at control by a third party.²⁵

Thanks to the presence in Chungking of Maj. Gen. Adrian Carton de Wiart as the personal representative of Prime Minister Churchill, British agencies enjoyed the same sort of part military, part diplomatic representation

that the Americans did. Their diplomatic position and their resources were important; Wedemeyer was to find their co-operation valuable.²⁶

To place Wedemeyer's various missions in their proper perspective against the myriad problems of China it may be helpful to note the number of U.S. troops in China as of 30 November 1944:

Organization	Number
Total	a 27,739
Army Air Forces (less XX Bomber Command and Air Transport Command	17,723
Air Transport Command	b 2,257
Theater troops	5,349
Services of Supply	2,410

a STM-30, Strength of the Army. TAG, for 30 Nov 44, reports only 24,216 in China.
b STM-30 reports 23,713 ATC troops in CBI: India Headquarters, 482; India Wing, 7,550; Assam Wing, 15,681; none in China Wing.

The immediate logistical support of Wedemeyer's theater was to be given by General Sultan's India-Burma Theater; his requirements on the zone of interior for units, supplies, equipment, and personnel were to be submitted through Sultan's headquarters, which thus could screen them for items that could be supplied from India-Burma Theater. In November 1944, Sultan had a total of 183,920 men.²⁷

The U.S. Command Structure in China Theater

On assuming command, Wedemeyer found in China U.S. personnel from the Army, the Navy, and the Army Air Forces. (Chart 2) Some were engaged in aerial combat against the Japanese; some were giving logistical support to the U.S. air force units and to the other Americans; some were trying to train and advise the Chinese armies; some were gathering intelligence. There were no U.S. ground combat units, for the U.S. effort in China had always been intended by the War Department to help the Chinese defend themselves, to which end the War Department and the Joint Chiefs had been willing to give advice plus technical and air support. Moreover, since every American flown into China meant that .62 of a ton of supplies had to be flown to China every month for his support, Stilwell had kept the number of U.S. ground force and service personnel in China to a minimum hence there were few indeed in that category. Most of them were intended to act as technicians or instructors, and so the number of higher commissioned

Chart 2
Organization of U.S. Forces, China Theater:
January 1945

ranks and enlisted grades made China Theater relatively top-heavy in rank, while shifting plans made it often hard to give them suitable assignments.²⁸

These Americans were divided by their missions into five major categories. Perhaps first in importance, in that they included the only U.S. combat forces in China, were the several Army Air Forces units: the Fourteenth Air Force under General Chennault; the XX Bomber Command, under Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay; and the China Wing, India-China Division, Air Transport Command, under Brig. Gen. William H. Tunner. The logistical effort was being made by the Air Service Command under the command of the Fourteenth and by Advance Section No. 1, SOS in CBI, Col. Robert R. Neyland, Jr., commanding. The SOS kept the designation "Advance Section No. 1" until 10 November 1944.

Those ground force men who had been training and advising the Chinese had been divided among the operational staff working with the American-sponsored divisions in Yunnan Province (Y-Force Operations Staff or Y-FOS), and those doing similar work in east China with the Z-Force divisions. The Japanese occupation of east China disrupted the Z-Force; a rearrangement of the U.S. troops on Z-Force Operations Staff (Z-FOS) was clearly necessary. The officers and enlisted men assigned or attached to theater headquarters were easily identified as a fourth functional group.²⁹

Almost as soon as he heard of his new position, Wedemeyer asked the Army's Chief of Staff, General Marshall, to define his relationship to these several organizations and commanders and to General Hurley in the latter's role as the President's personal representative. The wording of Wedemeyer's queries made plain his belief that reports to Washington, by whomever sent, should be channeled through him and that clandestine, quasi-military, and intelligence activities should be under his control. His queries also indicated that personnel matters caused him some concern. And, having had ample opportunity during his nineteen months' previous service in Asia to become aware of some of the less-publicized problems of that area, Wedemeyer requested a clear definition of his duties in regard to lend-lease, Hump allocations, smuggling over the Hump, and black marketing.

In planning to create his own team in China, Wedemeyer asked that Maj. Gen. Thomas G. Hearn, who had been Stilwell's Chief of Staff, and Brig. Gen. Benjamin G. Ferris, who had been Deputy Chief of Staff, be replaced by Maj. Gen. Robert B. McClure and Brig. Gen. Thomas S. Timberman,

MAJ. GEN. CLAIRE L. CHENNAULT (left), Commanding General, Fourteenth Air Force, welcomes General Wedemeyer to the China Theater, October 1944.

respectively. Of Chennault, Wedemeyer wrote: "I fully appreciate his abilities and recognize in him an intrepid and inspirational leader; however, I am not sure that he will cooperate in the premises." He requested the War Department to order Brig. Gen. Eugene H. Beebe to China to be Chennault's deputy and ultimately his successor. If it were true that, as Wedemeyer had heard, Chennault's health was failing, then he asked that advantage be taken of that circumstance to relieve the airman at once without prejudice to his splendid combat record.³⁰

As drafted by Brig. Gen. John E. Hull, Assistant Chief of Staff, Operations Division, the War Department's initial response was largely noncommittal. Wedemeyer was told that his directive (discussed above) would answer many of his queries. Since Hurley was the President's personal representative, it appeared to the War Department that he could radio the President directly. Hurley's mission was described simply as having been to harmonize the Chiang-Stilwell relationship. In regard to Chennault, Wedemeyer was told to observe the situation in China, then send further recommendations.

More specific answers were promised later, but he was also told to study existing instructions.³¹

Wedemeyer, in compliance with this suggestion, studied the situation on the scene in China before moving to set up his command through the issuance of directives to his principal subordinates. In November 1944 his operational activity was directed toward the Chinese, in urging them to make a co-ordinated and effective use of their existing resources to stop the Japanese short of the Hump airline terminus of Kunming, while he began drafting directives to his air force, Services of Supply, and field commanders.

General Hearn, who had been in China since March 1942, asked to be relieved after Stilwell's recall. The War Department, believing that his presence in Chungking if continued for a while would give an element of continuity, directed that Hearn confer with Wedemeyer to arrange the time of his leaving. China Theater was authorized to issue orders for Hearn's relief "when his services could be spared."³²

The XX Bomber Command, though it was a major burden on the logistical and air resources of China Theater, was, as previously observed, not under Wedemeyer's command. It was part of the Twentieth Air Force, whose commanding general was the executive agent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in carrying out their directives for its employment. Subject to contingencies set forth in JCS directives, Wedemeyer could divert the B-29's from their primary mission if a tactical or strategic emergency arose. In practice, the provision had meant little, for the JCS defined emergency with the utmost rigidity.³³ Though in the early days of his command in China, Wedemeyer did not recommend that the B-29's be withdrawn from China, he did advise that he should be authorized to make recommendations as to their most profitable use.³⁴

The China Wing of the India-China Division, Air Transport Command, also was not under Wedemeyer's command though the India-China Division had assigned it missions that supported Wedemeyer. The China Wing operated regular scheduled flights between such cities as Wedemeyer might desire; it flew supplies from Kunming to Cheng-tu; it operated missions that Wedemeyer might want, such as movement of Chinese troops from Burma to east China; and when not required for any such missions it flew the Hump from China to India.³⁵

KUNMING AIRFIELD. The Air Transport Command flew supplies to Chennault's forward fields from the Kunming bases.

On 10 November Wedemeyer issued the first interim directive to the SOS in China. Maj. Gen. Gilbert X. Cheves became SOS commander, vice Colonel Neyland, who became commanding officer of the Base General Depot No. 2 at Calcutta (and ultimately commanding general of that base section). General Cheves was simply told that existing directives would remain in force as far as applicable. Under them, the SOS in China had been virtually independent, for Neyland had acted as a deputy in China for Maj. Gen. William E. R. Covell, commanding the SOS in CBI.³⁶

As for the various intelligence agencies, Wedemeyer did not move to integrate them into a harmonious team until late December 1944. Then he began by questioning them as to their missions and authority to operate in China.³⁷

The U.S. Projects in China

The long-standing intent of the War Department to help the Chinese to help themselves and Roosevelt's and the Generalissimo's desire that U.S. air

INDIA-BASED B-29's of the XX Bomber Command staging at Cheng-tu for a strike against Japan.

power play the stellar role in China interacted to produce a number of air, supply, and training projects whose sum defined the theater's sphere of operations. Of all these, the Fourteenth Air Force currently seemed the most important; Wedemeyer's initial judgment of the importance of the air element in his operations was suggested by his writing to General Henry H. Arnold, who commanded the Army Air Forces: "[General Marshall] has given me a task which is almost wholly dependent upon proper employment of air and I must have adequate air representation to accomplish this task. . . . I should have over 50% air officers on the China Theater staff."³⁸

The Fourteenth Air Force had, in November 1944, an average strength of 398 fighters, 97 medium bombers, and 47 heavy bombers. In that same month the Fourteenth received 13,578 tons of supplies flown in over the Hump, of which 9,357 tons were gas and oil.³⁹ From the Kunming airfields, the China Wing of the ATC flew these supplies to Chennault's forward fields, this intratheater transport being of course a charge on Hump tonnage. The apparent crisis in east China made it seem advisable to use all available

Chinese trucks for concentrating the Chinese for the defense of Kunming; the quartermaster truck companies of the SOS were not by themselves enough to support the Fourteenth Air Force.

These resources of air power, unimpressive in contrast to what Allied commanders had in Europe or the Pacific, but a good deal more than the Japanese had in China, were divided among two composite wings--the 68th and 69th--the 312th Fighter Wing, the Chinese-American Composite Wing (CACW), and the 308th Bombardment Group (H). An example of Chennault's flexibility, the 68th Wing had three fighter squadrons assigned, with bombers attached as the mission required. The 69th had four fighter squadrons and three medium squadrons. With headquarters at Kunming, it was shifting its attention from the campaign in Burma to the defense of Kunming against a Japanese attack from the south or southeast. The Chinese-American Composite Wing, headquarters at Peishiyi, had two fighter groups and one bombardment group. The 312th had two fighter groups (50 P-47's, 60 P-51's, and 6 P-61's), a total of five squadrons, protecting the B-29 fields at Cheng-tu.⁴⁰

The B-29's of the XX Bomber Command were based on India, but staged through the Cheng-tu complex of air bases to attack their targets in Formosa, Manchuria, and Japan. The Cheng-tu fields, an expansion of existing Chinese facilities, were a major installation. There were four airfields, each with a runway about 2,600 yards long, and storage for 168,000 gallons of gasoline. Three fields had hardstandings for fifty-two B-29's each, and the fourth, for forty-three. There was housing for 7,078 airmen. Providing these facilities was the responsibility of China Theater, though the power the B-29's represented was not at Wedemeyer's command.⁴¹ Hobbled though the B-29's were by the logistic problems of accumulating supplies at Cheng-tu, they were still capable of a few massive blows within a given time period, for experience proved they could mount raids of from 84 to 91 aircraft, with bomb loads of from two tons per plane on maximum-range missions to four tons over-all, that is, 5,901 tons of bombs on 1,576 combat sorties from China in seven months of operations.⁴²

The major effort of the Services of Supply in October-November 1944 was devoted to operations on the line of communications from Kunming to east China, the eastern line of communications (or ELOC). The line had been forcibly shortened by the Japanese who overran its eastern termini, while the lack of resources at the SOS's command made its efforts necessarily

on a small scale. So the 3732 and 3843d Quartermaster Truck Companies, making extensive use of rather unsatisfactory Chinese drivers and supported by the 857th Ordnance Heavy Automotive Maintenance Company, brought forward what they could to the Chanyi truckhead, and later to northern fields of the Fourteenth Air Force. The bulk of tonnage to east China was carried by Chinese agencies.

The major engineering projects were highway construction, maintenance, and repair. The Engineer Section of SOS used Chinese contractors and Chinese Government funds on the Kutsing-Tushan section of the ELOC. On the other side of China, men of the Burma Road Engineers, attached to the SOS and commanded by Col. Robert F. Seedlock, were charged with maintaining and improving the Chinese end of the Burma Road, roughly from Kunming to the Salween, against the day when the Ledo Road would connect with it. Essentially they were a task force of engineers and heavy equipment operators, numbering about 180 all told. Airfield construction, so important to the Fourteenth Air Force, was a Chinese responsibility, for the SOS did not have the necessary facilities.

In addition to these major efforts, the SOS performed its housekeeping tasks for the U.S. forces in China, operating a station hospital in Kunming, providing 3d and 4th echelon motor maintenance facilities in the same city, purchasing subsistence in the open market, maintaining signal communications, and the like. All this was on a small scale, for the Hump restricted everything that might be flown in and often the SOS received nothing it had requisitioned; the Fourteenth Air Force was until October 1944 responsible for its own supply through the Air Service Command in that great area east of the 108th meridian; and lastly, the Chinese Government, through the War Area Service Command, supplied food and shelter to the U.S. forces in China through its hostels.⁴³

After the air effort and the attempts to move tonnage to the airfields and to the troops, the remaining U.S. project in China was liaison with and training and observing of Chinese troops. On the Salween front, liaison and technical advice was given in the forward areas, while troop training continued in the rear. In east China, the reluctance of the Chinese to attempt a stand after Heng-yang's fall on 8 August led to the withdrawal of almost all the Americans who had tried since 1 January 1944 to train a second Thirty Divisions in east China. The so-called Z-Force Operations Staff that remained comprised an observer group with the headquarters of the Chinese IX War Area and a liaison team of twenty-eight under Col. Harwood C. Bowman in the city of Liuchow. This handful of Americans, in the first

months of Wedemeyer's command, sought to give technical aid to the Chinese defenders of Kwangsi while sending a flow of information back to theater headquarters in Chungking. They provided air-ground liaison, supervised demolitions, helped distribute the 500 tons of munitions flown in to east China in late October 1944, and helped with administrative and logistical matters. The rest of the Z-FOS men, including the headquarters, were in Kunming, their future mission dependent on Wedemeyer's estimate of the situation. They numbered 625.⁴⁴

Near Kunming there were a Field Artillery Training Center, a Command and General Staff School, and a Chinese Ordnance Training Center. American officers and enlisted men acted as instructors while the Chinese provided the administrative staff and school troops. The Field Artillery Training Center had opened its doors 1 April 1943 and had trained individual students, trained and equipped artillery battalions, and repaired Chinese ordnance.⁴⁵ Activated 15 May 1944, the Command and General Staff School used the plant of the old Infantry Training Center and gave instruction to 100-man classes of Chinese field-grade and general officers.

Farther west, on and behind the Salween front itself, a much larger group of Americans, the Y-Force Operations Staff, was giving close support to the Chinese attempt to clear the Japanese from the Chinese end of the Burma Road. Infantry, artillery, veterinary, engineer, signal, medical, and air personnel were attached to Chinese armies and divisions.⁴⁶ American portable and field hospitals gave medical care to Chinese troops of a sort hitherto unknown in Chinese wars. A chain of liaison teams, reporting to Brig. Gen. Frank Dorn, Chief of Staff, Y-FOS, observed the Chinese, and checked on their compliance with the orders of General Wei Li-huang, the Chinese commander on the Salween. The whole attempt to clear out the Japanese was made possible by air support and air supply from the Fourteenth Air Force. At the Chinese Communist headquarters, Yenan, there was the small American Observer Group under Col. David D. Barrett. In terms of American troops working directly with the Chinese the effort was small, some 4,800 officers and enlisted men. To provide supplies for the projects just described was one of the most important missions of General Sultan's India-Burma Theater.⁴⁷

Y-FORCE OFFICERS observing a Chinese artillery attack on the walled city of Teng-chung. From left: Col. John H. Stodter, Commander, Liaison Group, Chinese 53d Army; Brig. Gen. Frank Dorn, Chief of Staff, Y-FOS; Lt. Col. Frank Sherman, Liaison Officer, Chinese 2d Division; and Lt. Col. John Darrah, Executive Officer, Y-FOS.

Sultan's Task

The situation in India and Burma contrasted sharply with the darkening scene in China. If in May and August of 1942 and April and May of 1944 Japanese victories in Burma had threatened to inflame nationalist sentiment to the point of large-scale revolt, by the end of October 1944 Japanese defeat was so apparent a prospect that only those Indians who, like Subhas Chandra Bose, had joined the Japanese camp acted as though they thought they had picked the winner; Indian nationalism waited on Allied victory for the satisfaction of its claims. The military outlook was bright. The Japanese attempt to invade India in 1944 with three divisions had been a debacle, no less; the plans, the commanders, the divisions were all ruined. The Japanese hoped to hold Burma as long as possible to keep China blockaded to the last minute, but never again could it be a springboard to conquest. In the north of Burma General Sultan had one British and five Chinese divisions plus an American brigade, all supported by India-Burma Theater, concentrated in the Myitkyina-Mogaung area of north Burma, the Bhamo-Namhkan-Wanting area, ready to pry open the last Japanese grip on the Burma Road. Their unbroken series of past successes against the Japanese 18th and 53d Divisions

Chart 3
Allied Chain of Command:
November 1944

LT. GEN. DANIEL I. SULTAN (left), Commanding General, India-Burma Theater, with Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten (center), Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia, and Brig. Gen. John P. Willey, Commanding General, 5332d Provisional Brigade.

plus regiments from the 2d and 49th indicated they were well able to do so. Opposite central Burma, on the Indian border, the British 4 and 33 Corps were drawing close to the Chindwin River. In the Arakan, the British 15 Corps was preparing to move down the coast of Burma in order to secure bases from which air supply could reach deep into central Burma to sustain the 4 and 33 Corps when they should return the British flag to Mandalay and Meiktila.⁴⁸

When he had been deputy commander of the old China-Burma-India Theater, General Sultan had had his office in theater headquarters in New Delhi, with India and Burma as his area of responsibility. Supervision of the U.S. effort in India-Burma and liaison between the New Delhi headquarters and the field headquarters in Burma had been his major tasks. (Chart 3) When he took command of the new India-Burma Theater, his

directive in effect required him to continue with his administrative responsibilities in India and Burma, adding to them the command of India-based U.S. and Chinese operations in Burma. The JCS directive made clear that Sultan's was a supporting role:

Your primary mission is to support the China Theater in carrying out its mission. . . . This includes the establishment, maintenance, operation, and security of the land line of communication to China, and the security of the air route to China. . . . you will participate in and support the operations of the Southeast Asia Command. For this purpose, forces involved under your command will be under the operational control of SACSEA [Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia]. . . . you will be responsible for the logistic and administrative support of all U.S. Army Forces in the India-Burma theater. . . . Requirements of the China Theater which cannot be met from resources available to you will be submitted by you to the War Department. . . . You will coordinate directly with the Commanding General of the China Theater and with the Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia Command and with the Commander-in-Chief, India, to the extent necessary to carry out the mission. The India-Burma Theater must serve as a communications zone for the China Theater and requisitions will be made accordingly by the Commanding General of India-Burma Theater.⁴⁹

The directive meant that the installations and troops in India and Burma would continue at their familiar tasks. It also defined the relationship between Sultan and Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia Command.

In China, the major problems of inter-Allied command relations revolved around Wedemeyer's relation to the Generalissimo. In India-Burma, they arose between India-Burma Theater (IBT) and Southeast Asia Command (SEAC), which had operational control of Allied forces in Burma. Stilwell had acted as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, SEAC. This post was now given to Lt. Gen. Raymond A. Wheeler, onetime Commanding General, SOS, CBI, who had been promoted to Principal Administrative Officer, SEAC. But Sultan did inherit Stilwell's duties of field commander in Burma by succeeding him as Commanding General, Northern Combat Area Command (NCAC), and Commanding General, Chinese Army in India.

The Northern Combat Area Command had originally been created in early 1944 to provide a headquarters that would be legally and actually American to command American, British, and Indian service and combat troops in north Burma. Its personnel were concurrently the American staff of a Sino-American headquarters, Chih Hui Pu, which commanded the Chinese in north Burma. By summer 1944, through common and informal consent of Chinese and Americans, the term Northern Combat Area Command had quietly superseded Chih Hui Pu and all concerned were content to refer to NCAC as the senior Allied headquarters in north Burma.

In addition to U.S. service troops, there were two Chinese armies, the

New Sixth and the New First, and the 1st Chinese Separate Regiment under NCAC. Together, they formed the Chinese Army in India (CAI). The New First Army, under General Sun Li-jen, included the 30th and 38th Divisions. The 38th Division had been engaged since 30 October 1943, and had previously taken a creditable part in the First Burma Campaign of 1942. The division had been trained, re-equipped, and brought up to strength at Ramgarh Training Center in Bihar Province, India. Its sister division, the 30th, was also Ramgarh-trained. Its 88th and 89th Regiments had fought at Myitkyina. The New Sixth Army included the 14th, 22d, and 50th Divisions, commanded by General Liao Yao-shiang. The 22d Division had fought in the First Burma Campaign, then been rebuilt at Ramgarh. It had been in action since January 1944.

As a field commander and as a theater commander, Sultan found that SEAC had the ultimate operational control of all U.S. and Chinese combat troops under his command, though he himself, through General Covell, the SOS commander, controlled the U.S. logistic effort in India, for India lay outside SEAC's boundaries. As a theater commander, Sultan was independent of SEAC, but as commander of the Northern Combat Area Command, he was one of two Army commanders under SEAC. In his capacity as theater commander, Sultan had under him the U.S. Tenth Air Force, Maj. Gen. Howard C. Davidson, but operational control of the Tenth had been yielded to SEAC's Eastern Air Command, an integrated organization with Royal Air Force (RAF) and Army Air Forces (AAF) units. Eastern Air Command was commanded by Maj. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer of the AAF. So, even as Wedemeyer had two superiors, the Joint Chiefs and the Generalissimo, Sultan had two, the Joint Chiefs and the Supreme Allied Commander, SEAC, Admiral Mountbatten. As a chief of staff to the Generalissimo, Wedemeyer had a more elevated position in the hierarchy of China Theater than did Sultan in Southeast Asia Command, for between Mountbatten and Sultan lay still another echelon of command, Allied Land Forces, Southeast Asia.

The American Effort in India and Burma

To carry out his tasks, Sultan in November 1944 had a U.S. force many times the size of Wedemeyer's:⁵¹

Total	a 183.920
Theater troops	21,230
SOS	60,223
AAF	79,946
ATC	a 22,521

a See note 27 (2) , above.

As the table above indicates, the missions of these troops--one cannot say "men" because nurses and members of the Women's Army Corps were also present--were principally in the fields of logistics and air war.

Their tasks were to give logistical support to the Hump and Tenth Air Force airfields; operate the Assam line of communications which sustained the six Allied divisions in north Burma; provide air supply to British, Indian, and Chinese divisions in Burma; build the Ledo Road; and operate both the communications and combat zones of the Chinese divisions in north Burma.

As he took up his new tasks, General Sultan was spared a duty which in China had absorbed Wedemeyer and his staff for many days; he did not have to frame new directives for his subordinate commands. The SOS could continue as it had, operational directives to the Tenth Air Force would come from Eastern Air Command, and the Chinese Army in India and Northern Combat Area Command were going concerns, with plans complete for the fall campaign.

The basic mission of the SOS was to construct, operate, and maintain a ground line of communications that would in its initial phases support the airlift to China and the North Burma Campaign and when complete stretch to China to support the U.S. effort there.

The India-based air effort comprised the B-29's, which from their home bases around Calcutta were staged through China to attack Japan; the Air Transport Command, which from bases in Assam and later Bengal as well flew supplies over the Japanese lines into China; the Tenth Air Force, which flew strategical and tactical missions in Burma; and the Combat Cargo Task Force, which furnished air supply.

Training Chinese troops at Ramgarh, Bihar Province, was still one of the major American activities in India, but the days of maximum effort there passed with the completion of preparations for taking north Burma. As of 24 October 1944, when the CBI Theater was split, 5,368 Chinese officers and 48,124 Chinese enlisted men had been trained at Ramgarh. Still present were 1,309 Chinese officers and 7,951 Chinese enlisted men. Training of artillery, armor, and corps and army troops was the major task in fall 1944. Ramgarh's facilities were also used to train the only U.S. regiment to be sent as such from the United States to China, Burma, and India, the 124th Cavalry Regiment of the Texas National Guard, now a dismounted unit.⁵²

The SOS in India, Fall 1944

There was very little immediate effect on Covell's SOS in India and Burma from the division of the China-Burma-India Theater. The SOS in China had been substantially independent, as far as command went, and as

Map 2
China-Burma-India Line of Communications
July 1945

it had but a few weeks before received a substantial increase in its personnel allotment, there was no immediate impact on the personnel situation. Then, as Wedemeyer's plans jelled, personnel requisitions began to arrive from China, including one for the commander of the Calcutta base, General Cheves. As they arrived, a survey showed that attempts to fill them from the SOS organization in India-Burma were the principal effect of the split on SOS in India-Burma. Immediately after the split, the SOS was organized as:

Headquarters, New Delhi
Base Section No. 1, with headquarters at Karachi
Base Section No. 2, with headquarters at Calcutta
Intermediate Section No. 2, with headquarters at Chabua, Assam
Advance Section No. 3, with headquarters at Ledo, Assam

Each section commander was responsible for all SOS installations in his area.⁵³

The principal task of the SOS was operating the terrestrial elements of the long line of communications that stretched, ultimately, from dockside at Calcutta to the unloading stands on the Chinese airfields. (Map 2) The major components of the line were the port facilities of Calcutta; the rail, barge, road, and pipe lines of the Assam line of communications; the Air Transport Command fields in Bengal, Assam, and Burma; the transport aircraft themselves; and, finally, the airfields in China. The Air Transport Command was autonomous, but its support was one of the greatest single problems of the SOS.

In India and Burma, construction and transportation were no longer a major puzzle but were routine operating problems. The depot system and local procurement were well established so that the intratheater supply problem was in hand. Indeed, the major problem remaining was that of the backlog of water-borne supply tonnage which had been built up between Los Angeles and Calcutta because shipping was not available in quantity to satisfy every overseas command.

Calcutta, the heart of Base Section No. 2, was the principal seaport in India-Burma, for Karachi, in Base Section No. 1, regarded as the only secure port in the days of Japanese victories, was now too far from the front and received very few vessels to unload. In the winter of 1943-44, Base Section No. 2 had received two more port battalions, the 497th and 508th, modern dock and barge equipment, and full use of a section of the King George Docks. This plus dynamic leadership had broken the port bottleneck at Calcutta. In October Calcutta handled 61,591 long tons, a figure that though large in comparison with past performance was shortly estimated by General Covell to be but one fifteenth of Calcutta's potential capacity.⁵⁴

LOADING RIVER BOATS at Calcutta with rations for the fighting front. U.S. port battalion men trained and supervised the Indian dock workers.

In November 1944 Brig. Gen. Robert R. Neyland, Jr., took command of Base Section No. 2, in General Covell's opinion greatly increasing the port's efficiency by improving the morale and performance of duty of the American port battalions and the Indian dock workers and stevedores supplied by the Government of India under reciprocal aid. During 1944 the United States adopted the system of paying for tonnage unloaded rather than for man-hours of Indian labor expended. This, together with the introduction of labor-saving devices and training of Indian labor by the men of the port battalions, resulted in a substantial reduction of Indian man-hours and Indian labor costs. Between September and December 1944 Indian man-hours were cut from 647,929 per month to 357,390, handling costs per ton from $2.87 to $1.36.

Nor did supplies accumulate in warehouses or at dockside, for the Assam line of communications from Calcutta north and east had, if General Covell was correctly informed, a capacity 15 percent above anticipated military requirements. The major factor in this happy situation, a considerable change from that in 1942, 1943, and early 1944, was that American railway troops

LOADING BOXCARS. Soldiers of the 748th Railway Operating Battalion oversee the transfer of supplies from river boat to boxcar, India, November 1944.

managing the line of communications were now under Allied military control which extended along key sections of the Bengal and Assam Railway. Completion of several major construction projects had eliminated some major bottlenecks.⁵⁵ The unbridged and turbulent Brahmaputra River had been a problem, for the two ferries crossing it had been unable to meet traffic demands. Two more ferries were completed by fall 1944 and drastically changed procedures greatly increased the traffic flow at each of the four. A steep section of single track had limited train lengths and speeds, for long trains on it were apt to break apart. Double-tracking met one problem, vacuum brakes and American engineers the other, so that from February 1944 to November 1944 traffic over the stretch jumped from 75,110 tons to 138,393 tons a month.⁵⁶

There were both broad and meter-gauge railways in the line of communications, and the transshipment points that linked them restricted traffic. On

6 October SOS took over one such major point which had remained under Indian civil control long after the rest of the system had passed under Allied military control. This point had threatened to hold back the whole line of communications. Out went the antiquated steam gantry cranes, and in came new electric models from the United States. A new railroad yard was built to handle more cars. Floodlights were erected and operations went on a twenty-four-hour basis. Other transshipment points were similarly treated, and such modern techniques promptly brought results; by November 1944, rail-to-river traffic at one point had increased 224 percent over February, and at a river-to-rail point traffic was up 204 percent for the same period. Malaria and dysentery in the Military Railway Service area, which had in the past helped make Indian rail traffic even more of a hazard, were directly attacked in September by converting some boxcars into diners and mobile dispensaries to serve troop trains on long runs through Assam. Thanks to these improvements, the Military Railway Service carried its all-time peak load of troops in October, when it moved 92,800 troops plus matériel into place for the fall offensive.⁵⁷

The steady progress of the pipeline program directed by the Quebec Conference of August 1943 was shifting attention from the problem of transporting fuel to that of procuring it. From the port of Budge-Budge, near Calcutta, one six-inch line ran to the Tinsukia tank farm in Assam while another of six-inch and four-inch combined served the B-29 fields outside Calcutta. From Tinsukia, two four-inch lines went on into Burma alongside the Ledo Road. One had reached Myitkyina by the time the CBI Theater was split, the other by 31 October 1944 was complete to mile 219 from Ledo, near Warazup. The neat black line that these arteries made on a map looked rather different in the field--years later, an officer recalled seeing a working party laying pipe in flood water chin high. "One, two, three," the leader would count, and at "three" all would take a deep breath and duck below to connect the pipe under water.⁵⁸

In Assam, there were now enough airfields to accommodate the Air Transport Command's Hump operations and permit the fullest degree of air support and air supply to the forthcoming campaign in Burma. In the spring and summer of 1943 the condition of the airfields had greatly hindered supply of the Fourteenth Air Force in China; that was now a thing of the past.⁵⁹

Though the Air Transport Command was in no sense part of the SOS, its role as the vital link in the line of communications to China requires its

BULLDOZER IN OPERATION SOUTH OF MYITKYINA

mention here. The Ledo Road and the pipelines were hopes for the future, but after its early struggles the ATC had become a present reality and was delivering supplies to China at a pace that increased daily. Its successes in 1944 and 1945 must be regarded as the indispensable foundation for Wedemeyer's achievements in China; the steady increase in tonnage delivered to China merits a departure from chronology.⁶⁰

In October 1944 the India-China Division of the ATC had an average strength of 297.8 operationally assigned aircraft. They were manned and maintained by 22,423 service troops and 23,812 locally hired civilians. By June 1945 the India-China Division had an average of 622.4 operationally assigned aircraft. Service troops then totaled 33,938, their numbers augmented by 47,009 civilians.⁶¹ Table 1 shows tonnages delivered.

The Ledo Road was nearing completion. The ground was drying in north Burma, the rivers returning to their channels, and the soldiers beginning

TABLE 1--TONNAGES DELIVERED BY INDIA-CHINA DIVISION, ATC

Year and Month	To China a	Intra-India
1944
October	24,715	12,224
November	34,914	15,553
December	31,935	16,245
1945
January	44,099	17,112
February	40,677	17,118
March	46,545	19,424
April	44,254	19,569
May	46,394	15,015
June	55,387	14,269

a Tonnages shown on Chart 1, p. 14, above, include hauls by other carriers than ATC, such as Chinese National Airways.
Source: History of IBT, II, 383-86.

to get the mud and mildew in their camps reduced to less than nightmare proportions. The lead bulldozer was about eighty miles away from the Myitkyina-Bhamo Road. Maj. Gen. Lewis A. Pick, commanding Advance Section No. 3, the builder of the Ledo Road and so closely connected with it that the soldiers called it "Pick's Pike," thought that another ninety days would see it joined to the Burma Road.⁶² Breaking the blockade of China was now a problem of tactics rather than of engineering.

Surveying their command in October 1944, Sultan and his principal subordinates--General Stratemeyer, the airman; General Covell, of the SOS; General Tunner, of the ATC; General Davidson, of the Tenth Air Force; Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Hanley, Jr., of the India-Burma Air Service Command; General Cheves, of Base Section No. 2 (Calcutta); Brig. Gen. John A. Warden, of Base Section No. 1 (Karachi); Brig. Gen. Joseph A. Cranston, of Intermediate Section No. 2 (Chabua); and General Pick, of Advance Section No. 3 (Ledo)--could feel that the work of the past two years was approaching fruition. The power accumulated in and based on India could pump supplies into China Theater on a scale equal to the boldest planning of the past.

Supply Activities in India

Though in October 1944 the supply situation in India gave cause for quiet satisfaction, it would not stay that way without effort and attention. Perhaps indicative of the difficulties of the past, as of October 1944 CBI had

been authorized the highest levels of supply of any overseas command; the War Department might soon direct a reduction.⁶³

There were also stirrings within the Government of India, upon whose generosity via reciprocal aid (or reverse lend-lease) SOS depended heavily. In 1942 the War Department had directed that, in view of the shipping shortage, the Americans in India should rely on local sources to the utmost, and by late 1942 the SOS reported that CBI was living off the land. India had co-operated. Now, in late 1944, it appeared to the SOS that reciprocal aid was leveling off and more apt to decline than rise.⁶⁴ The Government of India was becoming increasingly aware of inflationary pressures, and the U.S. forces and U.S.-sponsored Chinese divisions in Burma were heavy users of consumer goods. Thus, to take but one clothing item, in 1944 the SOS received 557,087 pairs of shoes. Among subsistence items--in a country which in 1943 had suffered one of the great famines of all time--in 1944 SOS drew from Indian sources 24,472,293 pounds of meat, fish, and fowl.⁶⁵

In addition to objective physical and financial factors, there were subjective and political factors. The cinema had long ago convinced the Indian public that the United States was incomparably the richest nation in the world; it was difficult to persuade Indian legislators and editors that India should share its stocks of food, cloth, and construction materials with the Americans, whose rate of pay, munificient by local standards, was making them the joy and the salvation of local shopkeepers.⁶⁶

So there were numerous hints from official Indian sources in the summer of 1944 that the supply of food and cloth was about to be cut back, and the SOS, as the theaters split, was engaged in diplomatically trying to keep the flow of reciprocal aid at past levels.⁶⁷ Receipts of clothing and subsistence were beginning to fall, how far and how fast remained to be seen. In the negotiations on reciprocal aid, SOS had one advantage. Beginning October 1944 the War Department directed that the theater commander screen all requests for lend-lease from India Command and SEAC. This responsibility was delegated to the SOS, and SOS believed its hand was strengthened accordingly in dealings with its British and Indian colleagues.⁶⁸

JORHAT AIRFIELD, one of the U.S.-built airfields in Assam.

Supplies from the United States were distributed to the several parts of the theater through the general depots. High priority items, flown from the United States and landed at Karachi, were an ATC responsibility and were airlifted by that agency direct to the general depot to which the item was consigned. For water-borne supplies, the Calcutta Base General Depot acted as a clearing point. Some supplies went from Calcutta to another general depot at New Delhi, but most went to the Intermediate General Depot at Chabua, Assam. Chabua in turn sent supplies to China Theater via the Hump and to north Burma via the Advance General Depot at Ledo. With minor exceptions, all SOS, theater, and Chinese troops in India were served by the depot of the section in which they were stationed. This system seemed too decentralized for effective control of supply stocks, so on 1 November the depot commanders were placed directly under SOS.⁶⁹

With the split of the CBI Theater, the fact that China Theater was still dependent of India-Burma Theater for supplies led to a certain amount of confusion, for some individual units in China such as the Burma Road Engineers were requisitioning direct on the Chabua depot, while China Theater itself was simply forwarding requisitions made on it without consolidating or screening them. In effect, this meant that the clerical staff at Chabua was handling much of the paper work for supply of China Theater.

Ultimately, this had to be brought to the attention of China Theater for remedial action.⁷⁰

But even as the scanty American resources in Asia were being marshaled to halt what seemed a grave threat to China, the War Department's planning looked ahead to the day when these same resources would be surplus and in September 1944 theater commanders were ordered to begin disposing of all surplus property except aircraft and items peculiar to aircraft. These surpluses were to be reported to the Foreign Economic Administration. The Chinese and Indian economies had long been starved for goods, and the two U.S. theaters had supplies and installations that ranged from emergency rations to fully equipped modern hospitals. Both the Government of India and the Republic of China would have the liveliest concern in the disposition of such surpluses, and would seize on any wartime action as a precedent. Indeed, India set up its own India Disposals Board in September 1944, six days before the War Department issued its own circular. This board immediately asked the U.S. diplomatic mission to India for authority to dispose of all U.S. surpluses.

Disposal of U.S. surplus property, though promising a number of complicated problems for India-Burma Theater, appeared simplicity itself compared to disposal of surplus lend-lease, for there were several varieties of lend-lease, some of it involving four governments. There was reciprocal aid to the United States from India; there was British aid to China, e. g., vehicles at Ramgarh Training Center; there were U.S.-built airfields in India; there was Indian reciprocal aid to China, and U.S. lend-lease to China. In the winter of 1944-45 questions about how items in such categories were to be set aside for disposition, by whom, and for whose account began to arise; theater headquarters followed them closely, either as a party or as an interested observer to negotiations between the SOS and Indian and British authority.⁷¹

Lend-Lease to China

With the opening of the Stilwell Road appearing to be a certainty, an event that would enable vehicles and artillery to be moved into China in quantities, India-Burma Theater's role as the present custodian and eventual delivering agent began to assume current operational importance. Originally, in 1941 and 1942, lend-lease had been requisitioned on the basis of filling the gaps in the equipment of thirty Chinese divisions. In the fall of 1942 Stilwell had asked War Department approval of a sixty-division program. Initially the Department had concurred; then what seemed a lack of Chinese interest in the program plus the difficulty of delivering arms led the Department

in July 1943 to cut the program back to arms for the first thirty divisions plus 10 percent of the requirements of the second thirty for training purposes. When the CBI Theater split, this was the current program approved by the War Department.⁷²

During the command crisis that preceded the split of CBI Theater, there had been a series of changes in lend-lease procedure, all in the direction of putting certain Chinese divisions squarely in U.S. supply channels. If this trend continued, if certain of the Generalissimo's best divisions were to enjoy the full support of the theater SOS and Army Service Forces, the political implications could be great. However, a considerable portion of these developments took place in the period July-September 1944 when it appeared probable to the War Department and the President that Stilwell would have command of a considerable Chinese force in China; it remained to be seen if the end of that prospect meant the end of this trend.

In the spring of 1944 the circumstance that a considerable tonnage of lend-lease for China was in Indian stockpiles with no prospect of immediate delivery suggested some new approaches to the storage, issue, and delivery of lend-lease to Chinese divisions. One was the idea of pooling stocks, with both lend-lease and U.S. Army supplies being treated as one stockpile and supplies being issued to U.S. and U.S.-sponsored Chinese units as required.

Another new approach was the "six-months rule," under which lend-lease for China could not be requisitioned from depots in the United States unless it could be delivered to China within six months. One objection raised by theater headquarters to the six-months rule was that the stockpiles in India were unbalanced, that there were items needed by the U.S.-sponsored Chinese divisions which were not at hand in India and which could not be requisitioned under the six-months rule, although a sudden and unpredictable victory in north Burma might open the way for immediate and substantial deliveries to China. But the rule remained in effect and the steady improvement in the Assam line of communications, which greatly reduced the transit time through India, made it appear that the six-months rule would not be too great a limiting factor.

By September 1944 it seemed so obvious the Japanese would soon be driven from north Burma and a road opened to the Chinese forces in Yunnan that a new and speedier process for requisitioning lend-lease seemed necessary. Existing procedure called for clearing bids through the Munitions Assignments Board. Requisitioning on the Los Angeles Port of Embarkation brought supplies to India far more quickly. If lend-lease arms could be requisitioned rather than bid for, the rearming of U.S.-sponsored divisions would be greatly speeded. Therefore in September 1944 the War Department

permitted drawing replacement and maintenance equipment plus ammunition for the Chinese Army in India by requisition on the Los Angeles Port of Embarkation. Arms for initial issue would still be bid for through the International Division of Army Service Forces in Washington for presentation to the Munitions Assignments Board. But the precedent for requisition as against bidding was strongly indicated. A month later, on 6 October, the Munitions Assignments Board approved supply through the SOS of medical replacement and maintenance equipment of all U.S.-sponsored Chinese divisions with which U.S. medical personnel were working. Supplies for control of malaria could be drawn from the SOS even by units that did not have direct U.S. medical supervision.

In preparation for the opening of the road to China, the SOS sought to have on hand, as of 1 February 1945, for immediate shipment, equipment for five divisions plus army troops. SOS planned to deliver this matériel in February and to follow with delivery of matériel for two and one-half divisions every month thereafter, until the current thirty-three-division program was complete, and advised China Theater accordingly on 20 November.⁷³

Table of Contents ** Previous Chapter (Foreword/Preface) * Next Chapter (2)

Footnotes

1. For a discussion of the Japanese offensive plan (Operation ICHIGO), see the second volume of this subseries, Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1956), pp. 316ff.

2. Maj. Gen. John R. Deane, USA, Ret., The Strange Alliance: The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia (New York: The Viking Press, 1947), pp. 246-49.

3. RAD CFB 36841, Wedemeyer to Brig Gen Douglas L. Weart, DCofS Rr Ech USFCT, 5 May 45. Item 645, Bks 3 and 4, ACW Personal File. (See Bibliographical Note.)

4. (1) CM-OUT 51593, JCS to Sultan, 25 Oct 44. (2) History of Services of Supply in India-Burma Theater, 1944-45, Vol. I, p. 4. OCMH. (Hereafter, SOS in IBT.)

5. (1) The Wedemeyer letters in the OPD Exec Files (see Bibliographical Note) describe the general's reactions during the time he was Deputy Chief of Staff, Southeast Asia Command. (2) History of China Theater, 20-31 Oct 44. OCMH. Initialed by Wedemeyer, 12 Nov 44.

6. (1) Hurley Papers. (2) Capt. Robert L. Bodell, History of DIXIE Mission. OCMH. (Hereafter, History of DIXIE Mission.) (3) The Japanese troop movements which preceded the east China campaign of 1944 seem to have been made without Communist interference.

7. (1) On 4 December 1944 Wedemeyer criticized the poor performance of the Chinese forces that had tried to defend the U.S. bases in east China. Unless the interpreter erred badly, the Generalissimo replied that those were provincial troops but that now Nationalist divisions were going to fight to save Kunming. Min, Mtg 12, Wedemeyer with Generalissimo, 4 Dec 44. Bk 1, Generalissimo Minutes, 1-69, 13 Nov 44-15 Jul 45, Job T-49-20 CBI. (Hereafter, Generalissimo Minutes.) (See Bibliographical Note.) (2) For a discussion of the Generalissimo's refusal to let arms be sent to the east China commanders, see Stilwell's Command Problems, Ch. XI. The ban stayed in effect until February 1945. See Rad CAK 6126. Brig Gen Edgar E. Glenn, CofS Fourteenth AF, to Chennault, 22 Feb 45. Item 439, Bks 1 and 2, ACW Personal File.

8. (1) Min, Mtg 27, Wedemeyer with Generalissimo, 10 Jan 45. Item 7, Bk 1, Generalissimo Minutes. (2) For an account of the separatist movement in east China to October 1944, see Stilwell's Command Problems.

9. (1) For a discussion of the Japanese-Chinese dispositions in 1944, see Stilwell's Command Problems. The problem of shipping arms to the east China commanders is also discussed there. The lifting of the embargo is discussed below, Ch. II.

10. (1) Ltr and Incls, Lt Col James M. Miller, Exec Officer Mil Hist Sec FECOM, 13 Mar 52, to Maj Gen Orlando Ward, Chief of Mil Hist. (2) Ltr and Incls, Col Allison R. Hartman, Chief Mil Hist Sec FECOM, to Ward, 19 Dec 51. OCMH.

11. The comments of Maj Gen Claire L. Chennault and of former Japanese officers on the draft manuscript of this volume tend to support this hypothesis, OCMH.

12. (1) Economic Conditions in Free China and Their Effect on Army Procurement, Jan 45, pp. 2-3, prep by Resources Sec. Central Purchasing and Procurement Authority, Hq SOS USFCT. OCMH. (Hereafter, Economic Conditions in China.) (2) Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1950 states that the U.S. national income in 1944 and 1945 was at a level of over $180,000,000,000 (page 265) and that national defense, expenditures in fiscal 1944 were $83,766,000,000 and in fiscal 1945, $84,569,000,000 (page 312).

13. Economic Conditions in China, pp. 14, 17-18, 19-20.

14. See Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell's Mission to China, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1953), Chart 6, p. 284, and Stilwell's Command Problems, Chart 5, p. 112.

15. History of India-Burma Theater, 25 Oct 44-23 June 45, I, 106. OCMH. (Hereafter, History of IBT.)

16. (1) Rad cited n. 4(1). (2) The mission as quoted above is closely paraphrased in History of China Theater, 20-31 Oct 44, which Wedemeyer initialed 12 November 1944.

17. Memo, Col Thomas F. Taylor, G-3, for Wedemeyer, 3 Nov 44, sub: Reorientation of Chinese-American Effort in China. OCMH.

18. (1) The increasing tendency of the War Department to minimize China's role in the war is described in Stilwell's Command Problems. (2) Stilwell's Mission to China, Ch. II.

19. Stilwell's position as chief of the Generalissimo's (projected) Allied staff is discussed in Stilwell's Mission to China, Chapter II.

20. (1) CM-OUT 51593, JCS to Wedemeyer, 24 Oct 44. (2) Memos 513, 605, 909-7, Wedemeyer for Generalissimo, 17 Apr 45, 9 Jun 45, 2 Apr 45, Bks 9, 8, and 3, ACW Corresp with Chinese, Corresp File, OffCG Hq China Sv Comd. Box 45519, KCRC. (Hereafter, ACW Corresp with Chinese.) (See Bibliographical Note.) (3) Item 2, Wedemeyer Data Book. OPD Copy, OCMH.

21. See, for example, comments of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Caraway (former Chief, Planning Section, China Theater) on draft manuscript of this volume. OCMH.

22. Presidential messages of 1943-44 sent through Army channels to the Generalissimo are in the nine books of JWS Personal File. (See Bibliographical Note.)

23. (1) Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), quotation on page 539. (2) But Stimson may have abandoned hope when Stilwell did, in October 1943, for there was not the collaboration and correspondence between them in 1944 that there had been in 1943. See Stilwell's Mission to China, Chapter X.

24. (1) See the Wedemeyer correspondence in WDCSA 091 China, DRB AGO. (2) Stilwell's Mission to China, p. 246.

25. (1) The status of the Fourteenth Air Force and the Air Transport Command is discussed in Stilwell's Mission to China. (2) The XX Bomber Command relationship is treated in Stilwell's Command Problems. (3) The problems Wedemeyer faced in attempting to assert authority over approximately twenty U.S. and Allied intelligence agencies operating in China are described in History of China Theater, Chapter III. OCMH.

26. Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, Happy Odyssey: The Memoirs of Lt. Gen. Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart (London: Cape, 1950).

27. (1) Item 2, Wedemeyer Data Book. (2) STM-30, Strength of the Army, TAG, for 30 Nov. 44, reports 23,713 ATC troops in CBI, 15,469 in XX Bomber Command, and 141,750 in India, Burma, and Ceylon--a total of 180,932.

28. (1) Ltr, Col Eugene B. Ely, Pres Boards of Investigation USFCT, to CG USFCT, 7 Dec 45, with Incl, A Reconsideration of Report, "The Strength, Distribution and Orgn of American Personnel in the China Theater." Exhibit 16, CT 41, Dr 1, KCRC. (2) Memo, Col Edward H. Young et al for Actg CofS, 7 Jan 46, sub: Recommendations Pertaining to Reconsideration of Report on Strength, Distribution, and Organization of American Personnel in China Theater. Tabs 5, 6, 8, 14, same file.

29. Wedemeyer Data Book.

30. CM-IN 23448, CM-IN 23602, Wedemeyer to Marshall, 25 Oct 44.

31. CM-OUT 53093, Marshall to Wedemeyer, 27 Oct 44.

32. History of China Theater, 20-31 Oct 44, p. 23.

33. (1) Item 9, Wedemeyer Data Book. (2) For Stilwell's attempt to use the B-29's, see Stilwell's Command Problems, Chapter X.

34. Rad CFB 25886, Wedemeyer to Marshall, 10 Nov 44. Item 58, Bk 1, ACW Personal File.

35. Memo, Gen Tunner, CG ICD ATC, for Wedemeyer, 17 Dec 44. Item 10, Wedemeyer Data Book.

36. (1) Opnl Dir 2, Wedemeyer to Cheves, 1 Dec 44. Item 4, Wedemeyer Data Book. (2) SOS in IBT, p. 15.

37. History of China Theater, Ch. III, p. 1.

38. Rad CFB 25485, Wedemeyer to Arnold, info Stratemeyer, Chennault, Tunner, and Sultan, 4 Nov 44. Item 45, Bk 1, ACW Personal File.

39. Item 8, Wedemeyer Data Book.

40. (1) Item 8, Wedemeyer Data Book. (2) Chennault comments on draft MS of this volume. OCMH.

41. Item 9, Wedemeyer Data Book.

42. United States Strategic Bombing Survey [USSBS], Air Operations in China, Burma, India, World War II (Washington, 1947).

43. History of Services of Supply, China, India, Burma Theater, 28 February 1942-24 October 1944, Apps. A-I. OCMH. (Hereafter, SOS in CBI.) Despite the title, the manuscript carries the story through 31 December 1944.

44. (1) Rpt, Hq CT&CC USFCT to The Adjutant General, 1 Jan 45, sub: Hist Rpt of CT&CC, 25 Oct 44-31 Dec 44. OCMH. (2) Bowman comments on draft MS. (3) Z-FOS Morning Rpt, 31 Oct 44, KCRC.

45. See Stilwell's Mission to China, Ch. VIII.

46. (1) See Stilwell's Command Problems, Pt. III. (2) History of C&GS School, 1944-45. OCMH.

47. (1) History of DIXIE Mission. (2) Stilwell's Command Problems, Ch X.

48. Report and Supplement for the Combined Chiefs of Staff by the Supreme Allied Commander, South-East Asia, 1943-1946, Vice Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, New Delhi, India, July 30, 1947, pars. 268, 299, 300, and 345. (Hereafter, Mountbatten Report.)

49. (1) History of IBT, I, 37. (2) Quotation from Rad cited n. 4(1).

50. (1) History of IBT, I, 1, 2, 60-64. (2) Stilwell's Mission to China, Ch. X. (3) Stilwell's Command Problems. Ch. III. (4) Since Sultan's combat forces were part of the much larger SEAC command, they will be described below in Chapter III.

51. History of IBT, II, chart facing p. 269.

52. History of IBT, I, 22-23.

53. (1) SOS in IBT, pp. 16-17, 19. (2) Wedemeyer comments on draft MS of this volume. OCMH.

54. (1) SOS in IBT, pp. 130-32. (2) Stilwell's Command Problems, Ch. VII.

55. Stilwell's Command Problems, Ch. VII.

56. History of IBT, I, 10.

57. History of IBT, I, 11, 12.

58. (1) History of IBT, I, 17-18. (2) Interv with Col Rothwell M. Brown, 10 Jun 52. OCMH. (3) Stilwell's Command Problems, Ch. I.

59. SOS in IBT, p. 6.

60. The two earlier volumes of this series, Stilwell's Mission to China and Stilwell's Command Problems, offer a brief account of the early days of the ATC in CBI. A detailed account may be found in the manuscript histories of the ATC. On file with Hist Div, ATC. See also Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, IV, The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan, August 1942 to July 1944 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1950) and V, The Pacific: MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945 (1953).

61. History of IBT, II, 383-86.

62. SOS in IBT, pp. 6, 160.

63. SOS in IBT, p. 88.

64. See Stilwell's Mission to China, Chapter VI, for a discussion of reciprocal aid in 1942 and 1943.

65. History of IBT, II, chart facing p. 218.

66. (1) History of IBT, I, 24. (2) During his service in India, Sunderland observed this attitude in many forms, some most amusing: "So I thought I would borrow your jeep. . . . .What! I thought every American had a jeep!"

67. See Stilwell's Command Problems, Ch. VII.

68. SOS in IBT, pp. 287-90, 272, 285. British and Indian forces in India proper were under India Command.

69. (1) SOS in IBT, p. 98. (2) History of IBT, II, 231.

70. SOS in IBT, pp. 102-03.

71. History of IBT, II, 242-57.

72. Tables of Organization and Equipment for the Chinese thirty-three-division programs are attached to a letter from Stilwell to Covell, 8 September 1944. OCMH.

73. SOS in IBT, pp. 307-09, 314.