Powerful Retreat

Among the stone-and-mud houses of Little Half Heaven, an old, toothless woman leaned on a stick and whimpered softly. Her husband explained: she had lived on Upper Tachen all her life, and could not understand what was going on. "She's deaf; she cries all the time." he said, and grinned, showing a single yellow tooth in his lower jaw. She was not the only one who found the evacuation of the Tachens hard to understand. Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, putting the best face he could on it, proclaimed that the Tachens' troops were being redeployed "to meet the new challenge of international Communist aggression."

Never in history had such an evacuation taken place with such a show of overwhelming power. Flung wide across the sullen East China Sea was the mighty U.S. Seventh Fleet. Cruisers and destroyers prowled to and fro within range of Communist shore batteries. From below the horizon, five of the U.S.'s mightiest carriers flung an umbrella of jet fighters above the two scruffy little islands. Closer in. the sea was littered with transports and scurrying landing craft in the disheveled bustle of a major amphibious operation.

Muzzle Covers On. From Okinawa, Formosa and Manila, 132 U.S. and 27 Nationalist Chinese ships had converged on the Tachens; Sabre jets of the 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing patrolled the sea lane that led back to Formosa. From Saigon had come Rear Admiral Lorenzo Sabin. where he had directed the evacuation of 214,000 Vietnamese. "We are going in with our muzzle covers on," said Sabin, "but we are prepared to go into action if we are opposed."

The first day, Navy pilots reported sighting a few silver-wing flashes over the mainland and a few scattered junks. Peking radio blustered about "provocation" and "danger of starting a major war." But in the face of the Seventh Fleet's might, Peking subsided into disconnected and embarrassed mutterings. By Monday night all sign of Communist activity had vanished. The muzzle covers stayed on.

On one patrol, a U.S. Skyraider swung too close to the Communist mainland, caught a burst of antiaircraft fire, and safely ditched near a Nationalist minesweeper. The Seventh Fleet's commander, Vice Admiral Alfred M. Pride, quickly explained that the plane had "misnavigated" within the three-mile limit, and therefore. "Communist gunfire is interpreted as being defensive."

For five days the landing craft thrashed across the rough waters between transports and the muddy beaches. First loaded were the islands' 14,500 civilians. They swarmed down the treeless slopes, each labeled with a white cloth tag, shoes tied onto feet with string to keep them from pulling off in the ankle-deep mud. Each carried a pathetic bundle of possessions--straw bedding, aluminum kitchenware, a canteen or blackened teakettle, and (almost invariably) a rose-patterned chamber pot. Few seemed sad at leaving their cold, wind-whipped islands.

Hacked from Rock. The 10,000 regulars of Lieut. General Liu Lien-yi's 46th Division took it harder. Glumly, soldiers loaded guns, mortars, electric cables, fresh boxes of ammunition still labeled: "From U.S.A. for Mutual Defense." Behind them, explosions thundered as demolition teams blew up pillboxes and gun emplacements laboriously hacked out of the rock and mud.

Friday night the last man and last gun were aboard, completing the job one day ahead of schedule despite 18-foot tides and a gale which forced a five-hour suspension. In the last hours, fire swept through the huddled villages, colored fireballs festooned the night sky as ammunition was exploded. Among the last demolitions were the modern hospital and the irrigation and reservoir system built by the FOA at a cost of $500,000 in the days when U.S. Intelligence officers were using an island-wide loudspeaker system to assure the islanders that the Tachens were "the bastion of Formosa" and "the steppingstones to the mainland." Said U.S. Ambassador Karl Rankin, who waded ashore in a pin-striped suit: "A tragic moment. This is only one chapter, not the end of the book."

Something for Nothing. As the transports headed south for Formosa, the silence of death fell over the Tachens. Nationalist flags flickered in the cold wind, carefully booby-trapped for the unwary Communist. Over the empty doorways were defiant legends, promising to return. Rice bowls stood unwashed on the kitchen tables. Thousands of rats emerged and scampered through the smoking ruins. Admiral Pride radioed Washington: "Nothing was left on the Tachens or surrounding islands that is of any use, including tin cans."

Most of the rest of the world found comfort in the fact that the evacuation had been made in peace, and found reassurance in the unchallenged display of U.S. might. But the U.S. Navy's fighting men took little satisfaction in what they regarded as a reverse operation. Admiral Sabin did not blame the Chinese Reds for staying at home: "It would have been a stupid thing to pay in blood and lives for something they were going to get for nothing."

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