Lost Legion

They were the remnant of a remnant, holdouts in a battle that both their own nation and their enemies had long since considered over. But for eleven years, thousands of Nationalist Chinese soldiers maintained themselves in the mountainous corner where China, Burma, Laos and Thailand meet, and defied all efforts to dislodge them. When attacked by the Red Chinese, they slipped across the border to sanctuary in Burma. When Burmese troops tried to flush them out, they retreated to China. But last week their luck ran out.

Their odyssey began back in 1949, when crusty old General Li Mi, retreating as the Red Chinese armies advanced into Yunnan province, led some 10,000 of his men across the border to safety in Burma. General Li soon arranged to have supplies (often U.S.-made) flown in from Formosa, launched harassing raids on the Red Chinese across the border. Unfortunately, his troops were equally willing to take on the Burmese, who complained to the U.N. Under pressure, the Nationalist government suspended its aid, and in 1953-54 General Li and some 7,000 guerrillas were flown out to safety in Formosa.

But some 2,000 stayed on. Sheltered by the natives, many of whom were openly hostile to the government in Rangoon, the troops married local women, made a living by processing opium in homemade stills set up in the bush. Occasionally they slipped across the Red Chinese frontier to pillage border villages. The bandits' activities were a troublesome irritant to the Burmese government, which feared that the rebels' raids might provoke Red China into moving into Burma against them in force. Said one Burmese army officer: "We simply have to get rid of those guys."

Last summer, while working out the details of the Sino-Burmese border treaty, Burma concluded a secret deal with Red China in which the Communists pledged to help the Burmese army clean out the Nationalist bandits. Terms of the agreement allowed troops of both countries to jump ten miles across their respective borders in pursuit of the rebels.

Fortnight ago 5,000 Burmese troops attacked and overran the Nationalist headquarters at Mongpa-Liao. Caught between the Burmese and the Chinese Communist border guards, the Nationalists poured over the neighboring borders of Laos and Thailand. Last week Bangkok proposed to evacuate them to Formosa. It was the end for the last Nationalist Chinese fighting force on the mainland of Asia.

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