World Battlefronts: When a Hawk Smiles

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The misery of China's peasants, filth, disease, widespread begging, shocked raw young Americans. Their own discomforts —the mud, the lack of women, the food—rubbed them rawer still. They heard ugly stories—of Lend-Lease material being stored for use after the war instead of against the Jap, of hoarding and profiteering by merchants, of smuggling from India and trade with the Japanese, of excessive tax burdens on the peasants.

Chennault — and Stilwell — mitigated much of the consequent ill-feeling. Patiently, Chennault explained to his airmen the reasons for China's backwardness, her efforts to raise living standards, how Japan's blockade had almost wrecked China's military and civil economy.

The friendliness of Chinese peasants and youngsters, obvious efforts by the official class to make the Americans welcome, the patience and sturdy good humor of the airdrome coolies also helped. All is not sweetness-&-light today, but many Americans have acquired some of Claire 30 Chennault's understanding of their Chinese hosts and allies.

Chennault has also imparted some of his faith in Chinese airmen. There is a training school for Chinese flyers in India, and its graduates return to Chennault. Although they operate chiefly in separate, locally defensive units, a few Chinese flyers are integrated into the Fourteenth. The best of them have proved to be reliable and hard-hitting in battle, and are now accepted by most of the Americans.

The Chinese return Chennault's affection. Bandits once stole all the aviation gasoline at an air base; two Services of Supply men spent a month trying to recover the fuel. Finally a coolie was told that Chennault needed the gasoline. Before daybreak next day there was the clatter of drums of gas being rolled up the highway. By dawn all of the drums had been returned.

It is almost certain that Chennault will not remain with the U.S. Army after the war. There is every possibility that he will be the Generalissimo's air adviser, civil and military, in postwar China. He virtually controls the Chinese Air Force.

For these personal reasons—and, above all, for their incalculable service to China —Chennault and his Tigers are so many sky dragons to the Chinese. In Chinese lore, the dragon is an admirable beast.

Tiger at the Crouch. Many men—including men who have served under him—call Chennault a genius. But an Army colonel who was with him in China said: "I get irritated when I hear people calling Chennault a genius. He isn't. A genius would probably go mad out there.

He is a particularly cool, levelheaded man with an immense store of common sense, who knows his business and keeps his head when things go wrong."