Slender Straws

Chungking sorely needed straws of hope to grasp. With dismaying speed the Japanese were surging toward Kweiyang, all-important rail terminus and highway junction linking China's capital to the southwest. If Kweiyang fell, the delivery end of the Burma Road would be cut, the Japs would be only 235 air miles from Chungking itself.

Even in China there was a limit upon the space that could be traded for time. The hard reckoning was that the next two months might throw the balance against China, that China might be knocked out of the war.

There was little immediate hope to offer. In Chungking Major General Albert C. Wedemeyer, the new U.S. military chief, hurried his defense plans in daily conferences with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. On one of China's gravest days in her seven years of war, General Wedemeyer was able to promise only a reasonable expectation--that the tide would be turned eventually by measures now in the making.

But could the tide be rolled back in time to save Kweiyang, now the last forward U.S. air base? By this week the Japs had snaked in past Pachai, only 65 miles east of Kweiyang, apparently had bypassed the Chinese units set out for distant defense of the city's rail and road approaches. Another strong enemy column had speared beyond Hochih, stood astride the railroad only 75 miles southeast of Kweiyang (see map).

Kweiyang ordered evacuation of all nonessential workers; all U.S. and British citizens were ordered to leave Kweichow province; thousands of misery-stricken refugees were pouring out of Kweichow into the Szechwan bastion beyond Chungking.

Dead-End Road. If Kweiyang were to go as nine other U.S. bases had gone, the Japs would be in a position to: 1) advance northward along the Burma Road toward Chungking itself; 2) turn southwest toward Kunming or northwest to Pichieh and cut the best alternate road over which U.S. supplies might move in quantity, once the Burma end of the Road was cleared (see below).

That far-end clearance--once the hope of China--would be futile if Kunming fell. And in any case it was plain that China, in her darkest days ahead, would have to depend upon airborne supplies. General Wedemeyer said the air tonnage was increasing. But as the Japs advanced, it was also clear to the wearied, worried Chinese that supplies by air could not be the complete answer, that what the Allies had done thus far had not been enough.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.