It was a bright, sunny day in the East China Sea. There was a tang in the air and a stiff breeze; the water was choppy but not rough. A good day it was for yachting, a reporter in Taipei sardonically observed. There were plenty of surface craft in the sea off tiny (little more than a half square mile) Yikiang Island, but they were not yachts. The Chinese Communists were successfully invading Yikiang their first combat seizure of a Nationalist-held island since 1950.
The 700 "irregulars"guerrillas, fishermen and observersin the Yikiang garrison had no air or sea protection. They had...