Marines, including MajGen De Witt Peck, CG,
1stMarDiv (far left), Chinese workers and Nationalist Chinese soldiers take cover as a communist mine is exploded on the side of the
Tientsin-Chingwantao railroad bed.
Worton’s Warning
Before III AC landed in China, Brigadier
General William A. Worton, MajGen Rockey’s chief of staff and multilingual former
China hand, met with Communist General Chou En-lai. During their meeting,
BGen Worton laid out the plans for Marine occupation of Tientsin and Peiping.
Chou En-lai reluctantly agreed to the
Marine landing in Tientsin, but explicitly
denied Worton permission to occupy Peiping. Worton calmly but firmly replied
that Marines would not only occupy both
cities, but also that his Marines were immediately prepared to deal with any threat
the communists posed, and that they would
fight through and destroy any opposition.
The generals left their meeting in disagreement, but the Marine landings went
on as planned.
of men and machines at Tsingtao to witness the surrender ceremony of Japanese
MG Eiji Nagano’s army to MajGen Lemuel C. Shepherd Jr. Many of the Marines
were wary of their new mission, knowing
the tenacity and resilience of Japanese
soldiers in combat. While the Japanese
surrender was official, some Marines of
III AC saw the surrender as merely a piece
of paper with a signature, providing with
it a sense of security that paled in comparison to that of a ticket home to their
friends and families in the States.
A Glimpse of the Past
By mid-October 1945, the entire III AC,
made up of nearly 50,000 Marines, was
ashore in China. The local Chinese held
parades and celebrations in honor of the
new arrivals. Marines from the 1stMarDiv
noted that they received a welcome “that
must have outshone, outshouted and outsmelled any welcome given to troops any
time, any place and anywhere during the
war.” This warm feeling toward the arrival of the Marines was short-lived. An
explosive civil war was raging in China,
and the Marines soon would find themselves caught in the middle.
After the war, China duty began as it
had ended four years earlier. Most leathernecks found the comforts of China a
great relief compared to the tropical climate and fierce fighting of the Western
Pacific. A Chinese rickshaw driver always
was waiting to take Marines anywhere they
needed to go, and fresh food always was
available to those who could no longer
eat the tasteless C-rations. Just as with
old China hands, “houseboys” often were
employed to help with laundry, transportation and food.
Private First Class Eugene B. Sledge, a
veteran of several Pacific campaigns, hired
a houseboy to bring him all the fresh eggs,
milk and vegetables he could get. The food
would help create what the battle-hardened men would consider gourmet meals.
Life, it seemed, was comfortable for a
North China Marine. The communists,
however, would make sure the Marines
knew they weren’t welcome.
A Different Enemy
Chinese warlords, Japanese puppet
troops, Communist Chinese, Nationalist
Chinese and Japanese regular army troops
all maintained weapons when the Marines
arrived in China. The surrender and repa-triation of the Japanese turned out to be
far easier than anticipated as Marines soon
found that the Japanese were used to dealing with the warring factions in China.
Marines even allowed some Japanese outposts to maintain weapons and readiness.
USMC
Marines came under fire very soon after
they arrived, not from the Japanese, but instead from the Communist Chinese. While
on a railway inspection, the 1stMarDiv
commanding general, MajGen DeWitt
Peck, was forced to take cover as mortar
rounds fell on the tracks near his position.
Less than a year later, the ambush at Anping on 29 July 1946 took place, forcing
Marines to take a cautious position in
China.
Attack on Hsin Ho
By 1947, the Corps introduced a point
system, allowing most of the veteran Marines to go home, while the remaining
Marines took on guard duty at the isolated
outposts in China. The 1stMarDiv’s ammunition supply point (ASP) at Hsin Ho
was one of those outposts.
Hsin Ho was situated 30 miles east of
Tientsin on the Peiping-Mukden rail line.
The Marines there often patrolled the area
by horseback, sometimes with horses previously used by the Japanese. In April,
the communists decided to attack the ASP
in order to replenish their diminishing ammunition supply.
On 4 April 1947, Good Friday, PFC
Jacob Jereb stood watch over his post at
the ASP. In the early hours of the morning, he heard a suspicious noise and went
to investigate. The other Marines on guard
