(See Cover)
Nanning fell. Far south in China, Chinese armies snapped the railroad lifeline (now at last referred to as a line of retreat) for Japan's armies in Malaya, Thailand and Indo-China. Farther north, other Chinese armies hacked doggedly at the same strategic artery whose seizure by Japan a year ago brought China to the brink. On the central coast a third Chinese force, having dislodged the Japanese from the port of Foochow, fanned north and west, preparing a possible landing zone for U.S. forces.
It remained to be seen how much of their gains the Chinese could hold. But to China, after eight years of unrelieved defeat and retreat, the battle news last week came like the crash of a victory gong.
Behind the resurgent Chinese armies (U.S.-trained, U.S.-supplied, U.S.-supported) was the cool, clear organizing and strategic brain of a tall, tactful American, the commander of all the U.S. forces in China and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's chief of staff—Lieut. General Albert Coady Wedemeyer. He was the youngest (48) of U.S. theater commanders and one of the least known to the U.S. public. But all of his past now seems like a long (sometimes circuitous) march toward his predestined task in China.
Marching through Georgia. Wedemeyer was born to soldiering and cradled to the strains of military music. His grandfather, a music master, emigrated from the politically seething Germany of 1840, organized a band for the Union Army and marched it through Georgia, presumably with General William Tecumseh Sherman. His father, Captain Albert Anthony Wedemeyer, served as a U.S. Army bandmaster in the Spanish-American War.
Young Wedemeyer's real love was the Army. He was in grade school when he first announced that he was going to West Point. With the help of the popular Nebraska politician (who was to become the late great liberal Senator), George W. Norris (see BOOKS), and some stiff boning for entrance exams, Wedemeyer got there in 1917. Fifteen months later, the first of the 20th Century's world wars caused his bobtail graduation as a second lieutenant.
As a young officer, he was not distinguished. In 1923 he was sent to the Philippines—an assignment memorable chiefly because on the way he met and (in Corregidor) married Dade Embick. (Her father, now Lieut. General Stanley D. Embick, is chairman of the Inter-American Defense Board.)
Marching through Berlin. Five years later Lieut. Wedemeyer was sent out to the 15th Infantry at Tientsin, China. The vast, stirring nation, slowly shaping from revolutionary chaos into a modern nation under the hand of young Chiang Kaishek, fascinated the U.S. officer. He studied Chinese. But Wedemeyer turned down a chance for a career in the China service. In 1934 he was back in the U.S.
Somewhere along the routine line, something had happened to Wedemeyer. He began to study economics, foreign affairs, history and the new concept of air power. A mind that can be as cold and rigorous as a steel trap had found something to bite on. In 1936, Wedemeyer (now a captain after 15 years as lieutenant) graduated from the General Staff School at Leavenworth with such high honors that he was chosen to attend the German General Staff School, Berlin's famed Kriegsakademie.