On the Yangtze

All the fighting along the Yangtze was not between the Chinese and the Japs. There was a bitter, burning conflict there among Americans. The contestants were three American generals. By last week the sparks had flown as far as Washington.

Part of the trouble was the traditional conflict between airman and ground officer: Brigadier General Claire Lee Chennault, brilliant, unorthodox genius of the world's smallest fighting air force, had fallen out with his commander, Lieut. General Joseph W. Stilwell Jr., homely infantryman hero of the 1942 retreat from Burma.

And there was more trouble. Chennault was also at loggerheads with his Air Forces superior, bemedaled, autocratic Brigadier General Clayton L. Bissell, World War I hero and commander of the Tenth Air Force, whose headquarters are in India. Both feuds were connected, because Bissell is also Stilwell's executive in the Far East. The Army last week was anxiously trying to straighten out the row between these three seasoned soldiers. Airmen hopefully predicted that there would be a shake-up that would leave Chennault in command of a separate China Air Force.

Simple Row. Chennault, worker of tactical and strategic miracles with no more than a faint start of an air force, is an airman, through & through. Probably the Air Forces' most original thinker, he has chosen the unorthodox ways of soldiering and fighting that airmen love, and they have worked. In the last five months Chennault's pilots have destroyed 300-400 planes with a loss of eight pilots, fewer than 20 planes. China's debt to him and his American Volunteer Group is that, with the help of China's army, they saved Chungking, later saved Yunnan Province from the Japs.

"Vinegar Joe," an infantryman through & through, is in the anomalous position of having nothing but air-force troops to command in China. Chennaultmen say that honest Joe Stilwell has taken his command literally, has countermanded Chennault's orders on occasion, on others has dispatched flyers to raid points which Chennault did not think should be raided at the time.

"It's the man in the trenches that will win the war," General Stilwell observed during one argument with his individualistic lieutenant, unmindful of his own lack of ground command. "Goddammit, Stilwell," shouted the usually respectful Chennault, "there aren't any men in the trenches."

Mixed Row. A.V.G. men disliked General Bissell from their first meeting, have had no occasion since to revise their feelings. He turned up in China when the A.V.G. was to be disbanded and, according to their story, served curt and summary notice on them that all were expected to join the U.S. Army Air Forces.

Most of them were Navy-trained, but all were plain mad at his undiplomatic handling. Result: only five A.V.G. men stayed on with the China Air Force. Many, priceless assets in the defense of an area that few airmen knew, went home.

General Bissell's relationship with Chennault's hard-fighting force has not improved. Few months ago he sent an inspector to look them over; the inspector's report roundly trounced Chennault because his men were not in proper uniform, because they were not snappy in their salutes to superiors, because they played poker between air fights instead of studying or resting.

Chennault read the report, sent General Bissell a radiogram which said in effect: "Perhaps we don't dress right up here. But we have met the enemy every day against terrific odds and we have yet to lose a battle."

There were and still are other sources of friction, dangerous as a bare nail in a shoe. General Bissell is by report an able soldier who respects the rulebooks and goes by them. Chennault is an able soldier who has no use for "the book." Result is constant friction. It is increased by the fact that his supply of planes (of which he hopes to have a maximum 500) comes through Bissell's India command.

In this situation, airmen say, it is always Chennault who comes off second best, since Bissell, too, has a war on his hands in Burma. Result, as Chennault's men see it, is that the priceless opportunity Chennault has for knocking out the Japs' pivotal air bases and attacking their commerce on the South China Sea is now being wasted as thoroughly as it was last summer.

All these things the U.S. high command knew weeks ago, apparently decided that the flames might die down. They did not. Recently Washington learned that Chennault has been deliberately stepping out of military bounds, hoping to draw down disciplinary action and get his case officially to Washington.

Airmen know that the trouble is already serious enough to call for high intervention. Last week they were hopeful that the China theater would soon get it.

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