Yangtze Showdown Page 25

  27

  Mao’s Trap

  WHEN NEWS OF THE ATTACK on Amethyst was reported in Britain, there were immediate suspicions that the frigate had sailed into a Communist trap. National newspapers were quick to question the wisdom of sending Amethyst up the Yangtze when Mao’s forces were about to launch a major offensive across the river at Nationalist positions on the southern banks. As The Daily Telegraph pointed out: ‘If it is entirely clear that the attack on the Amethyst by Chinese Communist artillery was unprovoked and indefensible, it is also clear that the possibility of such an attack might, and indeed should, have been foreseen.’ The Sunday Pictorial was more damning: ‘As more of the facts reach London it has become pitifully obvious that: the British authorities were caught unawares; the whole position along the Yangtze River was gravely misjudged; men in high places have blundered.’1 Unsurprisingly, Admiral Brind did not share these views. He saw the attack on Amethyst as an unfortunate accident. The commander-in-chief was quoted as saying: ‘The shelling of the sloop Amethyst and the destroyer Consort by Chinese Communists was not a deliberate hostile act. The excitement when blood is up between two forces often involves a third in disaster.’2 Neither Amethyst nor Consort had opened fire first and they were attacked at different locations. Explaining away the two attacks as the result of some kind of panic may have stretched credulity. These were battle-hardened and disciplined soldiers on the northern banks of the Yangtze. The ‘blood is up’ explanation falls down further when the attacks on London and Black Swan and the Sunderland flying boats are taken into account. All the attacks were calculated.

  In 2005 Jung Chang and Jon Halliday revealed in their book, Mao, The Unknown Story, that the Communist leader had given orders that any foreign warship on the Yangtze could be attacked if it appeared to be a threat. ‘Treat them as Nationalist ships,’ Mao declared. Amethyst’s fate was sealed even before she left Shanghai. However, the attacks on Amethyst and Concord alarmed Stalin, who feared that Western powers might finally take military action in China’s civil war, with the Cold War opening up on a new front. Soviet forces in the Far East were placed on alert, and Stalin urged Mao to pull back from a possible confrontation. According to Jung and Halliday, Mao had to ‘tone down his aggressiveness’. He issued new orders to ‘avoid clashes with foreign ships. No firing at [them] without the order of the Centre. Extremely, extremely important.’3

  Mao was aware that London and Black Swan were being sent to help Amethyst, and a message went to General Su Yu that the ships should not be attacked unless they interfered with the river crossing. The message arrived too late.4 Despite Stalin’s concern, Mao was no doubt pleased that Britain had been confronted in this way. US ambassador Stuart recorded: ‘Commercial and naval ships of foreign countries, principally British, had long sailed up and down this mighty river at their own unbridled will, but now at last they had been bravely challenged and routed.’5 The use of the word ‘bravely’ was curious. The Communists were not under threat and, as has been shown, warships were easy targets for land-based artillery in the confines of the river. The point about the symbolism of the ‘old’ China was taken up by the Communists, with the New China News Agency declaring: ‘The British imperialists must understand that China is no longer the China of 1926 when British naval vessels bombarded Wan Xian [Wanhsien]. She is no longer the China of the days when Great Britain and the United States jointly bombarded Nanking in 1937. The Yangtze River now belongs to the Chinese people and the PLA and no longer belongs to servile and weak traitors.’ The Wanhsien incident saw the rescue of crews of British steamers who had been seized by a warlord’s soldiers. There were wild propaganda claims that British gunboats had attacked the port of Wanhsien, killing up to 5,000 Chinese. The Nanking incident was also a rescue operation, when an Anglo-American flotilla laid down a protective barrage to help evacuate westerners during anti-foreign rioting.

  Under the Moscow Declaration of December 1945, Britain, the US and the Soviet Union agreed on a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of China. At the Labour Party conference in Blackpool on 9 June 1949, Foreign Secretary Bevin reiterated the policy, stressing: ‘We have never, since we have been in office, intervened in Chinese internal affairs.’ It was not an accurate statement. Mao was right to have suspicions about Britain and the US. Both nations had been giving military aid to the Nationalists.

  America’s General George Marshall, one of the architects of victory in the Second World War, gained first-hand experience of the civil war. President Harry Truman had sent him to China in December 1945 in an attempt to persuade the Nationalists and the Communists to form a coalition government. The mission was a failure, with Marshall returning home little more than a year later to be appointed secretary of state, a post that left him with the vexed question of whether the Nationalists should continue to receive US aid. Chiang Kai-shek still enjoyed the support of many Republican politicians. As well as getting large sums of money, Chiang had been given American military advisers. In May 1947 Marshall reluctantly agreed to lift an arms embargo and ask for the release of a $500 million loan that had been agreed the previous year. Increasingly, Marshall viewed the Nationalists as a lost cause. In February 1948 he stated: ‘It can only be concluded that the present government evidently cannot reduce the Chinese Communists to a completely negligible factor in China. To achieve that objective in the immediate future it would be necessary for the United States to underwrite the Chinese government’s military effort, on a wide and probably constantly increasing scale, as well as the Chinese economy. The US would have to be prepared virtually to take over the Chinese government …’6 But two months later Congress passed another package – $338 million in economic aid and $125 million in military aid. This was in addition to the $1.4 billion that the Nationalists had received since the end of the Second World War. Among those urging more money for the Nationalists was Admiral Badger, who had refused to send any of his warships up the Yangtze. Badger and General David Barr were the new heads of the US military mission to the Nationalists. Mao could not have been unhappy with the US stance on aid. The demoralised, inept and corrupt Nationalists were losing about 40 per cent of their supplies to the Communists.7 So the Americans, in fact, were arming both sides. Austerity Britain was not in a position to hand over large sums of money but it did have warships to spare. The British government would be involved in some embarrassing decisions, highlighted by the case of HMS Aurora.

  In 1944 the naval attaché at the Chinese embassy in London, Captain Chow Ying-Tsung, had sent the Deputy First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Charles Kennedy-Purvis, a ‘shopping list’. The captain’s letter was brief and to the point.

  I have been instructed by the Generalissimo [Chiang] to enquire whether the British Admiralty are prepared to make available to the Chinese Navy the following vessels:

  1 A modern light cruiser of five to six thousand tons suitable for training as well as operational purposes.

  2 Destroyers, submarines and coastal craft.8

  The request was referred to Minister of Defence Alexander and the Foreign Office. Alexander was in favour and so was the then foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, who told him: ‘So far as I am concerned I am only too glad to find some field in which we are able at this difficult time to strengthen relations with China. I therefore welcome the offer which according to the draft reply you are now prepared to make to the Chinese.’ The Nationalists were, after all, fighting the Japanese. The US also offered warships – four destroyers and four gunboats.9 The Admiralty could not spare ships at such a critical point in the war against Germany and Japan. However, in 1946 Attlee’s government decided it would still give warships to the Nationalists, despite the fact that the war against Japan had ended and Britain had agreed to the Moscow Declaration. By that time the Nationalists and the Communists were back fighting each other on a major scale.

  That year the Admiralty handed over the corvette HMS Petunia. But the survivor of the Battle of the Atlantic would find the
questionable navigating skills of Nationalist sailors too great a challenge. In March 1947 Petunia, renamed Fubo, sank after colliding with a merchant ship off the coast of Formosa with the loss of all hands. An Admiralty report noted: ‘The Chinese had not insured the vessel and the Treasury therefore agreed that she should be formally regarded as a gift to China.’ Two months later the British government decided that the light cruiser Aurora, the destroyer HMS Mendip, two submarines and eight harbour-defence launches would be transferred to the Nationalists under a complicated loan agreement. Chiang did not want to pay for any of the vessels, insisting they should be gifts. The Nationalists argued that Britain had seized several of their ships in Hong Kong during the Second World War and that they were owed compensation. The Admiralty decided that the ‘awkward case’ could be settled with the transfer of Aurora and the other vessels. The Treasury agreed to the ‘tidy arrangement’.10 Bevin sealed the deal at a meeting with the Chinese ambassador in London. The ambassador ‘expressed the gratitude of the Chinese government for this material aid which he welcomed as a further proof of our long-standing friendship and co-operation’.11 In the case of Aurora, it was agreed that the Nationalists would pay around £100,000 for the Chinese crew of more than 600 to be trained in Britain. This money probably was never paid.

  The difficulty of dealing with the Nationalists was highlighted in an Admiralty report:

  The Chinese throughout tended to refer to these ships as gifts and continued to show great reluctance to sign any loan agreement, notwithstanding that a draft had been presented to the Chinese government in the autumn of 1947. It was, in fact, only shortly before the date provisionally fixed for the transfer of HMS Aurora that it proved possible to induce them to give consideration to the question of formal terms. Abandonment of the offer at so late a stage would have been politically most unfortunate, but it was eventually agreed, with the concurrence of the Treasury and the Foreign Office, that the ships should be transferred outright to the Chinese, the United Kingdom receiving as consideration the abandonment by the Chinese government of a claim against the Admiralty of some £300,000 to £350,000 in respect of the loss on war service of certain Chinese maritime customs vessels whilst on Admiralty requisition.12

  It is surprising that no one in the British government seems to have questioned the wisdom of supplying arms to one side in a civil war, while at the same time professing to be neutral.

  Aurora distinguished herself in the Second World War, most notably during the Mediterranean campaign, but she suffered an undignified end after being given to the Nationalists. Renamed Chongqing (Chungking), the cruiser sailed from Britain for China on 26 May 1948 under the command of an experienced captain, Deng Zhaoxiang. When she reached Hong Kong, nearly one third of her engineering ratings deserted. The cruiser carried on to Nanking, where Chiang and other leading Nationalists celebrated her arrival by paying a visit. Chongqing’s first mission – with Chiang on board – was to give support to troops retreating on the Shandong Peninsula and along the north coast. The military reverses and a lack of pay further undermined the crew’s morale and, unknown to the captain, Communist sympathisers, led by one Wang Nishen, were planning a mutiny. By November 1948 the ship, based in Shanghai, was guarding the Yangtze. There were further desertions, and soldiers and dockyard workers were recruited as replacements. The Communist sailors had formed a ‘liberation committee’, and on the night of 24 February 1949, after breaking into the ship’s small-arms locker, the group confronted the captain. Threats persuaded Captain Deng and some of his officers to sail the ship to Yantai on the Shandong Peninsula, which was occupied by the PLA. For most of the crew it was a shock. They had no idea that they were defecting to the Communists. Chongqing was carrying Nationalist funds, a large quantity of silver coins. The money, apparently with Mao’s approval, was used to persuade many of the crew to remain on board and work with the Communists. Captain Deng and others were no doubt aware that their careers in the Nationalist navy had come to an abrupt end anyway. Chiang’s anger at the loss of his prize after such a short time can be imagined. On 2 March a reconnaissance plane spotted Chongqing and B-24 bombers began targeting her. Members of the crew who remained loyal to Chiang threatened to take over the ship, and PLA soldiers were sent to quell the unrest. The cruiser sailed for another port further north, Huludao, where the entire crew faced ‘re-education’. The Nationalists kept up their hunt, and the ship was again attacked on 19 March, without any hits. But two days later a bomb seriously damaged the stern, and most of the crew abandoned the ship. The cruiser was out of fuel and unable to reply to high-level air attacks. It was decided to scuttle her. The Chongqing capsized at her moorings. On 23 April, three days after the attack on Amethyst, the Nationalists’ Shanghai flotilla – a destroyer, three destroyer escorts, a gunboat, five landing ships and eight auxiliaries – defected to the Communists.13 In April 1951, with the help of Russian experts, an attempt was made to salvage Chongqing. The hull was in good condition, and the ship was raised in the June and towed to a shipyard at Dalian, which had a dry dock. The Russians decided after closer examination that it would not be economical to return the cruiser to service. Chongqing was stripped of some machinery and weapons. Her engines ended up in a local factory. In November 1959 the hull was towed to Shanghai and used for fresh water storage. In 1964 it was given to a shipping line to accommodate workers on coastal projects, and later abandoned. The remains of the former Aurora were finally broken up in about 1990.

  The destroyer Mendip was loaned at the same time as the handover of Aurora. Mendip was transferred ‘free of charge’ for a period of five years, but the Nationalists were expected to pay all maintenance costs. One of the conditions of the loan: ‘The government of China undertake to restore the vessel to His Majesty’s government at any time during the period of the loan upon receiving from His Majesty’s government three months’ notice to do so.’ In the wake of the Aurora fiasco, the Royal Navy repossessed Mendip – renamed Lingfu – in June 1949. The crew who took over came from Consort. But a few months later the destroyer was sold to the Egyptian navy. Under the name of Ibrahim el Awal, she was seized by the Israelis after attacking the port of Haifa in October 1956. With some irony the Israelis added her to their navy with the name Haifa. The ship that ended up serving four navies was scrapped in 1972.

  The Nationalists did not receive any submarines from the Royal Navy despite a complaint from the Chinese Embassy in London that they had been promised. The Nationalists pointed out that they were in ‘urgent need’ of two ‘S’ class boats. More than sixty ‘S’ class submarines had been constructed for the Royal Navy and, despite wartime losses, some were surplus. The Admiralty no doubt felt it had been generous enough. And there must have been serious doubts about the competence of Nationalist submariners. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Hall, made it clear to Minister of Defence Alexander that submarines ‘cannot be made available until 1951 at the earliest’.14 By that time, of course, the picture had changed completely.

  Hundreds of sailors trained by Britain and the United States for the Nationalists ended up forming the nucleus of China’s Communist navy. In 1950 they underwent a heavy programme of indoctrination, forced to read the works of Mao and to ‘write their autobiographies and selfcriticism’. Those who passed went on to naval schools for further training. Deng Zhaoxiang, the captain of the Chongqing, was among the men who proved adept at survival. In 1953 he still regarded himself as ‘British navy’ but despite this admission – and a liking for ‘afternoon tea’ – he earned promotion. In 1977 he was appointed the deputy commander of China’s north sea fleet.15

  28

  The Tragic Sam Leo

  ONE MAN WAS ‘SACRIFICED’ WHEN Amethyst broke out on that July night. Sam Leo, Kerans’s loyal interpreter. On 28 May 1949 Leo, who worked as an interpreter and a translator for the naval attaché in Nanking, had volunteered to help Amethyst’s captain in negotiations with the Communist authorities, which were usually led by the
obstructive Colonel Kang. Leo, also known as Liu Chin-tseng, worked tirelessly throughout June and July. Kerans, of course, had decided he could not risk taking Leo into his confidence over the escape plan. Hours before the frigate’s bid for freedom the interpreter was sent ashore with instructions to collect ‘urgent’ medical supplies from the mission hospital in Chingkiang. Kerans provided him with a covering letter for Kang, and Fearnley the RAF doctor had listed the supplies that were supposedly needed in an attempt to add authenticity to the request. At no time was Leo aware that Kerans planned to try to escape. As the captain pointed out: ‘It was one man’s life against the rest of us on board.’1

  On the morning of 31 July, as Amethyst sighted freedom, the Communists were quick to seize on the innocent Leo. He was arrested and taken to Nanking, where he was placed in detention. For three days he was kept in irons and threatened with death, falsely accused of helping the ship’s escape. Leo would face months of ‘re-education’, during which some of his ‘fellow students’ were taken out and shot. His health deteriorated.2

  Ambassador Stevenson and the naval attaché, Captain Donaldson, recognised the important part Leo, who had a wife and two sons, played in helping Kerans’s negotiations and supported the idea of giving him compensation. On 5 September Donaldson sent a telegram to the director of naval intelligence at the Admiralty recommending ‘generous compensation’ and the payment of Leo’s salary during his time in detention. Stevenson sent a copy of the telegram to the Foreign Office, which ended up on the desk of Guy Burgess, the Soviet spy, who commented: ‘His [Leo’s] anxiety as to exactly what might happen to him in Communist Chinese hands (who must have been convinced not without some excuse that he was being used to throw dust in their eyes and that he was consciously part of the escape) must have been terrible even though in the surprising event he was not too badly treated.’ Burgess also thought Leo deserved generous compensation, which was presumably a matter for the Admiralty. But he wondered if the interpreter had been ‘thoroughly indoctrinated’ and whether ‘other threats and proposals’ had been a condition of his release. With great irony, Burgess questioned the wisdom of continuing to employ Leo as an interpreter in the naval attaché’s office, where he would have access to sensitive material, and advised ‘some less critical role’. Other Foreign Office officials were happy to learn later that the Admiralty might agree to pay the compensation rather than their department.3