T O P S E C R E T
VIA SPECIAL CHANNEL
1605 LOCAL TIME 30 APRIL 1943
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
FROM OSS DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PACIFIC OPERATIONS
TO DIRECTOR OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES
WASHINGTON
EYES ONLY WILLIAM R DONOVAN
1. METEOROLOGICAL PERSONNEL AND THEIR EQUIPMENT ARRIVED SAFELY BUT IN NEED OF REST 1400 LOCAL TIME THIS DATE.
2. IT WILL BE NECESSARY TO MOVE THE PERSONNEL AND THEIR EQUIPMENT TO YUMEN BY AIR. GENERAL STILLWELL HAS ARRANGED FOR A 14TH US AIR FORCE C-47 TO MAKE THE TRIP DEPARTING CHUNGKING MORNING OF 1 MAY WITH ETA YUMEN LATE SAME AFTERNOON, PRESUMING GOOD WEATHER.
3. LTCOL BANNING, PRESENTLY IN YUMEN, ESTIMATES STAGING OF DEPARTURE FROM YUMEN WELL TAKE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AFTER ARRIVAL OF NATIONALIST CHINESE INFANTRY ESCORT. GENERAL STILLWELL ADVISES TROOPS CANNOT BE MADE AVAILABLE BEFORE 0600 4 MAY 1943.
4. LTCOL BANNING FURTHER ADVISES THAT ORIGINAL ETA OF SUPPLY CONVOY RETURNING TO YUMEN HAS BEEN INDEFINITELY EXTENDED DUE TO WEATHER CONDITIONS AND OTHER FACTORS, AND FURTHER THAT DESPITE INTENSIVE EFFORT HE HAS BEEN UNABLE TO DEVELOP ANY INTELLIGENCE REGARDING LOCATION OF MCCOY.
FLEMING PICKERING, BRIG GEN USMCR
T O P S E C R E T
note 94
Somewhere in the Gobi Desert
Mongolia
0900 1 May 1943
Nothing but snow could be seen in any direction. Three days before, the skies had cleared following two days of intermittent blowing small-flake snow. When the sun came out, it came out brightly, reflecting off the snow. It didn't quite blind them, but it effectively limited their vision to about one thousand yards, less sometimes when the wind blew the snow especially hard.
McCoy's decision was to keep moving day and night, despite the snowfall.
It was very cold. The ambulance—designed to provide as much comfort as possible for the wounded—had a heater mounted on the firewall. The weapons carrier had an open cab and no heater. But those crowded onto the seat—McCoy, Sampson, and two of the Chinese—found a certain amount of warmth from the engine and transmission by draping a blanket over their laps.
They moved on what McCoy hoped was a dead easterly course, determined by a U.S. Army-issue compass. McCoy had no idea how much the metal mass of the weapons carrier was affecting the compass, but at least they were moving in a straight line. They used a kind of stop-and-go technique. That is to say, the ambulance would be stopped and used as a reference point while McCoy drove the weapons carrier ahead, making every effort to keep the tracks through the snow perfectly straight, moving as slowly as he could in third gear to conserve fuel.
In order to keep further control of all this, he also stationed one of the Chinese on top of the mountain of supplies and jerry cans in the back of the truck, with orders to instantly report if the tracks didn't make a straight line, or if he lost sight of the ambulance.
At night, they drove without headlights. Doing that proved to be not so difficult as he feared, after Zimmerman removed the lenses of a «blackout light» mounted on the front of the weapons carrier, from one at the rear, and from the one mounted on the front of the ambulance. The bare bulb on the front of the weapons carrier and the ambulance provided enough light for steering, and the bare bulb on the rear of the weapons carrier was bright enough to guide the driver of the ambulance—even at a thousand yards.
Anytime he had difficulty seeing the ambulance during the day—or its bare bulb at night—McCoy stopped and shut down the engine. The ambulance then caught up with him.
Because Zimmerman maintained—with the certainty of an article of religious faith—that after sixty seconds, more fuel was conserved by shutting an engine down and then starting it again, than by letting it idle, McCoy decreed to do that… but only so long as the batteries held up. And under no circumstances would both batteries be shut down at once. That way they could attempt to start a vehicle whose battery was exhausted by pushing it with the other vehicle.
In third gear each truck would go about fifteen miles per hour. That meant it took not quite three minutes for McCoy to drive the weapons carrier as far as he could without losing sight of the ambulance, and then it took the ambulance about that long to catch up. Thus the engines of each vehicle could be shut down for nearly three minutes during each stop-and-go cycle.
So far, the batteries of both vehicles seemed to be holding up, and McCoy was beginning to hope that the fuel-saving technique would work indefinitely. If a battery did become exhausted, he decided, he would get the vehicle started by pushing it. And then he'd try shutting the engines down every other time, or every third time. That way they'd have a running time of six or nine minutes to keep the batteries charged.
The move-stop-wait, move-stop-wait routine quickly became automatic and boring.
McCoy was startled when the Chinese lookout came crawling down from his perch.
He braked to a stop as the lookout began to climb over the passengers and windshield onto the hood, in the process striking with his boot the head of the Chinese soldier sitting next to Sampson. «Your mother is a whore who fucks dogs,» the one kicked muttered in Cantonese.
After a glance at the rearview mirror, which proved he could see the ambulance clearly, McCoy turned his full attention to the lookout, who had by now made it onto the hood of the weapons carrier. He was pointing into the distance. McCoy stared hard but could see nothing.
Sampson stood up, awkwardly hanging on to the windshield frame. «There's a guy on a horse out there,» he said, and corrected himself: «On a pony.»
McCoy finally saw the same thing, as the man and the pony suddenly came to life and trotted off into the distance. They were lost to sight within seconds because of the glare.
«What the hell was that?» Sampson said.
«He was probably as surprised to see us as we were to see him,» McCoy said. «What was he, an outrider?»
«If he was, he saw us, that's for sure.»
McCoy put the weapons carrier in gear again and resumed moving. As he stopped to let the ambulance catch up, the pony and its rider came into sight again. Not moving, just watching.
The ambulance began to move.
«What do we do now?» Sampson asked.
«Wait,» McCoy said.
The ambulance caught up with them two minutes or so later.
The rider on the pony moved toward them.
«He's not afraid of us, obviously,» Sampson said. «Is that good or bad?»
«He's got a rifle slung over his shoulder,» McCoy said.
He suddenly pushed himself out of the seat and started to climb over the windshield.
«Let them see that we have soldiers with rifles,» he ordered. «But for God's sake, don't point a rifle at him. If he unslings his rifle, be prepared to kill him.»
McCoy climbed onto the hood, then slid forward and climbed down to the ground over the jerry cans and burlap sacks tied to the bumper.
He held his hands away from his body to show that he wasn't holding a weapon, and walked toward the man on the pony.
The man on the pony started to unsling his rifle, then changed his mind. He waited for McCoy to approach.
The man on the pony had a full beard, and in the moment it occurred to McCoy that few Chinese had luxuriant beards, it occurred to the man on the pony that the Chinese officer approaching him with the flaps of his cap tied under his chin had a white man's skin.