Yangtze Showdown Read online

  Packard stressed the need for the wounded to get hospital treatment. Lying on straw, they were driven to Chingkiang in the lorries ‘at a dead slow pace’ because of the terrible road. Kerans and Dewar-Durie went ahead to alert the American mission hospital in Chingkiang, whose matron was Charlotte Dunlap. Not only did Miss Dunlap help the wounded but later ‘at considerable risk to herself’ she passed on accurate intelligence of the Communist batteries covering Amethyst.6 The officers then went to the local railway station to arrange for an extra coach to be put on the next train to Shanghai. Railway officials were reluctant to help, but Kerans remembered he had a letter from the commander-in-chief of the Nationalist navy, Admiral Kwei Yung-ching, and that ‘worked wonders’. An extra sleeping coach was attached to the train, and nurses from the hospital helped the wounded to board. The wounded included a group who arrived separately in another army lorry. The bodies of Skinner and Winter were also put on the train. Packard was in the middle of a transfusion when the train pulled away, and was last seen ‘festooned with tubes and bandages’ and heading for Shanghai.

  Kerans and Dewar-Durie returned to the Nationalist naval headquarters where the assistant naval attaché argued strongly to be taken to Amethyst in a landing craft. Eventually it was agreed. Kerans phoned Donaldson in Nanking to confirm the plan. It was arranged that Dewar-Durie would wait for the arrival of the wounded Weston and take him to the mission hospital. Kerans left in the landing craft in the early afternoon, with medical supplies and charts. Dewar-Durie noted: ‘I saw him off and it was a lovely summer day and as I sat on a jetty watching the little boat chugging away round the promontory, and the teeming life on the cluster of chunks below me, war seemed very far away.’7

  As the landing craft approached Amethyst, which was some seven miles down river of Chiangkiang, Kerans noticed that machine guns were being trained on his boat and he stood up and waved his charts. He was right to be anxious. Weston had given an order to open fire on any suspicious boats approaching the ship, although the first lieutenant would say later he could not remember giving it. At that point it was not clear if the Communists were on both banks of the river. Weston was surviving on Horse’s Neck, a cocktail usually made from brandy and ginger ale, and Fearnley, the RAF doctor, told him he needed to have a piece of shrapnel removed from a lung or it might become infected, proving fatal. After consulting Fearnley, Kerans insisted that Weston go ashore for treatment and, reluctantly, the first lieutenant left in the landing craft, hoping to return to the ship in ‘a few days’. He was met by Dewar-Durie, who took him to the mission hospital. That evening Weston went to the railway station in Chingkiang, where on the platform Miss Dunlap gave him a large injection of morphine before he boarded the last train to Nanking. No trains were running between Chingkiang and Shanghai because the line had been cut.8

  Dewar-Durie was told to remain in Chingkiang in case it was decided to scuttle Amethyst and the sailors needed help to make their way to safety. During the evening he paid several visits to the Nationalist navy headquarters, which was still in touch with the British embassy in Nanking. On his last visit, around midnight, he found everyone had packed up ready to leave by boat. The Communists had crossed the Yangtze at several points and were advancing rapidly. Early the next morning, 23 April, he was asked to return to Nanking as the plan to scuttle the ship had been postponed. Near the station he saw soldiers with red armbands and urged his driver to ‘go like the devil’. On the main road linking Nanking and Shanghai he found the Nationalists in full retreat: ‘Lorries and yet more lorries, horse-drawn carts and old Japanese tanks all rumbled past, while endless groups of soldiers plodded by in their soft-soled shoes. The congestion was terrific and the dust appalling.’ Many civilians were also fleeing Nanking. The panic was understandable. This was the city that had witnessed a major atrocity in December 1937, when invading Japanese soldiers swept in. An estimated 200,000 civilians were murdered, many after being tortured, in a six-week rampage. Most of the massacre sites were along the south bank of the Yangtze. Some 20,000 women and girls were reportedly raped. Dewar-Durie, who had spent fifty-one days evading Japanese troops after the occupation of Shanghai during the Second World War, managed to reach the British embassy. As he was driven through the gates he ‘could not help feeling satisfied’ that the army had helped out the navy.9

  After Weston’s departure from Amethyst, which ‘undoubtedly’ saved his life, Kerans, who had been appointed the ship’s captain by Vice Admiral Madden, turned his attention to the seventeen dead on board and made arrangements for their burial, ‘an urgent necessity’. There were simple services for members of the Church of England and the Roman Catholics. Kerans planned to sail to Nanking that evening, hoping that the failing light would hinder accurate firing from Communist batteries and aiming to get south of Deer Island, which was still in the hands of the Nationalists. But the situation deteriorated with ‘alarming rapidity’. Intelligence reports suggested that Amethyst was trapped between two Communist crossing points and that movement either way would ‘undoubtedly have caused further loss of life and the destruction of the ship’. Soon after 2000 Vice Admiral Madden told Amethyst to prepare to evacuate the ship and to scuttle her. Kerans quickly realised there was a major obstacle. There were no boats and insufficient lifebelts, and the men were too exhausted to make the short swim to land, where they would then face a long walk.

  Kerans sent a message asking if he could beach the ship instead. The demolition charges had been destroyed when the depth-charge store was hit but detonators were available. The ship’s company was divided into three groups, led by Hett, now a full lieutenant because of the shortage of officers, Lieutenant George Strain, the electrical officer, and Fearnley, the RAF doctor, who must have been bemused at finding himself in charge of sailors. Kerans planned to be the last to leave, along with the electrical artificers. Chocolate and a small quantity of food were issued, and the groups were told to wait ashore until Kerans’s arrival. They would all make their way to Soochow and then Shanghai. Vice Admiral Madden approved the beaching plan if the order to abandon ship was given. Kerans noted: ‘Throughout all this trying period the behaviour of all officers and ratings showed admirable fortitude. Every change in events was at once passed on to them and the tenseness of the situation was fully realised by all. In spite of this morale remained high.’

  At 2200 six Chinese warships, fully darkened, sailed down river past Amethyst but were not fired on by the Communists. About two hours later Madden signalled that the order to abandon ship would probably not be given that night. Most of the ratings were able to get some rest. Kerans reported: ‘All of us were now physically exhausted and the prospect of a lengthy trek to Shanghai in the wake of the retreating Nationalist forces to avoid capture seemed the only solution. The isolation and inability to effectively fight back was acutely felt.’ 10

  8

  A Diplomatic Challenge

  AMBASSADOR STEVENSON HAD BELIEVED FOR some time that it would be wrong to have any diplomatic links with the Communists. Protocol needed to be followed. But after the attack on Amethyst he realised that some contact was necessary to try to ensure the ship’s safety. On 20 April he sent a telegram to the British consul in Peking asking for an approach to the ‘Communist High Command’. The consul, Martin Buxton, was told to stress that Amethyst was on a peaceful and humanitarian mission, and that immediate orders should be given to the local army commander not to fire on her should she manage to complete repairs and get under way. It was this approach that Vice Admiral Madden hoped would resolve the crisis, but it became apparent that a swift outcome was not in sight, prompting his decision to send London and Black Swan on their ill-fated rescue attempt.1

  The consul wrote a letter to the army chief, General Chu Teh, and took it to Peking’s Aliens Affairs Bureau – which refused to accept it, insisting that the bureau’s authority was limited to the city and surrounding area. Later Buxton had a long conversation with an official named Chen, who ‘accep
ted my arguments’ but declined to take the letter and refused to reveal where Chu Teh could be contacted. Chen suggested that the consul should take his letter to the post office. It is not clear where the letter would have been directed. Buxton pointed out that the post office was hardly the right channel for a communication of such importance. However, he ended up posting it, sending a second letter on the night of 21 April.2

  Stevenson, meanwhile, was in touch with the Foreign Office, pointing out he would not make a direct approach to the Communists unless instructed. He argued: ‘My own view is that by doing so we might risk prematurely compromising our position with regard to recognition of the Chinese Communist administration without real hope of obtaining action desired. As a result of Communist authorities having obstinately ignored our previous communications, I fear it is now in any case too late even to ensure immunity of Amethyst from continued deliberate attacks, which must be known by now to the Communists’ supreme command who could have taken active steps to prevent them.’3

  Stevenson was not the only one unwilling to give recognition. The Communists told Buxton they did not recognise him as a British official, and the ambassador would soon discover that he too had no diplomatic status in their eyes. When Stevenson realised that Buxton’s letters were unlikely to achieve a breakthrough, he agreed to send Edward Youde, a third secretary at the embassy, across the Yangtze with the aim of trying to talk to the local Communist command – responsible for the batteries that had opened fire on Amethyst and Consort – which was believed to be based at Yangchow, opposite Chingkiang. The 24-year-old Youde, who was fluent in Mandarin, had volunteered for what was obviously a dangerous task.

  To his surprise Youde quickly obtained a pass to go through Nationalist lines from the army headquarters in Nanking. On the evening of 21 April, he set off, carrying his pass, 50 silver dollars, a haversack of clothes and a letter to the commander of the Nationalists’ Thirty-Eighth Army. This force was holding the Pukow bridgehead across the Yangtze. Youde persuaded the navy to take him in a launch to the north bank, and from there he went to the headquarters of the Thirty-Eighth Army, which had not been told he was coming. He presented his letter to the general in command, who said straight away that it would be impossible to cross the lines because the armies were too close and locked in combat.

  Youde, a future Governor of Hong Kong, noted: ‘Not without difficulty I persuaded him to agree to review his decision the next morning at dawn in the light of events during the night, and he then turned me over to his adjutant who treated me extremely kindly, fed me and gave me a bed. The adjutant and a friend of his, the ordnance officer, spent a pleasant evening raising my morale with warnings that the Communists would completely refuse to listen to reason even if I got into contact with them, but that it was improbable that I would get that far on account of the plain-clothes bandits who preyed on all who were rash enough to be caught between the lines.’

  By early morning the general had changed his mind, saying there was one possible crossing point. A soldier was told to take Youde to the army’s outpost in the area. The diplomat was given two packets of biscuits. He and his guide reached the outpost, where they found six ‘very sleepy’ soldiers, after walking along the river bank for about an hour and a half in drizzle. The guide left, giving instructions on how to reach the next town and warning that Youde should not argue with the bandits he was sure to encounter.

  Youde carried on for a couple of hours, enjoying a ‘rather pleasant’ walk. He met groups of peasants ‘whose eyes popped out of their heads’ on seeing a foreigner. None of them had seen any Communists and did not appear to be worried about bandits. ‘So much for Nationalist intelligence,’ Youde observed. On the outskirts of the town a shot was fired at him and he dived for cover. He took refuge in a brick kiln, along with some peasants, when ‘a spirited exchange developed between a Nationalist gunner on an island in the river and my assailant’. With the kiln becoming an increasing target, Youde and his new companions dashed to the safety of a graveyard. There he learned that a magistrate he expected to contact had fled, and the Communists were occupying a large chemical factory nearby. But no one seemed keen to take him to the factory. The diplomat was clearly a target for both sides.

  He was sitting in the graveyard thinking of his next move when a Communist patrol came over a nearby hill. With his hands up, he walked towards them. The soldiers dispersed into surrounding paddy fields ‘and had me covered from all sides’. Fortunately there was no firing. Youde explained his mission to the patrol commander, who told two soldiers to take him to a nearby headquarters. On arrival, he was given a new escort, a ‘jolly’ man, and learned that he would be taken to another headquarters. Despite being loaded down with a rifle, a pistol, five hand grenades, a pack and a supply of rice, the jolly man, an irregular who was wearing civilian clothes and a hat that looked like a bowler without the rim, marched off at a blistering pace. After an hour they came across a small group of Nationalist officials who were being taken to the same headquarters. The pace slowed, and they were all treated well, allowed to rest and drink hot water and to buy food from peasants.

  At about four in the afternoon they arrived at the headquarters, which was in a village, where Nationalist officials, police and prisoners of war had been assembled. Youde was taken to a farmhouse to see the commanding officer and once again explained his mission and stressed the urgency, only to be told that the matter would have to be dealt with by a higher authority. That evening he would be taken to a different headquarters, which was in radio contact with ‘the superior organ’. Before leaving he was given rice and vegetables and required to debate various subjects with the commander and his subordinates – the attitude of the British government to the Atlantic Pact, the Chinese civil war, the United Nations, and Britain’s food rationing programme and social security system. ‘The argument was amicable but not conclusive,’ Youde remarked. He left with a group of prisoners, who appeared to be destined for a training camp to correct their ‘misleading education’, and was grateful for frequent stops because he had been walking since dawn, with only one long break. Their destination was reached soon after nine but it was discovered that the unit he needed to contact had moved, and they walked on to another village, where accommodation was found in a farmhouse. Youde slept ‘like a log’ on the straw-covered floor.

  The group were on the road again at five the next morning, 23 April, and reached their destination four hours later. To his ‘intense disappointment’ Youde discovered that the forward headquarters had moved off during the night and he faced another long walk. The soldiers with him had no wireless equipment and relied on runners for information. It was not long before a serious problem emerged – a Nationalist minefield. While waiting for engineers to clear the American-made anti-personnel mines, a ‘field propaganda group’ of men and girls turned up carrying books and musical instruments, and Youde found himself in a captive audience listening to ‘liberation’ songs. After half an hour the commander of the soldiers decided it would take too long to clear all the mines and ordered that they walk in single file, with him in the lead. They arrived at a town called Puchen, which was also heavily mined. It then dawned on Youde that he had walked in almost a complete circle. Puchen was four miles west of Pukow, the Nationalist bridgehead, his starting point on the north bank. However, the direct route would have been extremely dangerous because of Communist artillery barrages.4

  Youde was allowed to see the commander of the forward headquarters about an hour after arriving in Puchen. He was received politely, but there was more frustration: ‘My request for an unmolested passage for the Amethyst was refused after much discussion and reference to a higher organ.’ During the talks it was suggested that the ship could be given safe passage if she first helped with the Communist crossing of the Yangtze. When Youde said that was impossible, the commander replied in that case ‘you will have to find the solution yourself’. It was argued that Amethyst had not received clearance from the
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to enter the war zone. There was no reply when Youde pointed out that the Communist authorities in Peking were refusing to accept communications from the British consul. The commander stressed that the ‘ship’s fire’ had caused heavy casualties. Youde countered with the right of self-defence. But most of the casualties probably resulted from the guns of Consort and London. These ships, like Amethyst, were attacked first.5

  The commander refused to make any approach to his superiors in Peking, and stressed that he had dealt with Youde as an ordinary foreign national, not recognising him as a British diplomat. He declined to provide a pass to allow Youde to cross Communist lines and return to Nanking. ‘He assured me, however, that I would be protected and assisted wherever I went by the People’s Liberation Army since it was their policy to protect foreigners and his assurance proved to be well-founded.’

  Youde now faced the problem of how to get back across the Yangtze, having learned that the Nationalist bridgehead at Pukow had been wiped out on the morning of his departure. One possibility, which did not appeal, was walking to Hankow, hundreds of miles up river. An alternative was to try to cross the river at Nuhu, 50 miles away, in the hope that he could get a train to Nanking. He reflected: ‘The only thing that seemed certain was that the Nationalists had sunk everything that floated on the north bank and that unless a miracle happened there would be no possibility of crossing at Pukow for some time.’