Chapter 142 training course

SACO's first training site was set up in a mountain temple in Xiongcun, She County, a few kilometers south of Anhui's commercial center Huizhou.Like the training site of the military command, it is called "Xiongcun Class" by the members of the training site because of its place name.It started with just six U.S. officers and the men of the U.S. Marine Corps under Major Bud Masters.Their equipment was weapons and ammunition towed from Chongqing on 6 motorized trucks.But there are said to be 6,000 soldiers from the "Loyalty and National Salvation Army" not far away, and Dai Li's 2,000 "well-trained" troops nearby, all seem to be ready to provide trainees to the training class, although they are reported Both lack ammunition and military equipment.

SACO instructors spent six months preparing a 320-person course on guerrilla warfare.Disappointingly, however, the first batch of recruits failed.As Melles recalled: However, the recruits recruited were very good at smuggling and espionage. They often went to Shanghai to obtain gasoline, car tires, newspapers, and even flour sacks for the Americans. Aunt Ma," a flour-like substance used to make explosives, turned out to be a course with mixed records, partly because the Japanese removed all 300 captured U.S. Marines from the area, resulting in the rescue of the U.S. The failure of the POW.

The second class, the Hongjiang class in Hunan, was deliberately chosen to be located in the lake area, not far from the mine manufacturing station of the Chinese Navy Training School.The Americans plan to use Chinese river sailors and small boat drivers, including pirates, as a naval force."We never gave up on the idea, but we never developed it," Melles later wrote. Part of the problem was that "General Dai knew nothing about ships, and he had no control over the Chinese Navy's men— Not even the parts in the interior, like around the second shift." The third squad, Linru Ban, also known as Niudong Ban, was located in Henan, where the guerrillas could harass the enemy's communication lines.The mountain temple where they are stationed is called Fengxue Temple, which is known to all worshipers in western Henan.Due to terrible famine and war, Fengxue Temple was once in decline.Some monks moved to the other side of the temple, and a few young ones who couldn't bear the hunger simply joined the training class of SACO.

Due to insufficient equipment in the battle, Linruban's guerrillas failed to contain the enemy. On the contrary, when the Japanese attacked, they fled westward.But the training class itself not only showed the distance between the Americans and the Chinese, but also showed the extra emphasis on correct political training by the military commanders. The titles of the American instructors in the Linru training column are not high, between sergeant and captain.None of them understand Chinese, and they completely depend on 8 translators from the military translation class. However, these overseas Chinese don't even understand the most basic military vocabulary.

As a result, only a few American officers were aware of the cadets' mandatory political training, understood that they were surrounded by military agents, or were aware of orders prohibiting Chinese officers from associating with them.The Chinese all live in the temple, while the Americans live in a Western-style house with 12 rooms built on a flat land to the east of the temple.Their living conditions are very good, and there are chefs who cook Western food for them, but they rarely communicate with the Chinese who live in the same camp.Zhong Xiangbai never spoke to an American during his four months as a political teacher in Linruban.

In addition to not being able to make friends with foreigners, Dai Li's subordinates are also prohibited from participating in any political activities, and are strictly prohibited from "creating new ideas".Although this is a KMT organization, the Linru training site does not allow any KMT groups, including the "Three Youth League".Moreover, each trainee was required to write a resume of his political background and discuss it in detail with the political instructor, who also observed the political leanings of the trainees at the dinner table or at similar leisure time.The basic principles of the military command, such as Chiang Kai-shek is the great leader of the country, the military command is the "clean" and "most revolutionary" part of the country, secret agents are the "eyes and ears" of the chairman, and an ideal military command agent must be an unsung hero , but also have a "revolutionary outlook on life" and so on. Anyone who questions it will be regarded as a deviant and labeled as "unconventional".

The sixth class is Hua'an class, located in Zhangzhou, Fujian.Built in August 1944.Prior to this, Li Chongshi, chief of staff of the Sino-American Cooperation Institute, accompanied Meles to the coastal areas of Fujian, and Secretary Chen Dayuan, the station chief of the Southern Fujian Station of the Military Command, received them.All three officials agreed that it was important to establish training classes in this pirate- and bandit-infested area.After Melles returned to Chongqing, he persuaded Dai Li to go to Jianyang, which used to be the publishing center, in July to meet with Chen Dayuan and Wang Tiaoxun, the head of Minbei station.Dai Li not only agreed to establish this new training class, but also decided to set up a "Southeast Office of SACO" to supervise the four important intelligence stations in Shanghai, Dinghai, Fuzhou, and Zhangzhou.

The Hua'an class was rife from the start with factional fighting between the columns controlled by Chen Dayuan and Lei Zhenzhong (both deputy directors of the training class), which was complicated by the personal relationship of one of the column leaders with Dai Li .Despite the efforts of American instructors, the training program remains remarkably lax.Although Lei Zhenzhong was trained in the army, Chen Dayuan was an agricultural expert and knew nothing about the military.The Chinese officials of the military command are also very dissatisfied with the different salaries of Chinese and American officials at the same level: the former is 200 yuan per month, and the latter is 10 times higher than the former.What's more, the food level of 4 Americans is equivalent to that of 180 Chinese in the entire column.The financial control of the entire training class by the Americans obviously does not help to appease the righteous indignation of the Chinese over this huge difference in food.

According to a Chinese officer in the training class who later joined the Communist Party, in a short campaign in mid-July 1945, the Hua'an squad was frustrated when it attacked the Japanese army.But after the Japanese surrendered in August, the Hua'an squad took Xiamen.At the end of the year, the training class was reorganized into the "Temporary Column of the Free Mobile Army", and later it followed Chen Dayuan to Taiwan. In addition, there are 9 battlefield training sites: Xiushui (Jiangxi), Jianou (Fujian), Yuhu (Zhejiang), Dongfeng (Fujian), Xifeng (Guizhou), Linquan (Anhui), Jiaoling (Guangdong), port (Zhejiang), Meixian (Guangdong).But the most important training point is the ninth class of the Institute for Sino-American Cooperation, which is located on Gele Mountain, the headquarters on the bank of the Jialing River, about 20 kilometers away from Chongqing.