World Battlefronts: Something New

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Even in tragic China the war picture grew brighter for the moment. Japanese commanders, their communications harassed by locomotive-busting Fourteenth Air Force pilots, had been sweeping aside light, ill-armed Chinese troops to smash the U.S. air bases one by one. But last week they tried for Chihkiang, 300 miles east of Chungking, and ran into something new and hard.

As their columns moved westward from the Paoking area, northward from Chengpu, the usual ragged Chinese armies were suddenly stiffened by U.S.-equipped units, tough and battlewise. The Japs, who had set out on a mere punitive expedition, found themselves fighting a hard, draining battle.

For the Japanese this was a foretaste of the future. The days of easy victories in China were fast passing. Exultantly Lieut. General Albert C. Wedemeyer, able commander of American forces in China, could promise his men that, with the end of the war in Europe, "our turn is coming."