Friday, April 24, 2020

China stories, 1

photo--from Robert Loh's Escape from Red China--for more of these see http://www.flickr.com/ photos/34303890@N04/ 4602477686/in/photostream/
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another classic in espionage/black ops is:  The Black Chamber by H. Yardley, 1931:
Yardley was blacklisted heavily by the US government.  He passed away near Washington, D.C. on Aug. 7, 1958.
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another interesting black ops book is Anthony Shaffer's Operation Dark Heart, 2010 which the Pentagon jumped on and tried to keep from the American people.
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 Let not the counterfeit Illuminati, imitators of the Round Table and of the mystery schools, carve up the Earth with their secret diplomacy and their trading in the souls of light!  Saint Germain and Morya have never lost a fight!  They hold the timing of the victory and they know their chelas whose time has come.      -Archangel Gabriel:  Pearls of Wisdom 22:3
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Sing a Song to Jenny Next   -Lawrence Gardella       E. P. Dutton, NY, 1981

(has n-e China map showing Gardella & co. escape route thru n-e China from the drop zone of Hunchun to Lienyun on the Yellow Sea, with 8 battles marked; also, drawing of the 2 lead characters; L.G. died on 2-16-81 as his manuscript was going to press)
Dedication
To my wife, Marie, for the love she has given me throughout our marriage & for the understanding & support she has granted me during the making of this book.  & to the rest of my family:  my mother, Muriel; my two daughters, Susan & Janet; my twin sons, whom I have never seen; my grandson, Robbie; my brother, Michael; & my late father, Edmund.  I pray that none of you will be bitter over what you are about to read.  I am not & never will be.  What happened, I chose freely.  May we enjoy the miracle.  I love you all.
Acknowledgments
There are many people who put their lives on the line so that I might survive the events described in this book.  Scotty, Audy, Charlie, Nancy & Sally, & my numerous Chinese & Mongolian friends; I will never forget you.  Gunny, my Marine Corps father & steadfast friend; someday I know we will meet again.  & how can anyone ever forget the Dragon Lady, who took so very much upon herself for her cause & for me.  Or Kim, the Dragon Lady's sister, whom I can picture today as clearly as when she was a little girl.  & those five Americans, friends, who endured with me so many years ago--the promise has finally been kept. 
& those others who have given of themselves in recent years so that I might tell my story.  Dr. Mortimer Greenberg, who has added years to my life.  The staff of Mt. Auburn Hospital, Cambridge, MA, whose compassionate care has sustained me.  Maurice & Alma Woodman, friends who showed me how to begin.  Asa Cole, a journalist who believed.  Chuck Corn, my editor, who worked so hard in fashioning the final book; you have my lasting gratitude.  & Jacques de Spoelberch, my literary agent, a person Marie & I can truly call friend; a man of his word, a man for all seasons.
1  
  On Friday the thirteenth of July 1979, I was working at a construction job in Cambridge, Massachusetts, right next to Harvard Stadium.  I ate my lunch alone, sitting in my car, then went for a little walk in the empty stadium, as I'd been doing every day.  It had gotten to be a routine.  On this day, when I came out of the stadium, three men were standing directly in my way.  They were well dressed, in business suits & shirts with ties, & they looked so young that I had to smile.  It wasn't hard for me to guess that they were here to see me about something that had happened twenty-seven years earlier, when they would have been playing in the sandbox.
  I walked right up to them, close enough that we could have reached out & touched.
  "Forget about trying to have your story published," one of them said, "& we'll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars."
  I don't know why I thought that was funny.  Anyhow, I started to laugh.  "You can take your money," I said, "& stick it..."  I started walking, & when they didn't give ground, I put my arms up & brushed them out of the way.  I kept on walking, & never once looked back.
  The story they didn't want me to tell is the one I'm telling now.
  I do not get frightened easily, especially now that I have leukemia, & don't know how long I can expect to live.  That is the most important reason I decided to tell my story after waiting nearly thirty years.  Until I made that decision I had told the story to one person, a priest.  I hadn't told anyone else--not even my wife or my daughters or my parents.
  For one thing, I was sworn to secrecy.  For another, it's a very strange story.  Suppose I told you that in the space of three weeks back in 1952, I traveled a thousand miles through China while our troops were fighting the Chinese in Korea?  That I attacked a couple of Chinese Communist bases, one of them manned by Soviets?  That I cross the Great Wall, walked into Peking dressed like a Chinese--in 1952?  That I met a cast of characters straight out of "Terry & the Pirates"--a Mongol chief six & a half feet tall, who could hit bull's eyes on a target over two hundred yards off with a bow & arrow--& a Chinese noblewoman who led a band of mountain fighters with no allegiance to either the Communists or the Nationalists?
  Suppose I told you that I killed scores, maybe hundreds of people, some with a machine gun, some with grenades, some with a flamethrower, some by slitting their throats with a knife?
  Suppose I told you that I made love to the noblewoman & now have twin sons, twenty-seven years old, living in China, that I've never seen?
  Suppose I told you that I believe I may have contracted leukemia blowing up an experimental atomic laboratory built by the Chinese in caves deep under a reservoir in Manchuria?
  Would you believe me?
  Frankly, if I heard such a story I might not believe it either.  All I can say is that as God is my witness, it happened, all of it, & it happened to me.
  For twenty-five years, from May 1952 to May 1977, I had no reason to tell the story.  But in May of 1977, everything started to change.  I was working as a foreman on a construction job in Danbury, Connecticut, when I got sick.  Three times in two weeks I went to the hospital emergency room, & they couldn't find anything.  The third week, feeling worse than ever, I went back to the hospital, & they took some tests.  This time they told me I had acute leukemia.  They wanted to put me in the hospital right there, but I said no.  I called my wife, Marie, & told her I was on my way home.  I was so weak that a couple of times I almost drove off the road, but I made it.  The Danbury hospital had called my doctor, & when I got home, Marie had us driven straight to Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge.  Dr. Mortimer Greenberg, who took over the case, came straight to the point:  "If we don't start you on massive chemotherapy, I give you three, perhaps four months."
  I asked him, "Will that stuff work?"
  He laid out the risks & the side effects.  What hit me was that I might have a heart attack or go into a coma.  I didn't know what to do.  Marie & I talked it over, & she persuaded me it was better to try something than just wait.  I stayed in the hospital forty-five days, getting blood transfusions & chemotherapy.  For three weeks of that time, I was in a semicoma.  Marie tells me that one arm & one leg sweeled up so that they were hideous.  I don't remember any of that, & there's a lot besides that I don't remember from that time, but that Marie & other people told me about afterward.
  They said that when I was in a delirium, I kept talking about tunnels, blood & monsoons--that I kept calling a Chinese woman doctor Dragon Lady.
  Marie was mystified.  She knew I had been in the Marine Corps, but that's all she knew.  In the nearly twenty-four years of our marriage, I had never told her about my experience in the service & now she was upset as well as curious.  When I got out of the hospital on July 1, 1977, I was feeling better, but Marie was feeling worse--angry, confused, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
  We've been married since 1953.  It's been a wonderful marriage.  & here was Marie, who means everything to me, wondering & feeling hurt about a whole chapter in my life that she knew nothing about.  I decided I owed it to her to tell what had happened.  Once she had heard it, she felt I should put the whole story down on paper.
  I still didn't know what to do.  Telling Marie was one thing, but having others know was another.  I decided to get help, & went to Father Chambers at St. Mary's Church in Franklin, MA, to ask his advice.  He told me to have faith, to be strong--& to tell my story.
  So I decided to try.  I decided that the American people ought to know what we did there.  For one thing, I now have a grandson, & I want him to know.  For another, though I'm happy to say that I'm in a state of remission now, who knows how long that can last?  The doctor doesn't.  Whatever happens to me, I want it all on the record--for Marie's sake, for my daughters' sake & for my sons'--the sons I've never seen.
  I had reason to believe that once word got out about this book, there were people who'd want to stop me, & that I'd hear from them.  I did--& not only on that day in Harvard Stadium but a few other times that were a lot less pleasant.  I'll come to those later on.
  But I ought to explain right away that there are some questions I don't know the answers to & maybe never will, & some about which I can't even explain why I've got to remain silent.  As a reader, your main question will be:  Is this story true?  Did it really happen?  I can only repeat what I've said before:  I believe in God, & as God is my witness, it happened, all of it, & it happened to me.


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