The Destroyers

For years to come an area of southeast China for 300 miles around will bear the scars of destruction left by a band of 16 U.S. soldiers. Somewhere in China last week the 16 grimly added up the results of their adventure. They had accounted for some 150 bridges, 50 roadblocks, 20 to 30 ferries, one tunnel, an assortment of locomotives, trucks, army hostels, one Catholic mission and a machine shop. But they had helped slow the Japanese advance on Kweichow, had helped save from utter disaster the great retreat in Southeast China.

Commander of the band of destroyers was 25-year-old Major Frank Gleason, of Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Shy, redheaded Major Gleason and his men arrived in Kweilin last summer to teach demolition techniques to the Chinese. When the Japs began their autumn offensive, he and his men stopped teaching and began destroying.

Virgil and the Colonels. Kweilin, with nearby Liuchow, forms the hub of southeast China's highways and railroads. Refugees were rushing in like animals before a forest fire. The 16 Americans among the thousands of fleeing Chinese went methodically to work mining road junctions, digging cavities under bridges, under abutments in the sides of denies.

They worked in teams of two or three. One team consisted of Sergeant Graham Johnston, ex-jockey from New Canaan, Conn., Sergeant Paul Todd, of Kalamazoo, and a Chinese boy interpreter called "Virgil." When the sergeants found it difficult to get cooperation they promoted themselves to colonels. Chinese soldiers willingly helped the "colonels." Chinese civilians, impressed by their rank, gave them special food and baths.

When the great Jap campaign got up full steam in October, Gleason's band was ready to tamp in charges, fuse them and blow. Waiting until the last possible moment before the enemy advance, Gleason finally started the destruction.

Captain Stanley A. Staiger, of Portland, Ore., and ex-Jockey Johnston, carrying explosives in sacks, worked for 24 hours along a river bank, never knowing for sure how near the Japs were. One after another they destroyed the bridges along their way. By the time they reached the last bridge they had only four inches of fuse left. They tamped in the charge, lit the fuse and galloped off with the uproar in their ears and debris raining around them.

The Furies. The Jap tide still rolled on. It rolled up to the great air force base at Liuchow. Gleason and his men did their ruinous best there. They wanted to fire the city too, but wretched Chinese householders, waving guns, refused to let them.

The destroyers were ordered to Tushan, where Gleason gaped at the assignment--warehouse after warehouse stacked ceiling high with tons and tons of small-arms ammunition bearing such brand names as Skoda, Krupp, Winchester. Other buildings were filled with mortar shells and dynamite.

They tackled the first warehouse, "trying it for size." It went very well. Ammo cans sizzled and pup-pupped, flames licked heavenward. They fused the second warehouse. Mortar shells began whistling around them. Amid explosion and fire Gleason's furies danced, hugging their TNT as they ran. With gasoline, alcohol and straw they fed the holocaust.

Gleason looked back. "When the last dump went off there was a single column of black smoke that went straight up with the most terrific sound you ever heard ... a black column 100 yards thick holding up the overcast like a pillar." Gleason's destroyers joined the horde of China's fleeing homeless. Six people sprawled, exhausted, on the last bridge along their retreat. Gleason's men dragged them off, blew the bridge and hurried on.

At Tushan the Japanese Emperor's hungry Army had to turn around. In the end it had to pick its way laboriously back across the bitter, blackened land.

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