My Story (9) – Battle of Dachen (1)
My Story (9) – Battle of Dachen (1)
Although Chinese Nationalists lost all their territory in Mainland
China, they still controlled some of the adjacent off-shore islands, most
notably Jinmen and Matsu. Dachen, with a group of small islands, 230 nautical
miles from Taiwan, was the farthest. After the US aided Taiwan’s defense at the
outbreak of the Korean War, they pressured the Nationalist Government to
withdraw from those islands because they were so near the Communist controlled
Mainland, they were indefensible. But Chiang Kai-shek, the President of the Nationalist
government, steadfastly refused in the hope of someday using those islands as
stepping stones to recover the Mainland. The recovery of Mainland China was
never realized; and even though the US refused to include the islands within
the scope of their defense, Taiwan, after some well-known battles, still
managed to hold Jinmen and Matsu.
Dachen, after several years of struggle, was lost.
Working as a political officer
When Mom
worked for Sears, the girl before her left a full drawer of unprocessed files. When
she worked for Federal Government in Los Angeles, there was a coworker who was
always chatting, not working. My immediate superior, Political Director Yang,
was a combination of those two types of personality. He was plump and mild
tempered, always wearing a smile on his round face. During our stay in Japan, I
hardly had any work relating to my responsibilities. This led me to the wrong
idea that my job was easy. After returning from Japan, I was shocked to learn that
we had a schedule to follow and lots of work to be done; that my friends from
the Academy had been working very hard,
achieved much, and we were very far behind.
At this point I would like to explain what a political
officer in the military was and what they were supposed to do. In Western
countries, including the US, there is no such position. It was a special
position created by the Communist countries, started by Soviet Russia. Their job was to ensure loyalty to the
Communist cause. At the beginning of the Nationalist Movement in China, all the
powers in the world were hostile except one, the newly founded Communist regime
in Russia. They sent advisers to the newly established Nationalist Army,
together with its political commissar system. Even now Communist China still
maintains the same system, and the position is the most powerful in civil
government and the military. The situation of the National Government in
Taiwan, after being defeated by the Communists, was precarious. Some ships,
including a cruiser, the biggest ship in the Nationalist Navy, whether led by
mutinous shipmates or by the captain himself, defected to the Communist Regime.
To prevent such betrayal, political officers were reinstalled, and we were the
first batch to be sent on board.
Therefore, a political officer was supposed to be important and
there were a lot of urgent things to be done. My immediate superior, Yang, did
not do any of it. When I asked, he took out a huge stack of files, all
unprocessed, and handing it to me, said "You do them." These words
became unpleasantly familiar to me. Whenever our superior, the political branch
of the fleet headquarters, had any designated work, the only thing my superior
did was hand it over to me and say, "You do it."
Yang did
have his merits, which was getting along with people very well. Not only did he
have friendly relationships with the officers and sailors in our ship, but our
superiors also had a good impression of him. The half year in Japan, we did
absolute nothing relating to our responsibility. Immediately after our return,
the Headquarters sent a team to review our work. The one from Political Branch
sat with him and chatted away the whole period, without reviewing a single file
and not asking any questions about our work. Yet we passed with flying colors.
In July 1954, Yang was promoted and replaced by Tang, a well
known novelist in the military. Because rooms are small in a battleship¸ we
usually did our paperwork in the officers' mess hall. Each day, Tang sat in the
officers' hall hunched over the table, writing furiously, not working, but composing
novels. His literary work often appeared in papers and magazines, and won quite
a few prizes. I read a few, and have to admit that his reputation was indeed
well-deserved. But writing a novel was not exactly one of his duties, so all
the political work on the ship was still piled on me.
Watch duty
In addition to piling two men's work in one, the Captain assigned
me an unthinkable task that I was not supposed to do. In a navy vessel, there
were two kinds of officers: military who received formal military training, and
non-military, industry officers who did not. Non-military officers took care of
such routine matters as supplies, health and medicine, clerical and
administrative work. Non-military officers were not supposed to be assigned any
military duties because they were not trained for that purpose and, if forced to
take part, might cause trouble or even disaster.
Watch duty during sailing was a military duty - a very important
one. As we started sailing to Dachen, I was shocked to learn that I was
assigned to do watch duty. I searched the ship file and found a memo from the
Naval Headquarters which clearly stated that political officers were
non-military and should not be assigned watch duty. I showed the file to my
supervisor hoping that he could ask the Captain to relieve me of this duty. He
went to the Captain, but instead of arguing that watch duty was not a
non-military duty, simply said I was not happy in performing watch duty.
The captain sent for me and talked to me in private. I remember he told me for the sake of the ship we had
to work together as a team, blah blah blah. He totally ignored that, being untrained, I had no
knowledge or experience in handling situations that might arise, and that any
wrong decision could put the ship in danger. However, I dared not argue with him
and had to accept. On my first watch there appeared suddenly a glare right
ahead the ship bow. I did not know what it was and was overwhelmed. I
immediately woke up the captain. He came to the bridge and said that it
was a fishing boat casting a net, and that was nothing to worry about. He was
quite annoyed to be disturbed by such a trivial stuff and scolded me for it. As he was leaving he
mumbled something about it being unwise and difficult to put an untrained,
inexperienced, and unqualified person to do such a important job. I was puzzled: since he knew I wasn't trained
for such job, why did he assign me to do it in the first place? The strange
thing was that it was always my turn to do "ghost watch", or what
they call it "graveyard watch" in the US Navy, from midnight to four
o'clock in the morning. During these wee hours, if the situation called for waking
up the captain, his temper was the shortest.
I gradually became used to it. During this time, the whole
ship was quiet. On the bridge, I sat in the captain's comfortable chair. The
magnetic compass was constantly buzzing, indicating the ship's course, radar gleaming
on its fluorescent screen, and sonar emitting a rhythmic ding-dong sound. With sea
breeze blowing, waves pushing, I spent the time reciting Chinese poems I used
to read. With some cram sessions in navy military officer's training materials and experience, I could finally distinguish a barge from a raft in
the radar screen image, and a school of fish from a hard object in the echo of
the sonar. With this knowledge, I was able to evaluate situations and not
disturb the captain’s sleep. Also fortunately, I was an easy sleeper; whenever
I felt tired and bored, I could fall asleep no matter when or where.
Once as I was going
back to my cabin from watch after four o'clock, I passed through the officers'
mess hall. By the dim night light I saw a shadow sitting in the Captain's chair,
which was off limits to everyone except the captain's immediate superiors. I
thought it must be the Captain. He was dressed neatly, holding a newspaper with
both hands and seeming to read it in the almost complete darkness. That was all
very weird. I went to bed full of curiosity and questions. The next day, I learned
it was not the Captain at all, but the code interpreter, whose figure was
similar to the Captain's. He had a sleepwalking disorder. It was known by all the
people on board. When it happened, they just let him, not waking him as long as
he did not go on the deck and risk falling into the sea. I heard a lot of
stories about dream walking; that was the first and the only time I witnessed
one.
Dachen missions
Less than two weeks after returning from Japan, on October
23, 1953, we embarked for Dachen. The group of islands are located in the outer
sea of Taizhou Bay, Zhejiang Province. About 230 nautical miles from Taiwan, it
is the first line of defense. The area under our control extended from Yushan Islands outside Sanmen Bay to the
south of Wenzhou Bay. It was a huge expanse of water, with the two Dachen
Islands in the middle. The two separate islands of the Upper and Lower Dachen embraced
each other to form a harbor where ships anchored.
Our mission started by sending or picking up
individuals in resistance and intelligence groups to or from the Communist-occupied
Mainland. Several
times a month, under the cover of darkness of night or amid stormy seas, we
approached a designated spot, normally
near one of the uninhabited islands, with a few small rafts or boats in
tow.
When sending them off, the people would climb into the small boats and
disappear into the darkness. In case of picking up, our ship would go to a spot
to tow them back. At that
time, the Communist Navy was not strong enough to interfere with our operation.
As long as we were not close enough to the range of coastal defense guns, we
came and went freely.
I noticed that time
and again when we recovered a group that we had previously sent off, there were
often some people missing. Had they been killed in a battle, caught, or something
else? Since their missions were secret, we were not supposed to ask. Yet they
treated it like nothing happened, and chatted, drank, and laughed as usual. I
really admired their guts and regarded them as unknown heroes.
We arrived at Dachen on
November 7th and anchored near the small and the only town in its group of
islands. I went ashore to have a look. The streets were crowded, dirty, smelly
and chaotic, but they gave me a sense of familiarity and spontaneously produced
a strange feeling of returning home. The people’s dialect, though with some
kind of accent, was understandable, unlike the Heluo dialect that the Taiwanese
spoke, which was completely alien to me.
Hosting the Shanghai Troupe
At the
beginning of January 1954, Taiwan's then famous acrobatic song and dance group,
"Shanghai Troupe", came to the Dachen Islands to entertain troops.
Our ship was to transport them around, and I was assigned to be the liaison. On
January 7th, we went to Yijiangshan, which were two separated tiny isles.
They sat close to each other to make a
narrow sea pass that looked like a river. That was how they got the name
because Yi-Jiang means one river. The two small islands had a total area of
less than one square kilometer. There were only small trees and withered
yellow grasses on the small futile land. Rocks were everywhere. Such a small
place later became globally known because of the heroic fighting put up by the
1000 plus Nationalist soldiers against the overwhelming 
Communist invader in
January 1955. The fall of Yijiangsan
eventually made the Dachen Islands indefensible.
The next
day, we visited Yusan, the Fisherman's Island, the
northernmost in the island chain under Nationalist control. There was no
landing place so our ship came near a tall rock with its flat face jutting
straight into the sea. The ship kept its distance to avoid colliding with the
rock. The landing spot was a flat square on the top. Waves were rising and
falling. As the waves receded the top of the stone rose a half-story high. We
could only jump onto land when a wave rose and the boat was in a manageable
distance from the rock. Since the troupe members were well trained acrobats, it presented no
problem for them to make a jump at the best timing.
Accompanying staff from our ship were nervous. We had to wait, sometimes up and
down several times to choose the best opportunity to make a bold jump. I was young
at the time, and was able to react quickly. I made it on my second try.
A
lighthouse sat at the highest point in the island. Built in 1894, it is said to be the first in the Far East. The
four-story lighthouse had stopped functioning, and the whole structure was in
complete shambles. We climbed up to the top where it used to gleam strong light
to guide the night sailing vessels. It was a fine day, and the view was
magnificent. During our stay in Dachen, lots of things happened around this
island that gave it special meaning to our ship, and which will be mentioned
from time to time in this chapter.
Beginning of the Battle
After the Korean War ended in July 1953, the Chinese Communists
turned their attention to Taiwan. Dachen, as its outermost position, was the
first to bear the brunt. In April of the following year, large battle vessels
of the Chinese Communist Navy were sighted. Our ship, after a short stay in
Taiwan for resupply and repair, returned to Dachen on April 26th. At arrival,
we immediately felt a different atmosphere¸ the chilly tension of war. On April
28th, four ships, including an escort destroyer, Taiping, one of the main
battle ships in Nationalist Navy, encountered enemy force. We were ordered to hurry
to Yusan waters. Because of the proximity to the battlefield, we heard the
rumbling of the guns and saw MiG fighters flying over. That was the first time the
Nationalist Navy engaged a hostile large
ship. That was also when the Communist Air Force started its role in the
following struggle.
While patrolling near Yusan on May 2 in the afternoon, we
found thousands of fishing boats assembled in formation, as if an exercising
was going on. When we approached, they dispersed, pretending to be fishing. We
randomly caught one and interrogated the crew for information. The fishing boat
skipper acted dumb and pretended to be unable to speak. That exasperated our
captain, who ordered two sailors to beat him up. Officers
and sailors, as onlookers, laughed and applauded. It was cruel. I was unable to
do anything at that moment but decided to put in some humanity lessons in my
future instructions in political sessions.
Two days later, Communist
battle ships were sighted again in the northern waters of Yusan. Dachen Fleet
Command ordered us, together with a
small but speedy gunboat, to investigate. After passing Yushan, our radar screen
showed two large flashing objects sitting near the Mainland coast. Up to this
time, the Nationalist Navy still dominated, and the Communist Navy, with its
smaller ships and less trained personnel, had always evaded us. Therefore,
although the intelligence informed us of enemy vessels larger than any previous
vessels, we took it
as a matter of course that they would avoid a real sea battle and presumed
that they would escape before reaching fighting distance. Looking back, I
suspect that perhaps the captain was eager to earn a merit, since that was the
first chance we had to engage in battle. We approached the enemy at full
speed. The enemy ships,
which
had always withdrawn to a safe distance, did not move. Instead, the two started
coming towards us.
I was on the bridge when
I heard the watchman, who was watching the enemy's movement closely through a
telescope, report, "They are coming towards us!" Then he counted the distance between us: "20,000 yards,
18,000 yards, 15,000 yards." Both sides approached each other at high
speed, and the distance shortened to 10,000 in a few minutes.
Then he yelled, "They opened fire!" Everybody on the bridge
was watching the two small silhouettes in the distance, and we all saw the
flashes of light, a volley of three rounds at one time. The first barrage
landed about hundred yards away exactly on our track, and the explosions
stirred up three huge columns of water as high as the ship's bridge. From the
distance they reached, we judged that they were equipped with 5 inch canons. We
only had one 3 inch canon which could reach barely about 8000 yards. Our ship,
with all the smaller guns, started shooting without the "fire" order
from the gunnery officer. Our shells fell pitifully halfway. Then we saw the
flashes of light again, and after a few minutes, the second volley shrieked
overhead and fell in front of the bow. We drove right through the water columns
and the sea water impacted in full force on the bridge and decks.
The next few
barrages fell to the sides, taking turns on the right and the left, yards away
but into the sea. Normally in a sea battle a captain would maneuver the ship in
a snake style under bombardment. If he had, we would have been hit at the beginning
volleys. Then I heard the gunnery officer shout to the captain: "Snake
sailing!" and captain seemed to awaken and gave his order. The ship
starting turning left and right in a zig-zag style. Nevertheless, the shells
also fell to the side. Afterwards some
people had the opinion that was why we escaped without a scratch – that because
the Communist battle ships presumed we would sail in the standard zig-zag pattern
but changed their strategy when they saw we were going straight, the captain's
mistake inadvertently produced
a deceptive effect that saved us.
The smaller gun boat, about several
hundred yard away, was not the target. She turned and sped up, her propeller stirring up
splashes higher than the aft deck. In a few minutes she left the battle and
escaped.
Our guns
were still blazing, still too far from the enemy, in spite of the gunnery
office's order through the intercom to cease fire.
Everyone on the bridge saw the flashes, three at a time; the
distant silhouette fired, and the watchman yelled, "It's coming!" It
took about five minutes for these shells to reach us. Everybody tensed up,
waiting for fate. Then we all squatted down and curled up into a ball to reduce
the exposed area. Only the captain, watching the situation, and the gunnery
officer, shouting the cease fire order in vain, stood straight.
My job in
a battle was supposed to be to record the process of the battle. But there was an assigned photographer to do the job, and I had nothing
to do on the bridge. I could not stand the tension in this crowded place, so I
went down to the main deck. As I was at the port side, one of the shells hit
the water not far from the ship. (picture left) I heard the shell
screaming through air, and I squatted down and curled up. I did not notice the
explosion, only a sound similar to the casting of a handful of beans, which later
proved to be bomb fragments hitting the hull. I felt something knock my helmet. Afterwards I found
this blasted piece on the deck. I have kept it ever since.
While our ship tried
to flee to the open sea, the enemy vessels followed, keeping a distance such that
they could hit us but we could not hit them. After what seemed to be ages and
ages of continuous bombardment, we eventually approached Yusan. Then the
garrison artilleries on the friendly island opened fire on them; the enemy
vessels stopped, turned, and went away.
After the battle
I was very impressed with the calm of the captain and
gunnery officer during the battle. The captain had to because it was his duty
to be aware of the changing situation and to make quick decisions which would
affect our lives. But the gunnery
officer, unlike others on the bridge whose bodies shook and faces turned ashen,
was steady. Later, I asked him how he did it. He said, "Because I believe in God, I just
have to pray and then I am not afraid of anything." That was the first
time that I realized what the amazing power of religion could do for devout
believers.
YiJiang Island
There were three un-inhabited small islands to the north of
Nationalist-occupied YiJiang Island. We often went to their adjacent waters
when we had to transport people in the intelligence or resistance groups. They
were quite near the Communist territory and completely within the range of
hostile fire. On May 15th, 1954, it was reported that lots of activities were
going on around them. The Fleet Command sent two ships to investigate and, if
necessary,
Although that was the end of Communists using a bigger ship to
overpower us, their change in strategy caused us to give up Tachen Islands
after the loss of many ships, and many lives.
In spite of the loss of ships, Communist troops’ activities around
the three un-inhabited small islands. They moved personnel and equipment onto them, and started
constructing artillery positions which could reach YiJiang San. We learned that some of the resistance/intelligence
group members were still there waiting for us to rescue them. Our ship could
not go in because of the artillery fire, so small boats were sent instead. They
were detected, and it was said one of them was hit and nine lives lost. A few
days later as we patrolled nearby, we saw bodies floating, not nine, but tens
of them. Some of them, with hands tied on their back, were obviously executed.
After that, the fate of the two small islands of YiJiang San, which were the
foremost defense line of Tachen, was doomed.
Air battles
The traditional "heavier tonnage with bigger guns"
strategy that was dominant in WWI changed after the Midway Sea Battle in WW2,
and air supremacy prevailed. After the Nationalists’ defeat in the Mainland,
its army was nearly completely wiped out, and its navy was weakened after the
defection of so many ships. But the air force was intact. P47 fighters,
leftovers of WWII, came almost every day if weather permitted. Based 400 miles
away in Taiwan, They could only stay in the area about 10 minutes. In that time
they were able to bombard any target at will without meeting any significant
resistance. Then one day the tables were suddenly turned.
The weather was particularly good on May 19. Seven P47
fighters came in the morning and flew in the direction of Taizhou Bay, a little
further west of YiJiang San. Soon we heard the Air-sea intercom broadcast on
the bridge announcing, "Discover enemy planes, Mig 17, northeast
direction, ninety miles." Mig 7 was a new model fighter plane developed by
the Soviet Union after WWII. At that time, we were sailing from the Port of
Dachen to Yijiangshan. Not long after, six low-flying P47s flitted over us and
two MiG fighters followed closely. The anti-aircraft guns on the two islands
opened fire, so intense that the entire islands were instantly covered by a
solid sheet of black smoke. The MiGs turned back.
The other lone F47 was entangled by two MiGs. Flying toward
us, it was desperately trying to extricate itself from the hopeless dogfight.
When it flew right over our mast and the following Migs came near, our guns
fired at them. They then turned and flew off.
On May 22nd, as we
were on the way to Yijiangshan, we saw two P47s and two Migs engaging. One of
the MiGs suddenly swooped toward us. When the ship fired off anti-aircraft
guns, it rolled up and took off.
During these difficult times, as anything could happen
suddenly and needed a professional and immediate response, our Captain seemed to
trust my ability to handle situations and still assigned me to the graveyard
watch nearly every night. During the day, I needed time to compensate for my
lost sleep, but the constant emergency alarms in which all personnel had to be
in their positions kept me awake. Thus I was continuously suffering from lack
of sleep. On May 29, 1954, the ship finally was let go and we sailed to NanJi
Island, the southernmost Island under our control in this area. We temporarily left
the battle field to catch a breath. I was relieved from the night watch and had
a comfortable sleep that I had not had for long time. I felt that life became
enjoyable again.
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