Stagnating at Sodden Peishiyi

New arrivals at Peishiyi discovered their quarters to be marginally more comfortable than their tents in India. Standing in front of their hostel are (left to right, top row) Isadore F. Hoke, Stanley B. Rickman, and Wilbur C. Dunlap; (middle row) Budd W. Evitts, James H. Mills, James J. Ryan Jr., and their "No. 1 Houseboy"; and (front row) William G. Duffin and William Meikle. -- J. H. Mills collection

Following their evacuation from Erh Tong Field at Kweilin (now Guilin), all elements of the 3rd Bomb Squadron made their way to Peishiyi Field (29⁰29'46"N, 106⁰21'32"E), about thirteen air miles northwest of Chungking (Chonqing) in Szechuan Province. Of vital importance, the city served as Generalissimo Chiang's provisional capital from 1937 to 1945. The nearby airfield at Peishiyi (Baishiyi), where headquarters of the Chinese-American Composite Wing and the 1st Bomb Group had also recently been relocated, was used by the Air Transport Command as a resupply and evacuation stop within China.

After a brief stopover at Chihkiang (Zhijiang), 3rd and 4th Squadron Mitchells came in at about the same time. The weather cooperated for a change. “The sun appeared on the job this morning for the first time in many a day,” wrote Maj. Thomas F. Manion, Group historical officer. Ten 4th Squadron planes touched down late in the afternoon of September 14, 1944, and two planes of the 3rd arrived later the same day.

With all the new arrivals from the 3rd and 4th Squadrons, housing and messing facilities were "pretty crowded,” according to Manion. Even with the additional personnel, "Our exceptionally good mess is holding up pretty well," although lines were long, and seating was cramped. Old friends who had not seen each other for many months of separation were reunited, and "the bull flowed freely.” Damp, cool weather brought out blankets and jackets, and some of the men began to think about making their own stoves from oil drums to heat the hostels.

The facilities were a disappointment. Previously used by the American Volunteer Group before it was disbanded, the base had stood in an abandoned and neglected state for about two years prior to its reclamation by the CACW. In early July, while Lt. Paul L. Young, squadron intelligence officer, was on detached service, he had visited there with an advance party to check out the base prior to the transfer of CACW and 1BG HQ. The men were billeted in "an old AVG Hostel, which leaned a little toward the Spanish type of architecture, with a patio here and there, and an inside garden where flowers are abundant, with a lawn and banana trees lining the path,” according to Lt. Benjamin Wu, 1BG historical officer at that time. The detachment’s personnel spent two uncomfortable nights "combating bedbugs and mosquitos.”

Soon after Young's visit, Maj. Don Hummel, Wing historical officer, described the airfield at Peishiyi. Consisting of a long, flat, grassy strip set among misty hills, it most resembled "a serene cow pasture,” he noted. At the eastern edge of the grassy rectangle were "a few scraggly buildings, the operations building with its glassed cupola being the only adequate looking structure, set next to some truck garages in a row of shacks―mere roofs on poles―suitable for storage of overnight freight.” The airfield had no hangars, no adequate revetments, and the packed-gravel taxi strip down the center of the mile-long runway was overgrown with grass and weeds. It, like the rest of the field, looked "fit for nothing but grazing.” On the north and south ends, hummocks and minor foothills rose directly from the flat rectangle of the field. From the west side rose hills, the sides of which were utilized for a few small revetments and a gunnery school and range. To the east a strong range of higher hills, lifting to an elevation of 2,300 feet, rose behind Peishiyi village, which ran parallel to the southern half of the airfield. Set on a commanding rise at the northern end of the village stood the CACW Headquarters building. The structure had formerly served as headquarters for the AVG and may have been the mansion of some overlord of Peishiyi village in the more distant past. Between the field and the mansion were rice paddies and farmhouses built around a central mud-packed courtyard that was used as a threshing floor at harvest time.

Little had changed by the time the 3rd Squadron's evacuees arrived. Officers were housed in the AVG-inherited hostels located about two miles beyond the village and headquarters building. Their spacious but austere rooms were furnished with wicker and bamboo chairs and rope-spring beds. A day room provided a place for poker games, bull sessions, and letter writing. The officers' compound was dense with banana trees that bore “never-ripening little green bananas above huge purple blooms.”

Enlisted men suspected that their dilapidated quarters, a half mile farther down the road, had originally been used to house coolies during construction of the airfield. Relegated to the lowest level on the Chinese social scale, coolies were laborers whose accommodations required no more than the most basic of necessities. Regardless of their original function, the hostels had been built in the traditional style that featured tile roofs with upturned eaves. My father remembered that the design was the result of superstition. Because they believed that demons could only travel in a straight line, the Chinese constructed their roofs with an upward curve so any evil spirits that might fall from the sky would shoot back up into the air and be unable to enter the structure to harm its inhabitants.

Overcrowding (although not by airborne demons) led to uncomfortable conditions. Six or seven men bedded down in little rooms that should have accommodated no more than four. They slept on narrow army cots. Each room also held a dresser and a lone chair at a small table on which stood a single candle for lighting. The glass had long since been broken or removed from windows, and the screening hung in tatters.

The ancient well that provided water was completely inadequate for their needs, according to Maj. Hummel, whose monthly historical reports typically provided informative and entertaining descriptions of Wing activities. Drinking water was always boiled. Bathwater, scooped out in buckets by coolies, "had a tobacco-brown color, with much debris, twigs, scum, and moss, and indeterminate decomposed messes looking like frog entrails. Refuse soon clogged the showers. The water stank. Live little fish came spurting through the taps.”

Outhouses were equally primitive. Although they boasted "marblish" toilets, flushing was accomplished by a coolie who dipped a gallon grease can full of water from a barrel that stood outside the door and then splashed the water into the toilet and liberally over the seat. If the paper inside the bowl clogged, he fished out paper and other solids with a split bamboo stick and deposited it on the floor. Other coolies periodically stirred the mess in the ditch behind the outhouse, dipped it up in buckets, and used it as fertilizer on the rice paddies.

A staff correspondent for YANK wrote during this period that “China is crowded and hungry.” He described the food typically dished out in China mess halls as “not exactly sumptuous,” and practically none of it was “GI from over the Hump.” At one or two out-of-the way stations where GIs were few, the food was tasty, well prepared, varied and plentiful, but at other stations it consisted primarily of water buffalo meat, potatoes, rice, eggs, “strange local vegetables (including tons of cucumbers),” small, sweet cakes, and “indifferent coffee.”

At Peishiyi, as at other bases in China until the end of the war, "We ate Chinese food prepared by Chinese,” Dad related. “Occasionally we'd get some C-rations, which was canned food, made in America. Made in America—that was a treat.” Of the food commonly on the menu in China, "Water buffalo was the worst meat,” he said. “You'd take a bite of it and chew it 'til it would swell up so big you had to throw it out and get another bite, to get the juice.” Bean sprouts were another new experience. “I never had heard of bean sprouts, but they were good to eat—and a lot of rice.” After the war, he almost refused to eat rice because he had his fill of it in China. "I've had enough rice to last me a lifetime."

A war correspondent visited the base at about this time and published an article that was reprinted in Groop Poop, "a bi-weekly publication of, by, & for the cogs of the Gambay Group" (the nickname given to the 1st Bomb Group soon afterward):  “If you want to know what it means to fight a war on a shoestring, ask any American at this base in rain sodden Sze-Chuan Province. These fellows not only are at the outer extremity of the tail end of the world's longest supply line, but they are living―existing would be a better word―in a climate that certainly is among the world's worst. Almost the only pleasure they get is in fighting the Japs, and the weather makes that less frequent than they would like. Day in and day out, for weeks on end, the boys never see the sun. There is a chronic drizzle. Mud is everywhere. The clammy cold sinks into their bones and refuses to be dislodged. Fuel is scarce and some of the boys are sleeping in unheated quarters.”

Getting by with "next to nothing,” the men had cigarettes, occasional magazines, and movies three times a week. "Otherwise, there is nothing to do but work, eat, sleep and try to keep warm.” There was no Red Cross Canteen, and the dispensary doubled as a rec room. Mail was seldom received because gasoline and equipment took most of the cargo space on incoming planes. Addressed to a GI at APO 627, a letter or package from home usually took from two weeks to two months to reach its intended recipient. "Little things count for a lot around here. Paper is so scarce that the commanding officer is obliged to post a notice warning that 'the practice of using mimeograph paper and typewriter paper for sanitary purpose must stop.'"

At Peishiyi, as at other China airfields, the 1st Bomb Group felt the neglect of the US military in this "forgotten" theater of the war. "The war in Europe has always caught the lion's share of attention," Raymond H. Hodges Jr. (recently transferred from the 3rd to the 1st Bomb Squadron) observed. "We were kind of the stepchild and got what was left. We ate off the land. We didn't get food and supplies until the war in Europe was over."

To learn more about the dire supply situation in China, find it in The Spray and Pray Squadron: 3rd Bomb Squadron, 1st Bomb Group, Chinese-American Composite Wing in World War II.