Tsingtao, Shantung Peninsula, North China - Winter 1948

Frank Baillie, LT USN ret.

 

On a sunny day in early winter of 1948 & a NATS, Naval Air Transport Service, R5-D (C-54 or DC-5 take your choice) took off from Agana Guam AFB & I  was on the way to Tsingtao with a passenger stop at Shanghai's Kang Wan airfield. At the time I was a Seaman first class Aerographer (weather striker) E-3. I stepped off the airplane at MCAF  Tsan Kou into a cold, biting, yellow dust laden wind off the Gobi Desert.  Off to one side were a number of

R5-C Curtis "Commandos" of VMR-153.  Beyond them was a fighter line with gull-winged F-4-U "Corsairs" of VMF-211.  There may have been one or two CAT (China Air Transport. Chennault's Flying Tiger Airline) R5-Cs parked near base Ops as well.  Across the field was a Chinese Air force fighter line of P-51 Mustangs. After a good deal of rubber necking at the a/c I stowed my sea bag & go-to-hell-bag (small hand bag) in a rickety Navy bus which took off heading for town.  While enroute I gawked at a lot of new sights & sniffed at some new smells. Part of that smell came from youngsters wearing conveniently designed trousers who relieved themselves in the gutters of the city.  The odor of garlic was pervasive & I found that Chinese people ate raw garlic as they would a piece of fruit. I've since been told that garlic is an effective medication for high blood pressure so perhaps it was a medication as well as a "fruit" for them.

My new home away from home, USS Estes AGC-12, was tied up at a waterfront finger pier. I climbed the after ladder, saluted the colors & the Petty Officer of the watch & began the pain-in-the-butt process of checking in. ESTES was an Amphibious force Flagship & she carried the Flag of Com NavWes Pac, VADM Oscar Badger, the inventor of napalm. His was a high powered staff with RADM Reese as Chief of staff & a Navy 4 striper or Marine Colonel in every department. I met the Admiral one morning when a golden cocker spaniel stuck his nose in the door of our office.  I bent to pet the dog & then looked up seeing the blue trousers of his master.  Scrambled eggs, lots of ribbons, lots of gold stripes. I damned near got whiplash snapping to & saluting. He smiled, wished me a good morning & went on his way.  I wondered who followed him on pooper scooper duty.

My Boss, the Staff Weather Officer, was the late Captain Irwin Forest Beyerly, one of  whose previous postings was as the last CO of SACO, the WW2 Sino-American Cooperative Organization, sometimes called the "Rice Paddy Navy".  An Aerm 1/C, E-6, named Nelson, was TAD to the Staff from Fleet Weather Shanghai & had been a SACO member. He was a tale teller of a high order & we really enjoyed his sea stories. Late in the war Captain Beyerly had "fleeted up" from Chief of Staff,  relieving RADM Milton "Mary" Miles who was sent to China by CNO ADM Ernest King in the late spring of 1943 with verbal orders "to find out what's going on in China, establish a weather reporting net, prepare the China coast in anyway you can for US landings in three or four years & in the meantime do whatever you can to help the Navy & to heckle the Japanese."  Captain Miles was known as "Mary" Miles by his Annapolis classmates after a movie star of the era. SACO was Captain Miles response to the Admiral’s orders & it was a story in & of itself.  If you've ever read Milton Caniff's "Terry & the Pirates" you have a hint about their organization.  Two person weather units consisting of  a weatherman & a radioman associated with small groups of Chinese guerrillas were spotted all over the country. Along with coast watcher units Their weather reports aided weathermen all over the western Pacific in forecasting for operations against Japan. Marines & Army personnel joined SACO as well, heading up & training guerilla units which reached 80,000 strong at one point. Guerrillas included cavalry in Mongolia & a "spit kit" Navy of junks, one of whose leaders was a Chinese lady pirate,  the inspiration for Milton Caniff's ("Terry & the Pirate's") Dragon Lady.  SACO rescued 30 allied pilots & 46 aircrew men shot down over China & the coastal waters. SACO guerillas accounted for thousands of Japanese casualties & widespread destruction of arms & equipment.  SACO junks fought the final "sea battle" of WW2 two days after the armistice. Two small SACO junks met a large Japanese junk which hadn't got the word. The CO of one SACO junk was a Marine 2nd LT named Stewart Pittman . The good guys won through accurate machine gun & bazooka fire which disabled a field gun mounted on the Japanese Junk. The Japanese officer CO surrendered his sword to Navy LT "Swede" Swentzell.

The war was long over in 1948 & I was a 19 year old sailor on a mission.  Liberty call.  Steak & eggs at the EM Club was a great start & I  really pigged out washing it down with a beer or two.  I loved that mural behind the bar.  The story was that two talented sailors on the way stateside for a court martial painted it. One part showed Old man Neptune straining to chase a gorgeous mermaid while an old gal, a sea hag if I ever saw one, was holding him back. Another portion of the mural depicted a pro station line with assorted sailors & Marines lined up for their treatment. The only figures I remember were a sailor at the end of the line who was holding up one finger & the mama san facing him who held up two fingers. A pretty little Chinese girl stood behind her with head bowed & a finger in her mouth.  In the middle of the line was a Marine MSGT in an overcoat with the collar up (to hide his identity) while holding a tooth-brush.  A photo mate friend took pictures of the mural & gave me pair of 8 x 10s which I treasured until my late wife saw them early in my marriage & deep sixed them. It's a good thing I loved the lady or I would have been in the "monkey house" for assault at the very least. I’ve since found new source for copys of the pictures.

Later in the evening of that first liberty I decided that Tsingtao beer went down very nicely. You remember those bottles with Pagoda Pier pictured on the label. Some Chinese restaurants are selling it in this country now.  Medics told me a cock & bull story later about some gruesome ingredients found in my favorite beer at that time & I couldn't stomach it for several days. Our rickshaw boys showed us pictures of Betty Grable & Rita Hayworth, hinting that they could be found at a local establishment. Naturally we had to check it out by moving through a two table bar via a secret passageway into the courtyard of Ping Kong Do Lee's "House of 1000 assholes". Don't blame me. That's what they called it. I believe that the Chinese called ALL brothels by that name. Yes, we had seen all the VD horror movies & yes we practiced safe sex.  Later, after one or two more Tsingtao beers we decided to look for Betty & Rita again since they weren't there for our first visit.  If at first you don't succeed & all that stuff. Actually we thought that perhaps the third time was charmed & tried another entrance but ended up in the same courtyard. Besides, I had been a virgin & it seemed like a good idea at the time.  All in all I must say that my first liberty in China was a success & I didn't come down with anything infectious.  Rickshaw boys were friendly & I didn't hold their lies about Betty & Rita against them. I learned that "hubba hubba" meant hurry up & later that when they talked about a "mala can so pee womba tooza" (never could spell) they were saying that I was the son of a monkey & a turtle. Like the Japanese the Chinese don't have swear words, or so I've been told, but they could still tell someone off to a fare thee well. One very noteworthy thing about those rickshaw & pedicab men were their heavily muscled hips & legs. The sad thing about them was the emaciated upper bodies that went with those Doc Blanchard hips & legs. (He was that Army fullback in the war years). Later in my tour I would have a problem with rickshaw boys & their friends. On entering an alley we were rushed by a group of street thugs. Someone slipped my expansion band watch from my wrist & they all took off in different directions. The rickshaw boys pled innocence but we suspected they had led us into a trap & we refused to pay them. Later I heard of cases in which the rickshaw boys would pull a bicycle chain as a weapon from a box under the foot rest. I might have been able to find & buy back my own watch at "Thieves Alley" on the following night.

My liberty pawnyos (friends) taught me to sing Mayo chen, mayo chow, mayo goonya, ding boo hao (with a bad accent). It means no money, no rice, no lady, things are bad. I learned a bit of pidgin Chinese but never got very good at it.  Mayo kwanchee (doesn't matter), Megwa hi-gee (American sailor), feegee (airplane?), sigh gen (take it easy) knee hao (hello), boo shih (not so) & I thought they were mispronouncing an English word, maybe they were??), Hao bah (OK), gom bay (a toast, down the hatch, up yours, whatever).  Bee rue ...?... or was that Japanese for beer?

I learned a little Japanese in later years which I sometimes mixed up with what little Chinese I picked up. Who remembers "muh-she muh-she, ah no nay..ah no nay, muh she muh she, ah no nay, Ah so deska"? It is gibberish & actually means hello, hello, hey there (repeated) is that right?  During my 1969 to 1973 twilight tour at Fleet Weather Central, Rota Spain I found myself talking to our Spanish maid in a mixture of High School Spanish, pidgin Chinese & Japanese. Ooops.

My liberty buddy, S 1/c Aerm, Bill Willis, was transferred TAD to MCAF Tsan Kou so that their weather office could support night flight operations with 24 hour weather observation coverage. Bill took to duty at Tsan Kou like a duck to water. I believe he would have preferred to be a Marine.  Yes, he's a CMA (China Marine Association) member & the guy that recruited me as a matter of fact. We really enjoyed his stories of day to day life at MCAF  (Marine Corps Air Facility) Tsan Kou when he visited the ship for pay days. Little did I know that I would be his relief.

On one of his jeep trips to the MCAF from the ship they were stopped by Chinese soldiers who blocked traffic both ways.  Accused bah loo (Communist) prisoners were forced to dig their own graves & kneel in position so as to topple into them when the NCO or Officer in charge shot them in the back of the head. Needless to say It was an unnerving experience for him. 

USS Estes was relieved by USS Eldorado, AGC-11 which made several interesting trips in the next months including Hong Kong where we visited the China Fleet Club. Actually our first stop in Hong Kong was a hotel restaurant which we were told served fresh milk & great ice cream. Do you remember powdered milk?  During later tours I got to try re-constituted milk in Japan which wasn't too bad. We stopped in at Gingles bar on Kowloon where I ordered a stout, not knowing what the blazes it was.  Didn't much like it.  The story went that Gingles was a Navy Chief who retired in Hong Kong, went out to celebrate his prospective return to CONUS (continental limits of the United States) only to wake up the next morning as a bar owner. We met a pair of lovelies in a Kowloon hotel & spent a few pleasant hours therein. I visited "The Real Jimmy Lee", a tailor, & had a double breasted pin stripe suit made that would have looked great on Al Capone in the 30s, but not me. My taste was all in my mouth. Later that day we checked out the China Fleet Club. The Brits were great hosts. They were partial to drinking contests, pouring whiskey into their beer pitchers, singing up a storm & standing on the tables to recite poetry. I guess it was poetry. I was flying high & didn't listen too closely.  We made friends with a group of sailors from the cruiser London & a recently busted Army Private who had survived the Dunkirk evacuation of WW2. 

Back in Tsingtao I  had an Eisenhower style jacket made....oops I mean a Vandegrift style jacket. It was blue serge with a large AG rating insignia (an arrow vertically thru a winged circle) embroidered in white on the back & my name in white over the right pocket.  Naturally there was a large dragon embroidered into the lining. My younger brother, 13 at the time & now a 30 plus year retired Master Chief Aerographer's Mate & 13 year retiree from the National Weather Service, thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread when I returned on leave in my home town, Brockton MA. The F. Baillie initial worked for him since his name is Fred. That jacket & a "liberated" leather flight jacket may have been factors in his decision to become a Navy weatherman a few years later. The flight jacket was legal, having been officially "lost to inventory" at MCAF just prior to the 1949 evacuation. It had been surveyed (thrown away) but was still in fair condition. That same "lost to inventory" set up allowed ships in the harbor to pick up any material which would be useful to them from abandoned Marine supplies.

Did anyone else ever buy one of those photo albums with great looking leather covers only to find that on warm days, or if wet, that the cover smelled of the horse urine or whatever it was the used to cure the leather?  I used to enjoy bartering with the various merchants & for many years I had a canvas bag full of interesting, widely assorted eastern coinage & paper money thrown in to sweeten the deal. Included  were German coins from the years that Tsingtao was a German concession & trade (silver) dollars from Mexico, China & Japan. My Mom gave my "treasure" to a coin collecting nephew who would retire as a CDR USN having added many interesting coins from many countries to the collection.