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The Letters and Diaries of Colonel John Hart Caughey, 1944-1945 - With Wedemeyer in World War II China (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,646
Discovery Miles 26 460
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The Letters and Diaries of Colonel John Hart Caughey, 1944-1945 - With Wedemeyer in World War II China (Hardcover)
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Total price: R2,666
Discovery Miles: 26 660
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Colonel John Hart Caughey, a US Army war plans officer stationed in
the Chinese Nationalist capital of Chungking, was an eyewitness to
the battle for China in the final months of the war (1944-45) and
beyond, when he rose to become head of the Theater Planning
Section. In frequent letters to his wife as well as in several
diaries, he chronicled the US military's role in wartime China,
especially his life as an American planner (when he was subject to
military censorship). Previous accounts of the China Theater have
largely neglected the role of the War Department planners stationed
in Chungking, many of whom were Caughey's colleagues and friends.
He also penned colorful descriptions of life in wartime China,
which vividly remind the reader how far China has come in a mere
seventy-odd years. In addition, his letters and diaries deepen our
understanding of several of the American leaders in this Asian war,
including China Theater commander Albert C. Wedemeyer; Fourteenth
Air Force chief Claire L. Chennault (former commander of the
"Flying Tigers"); US ambassador to wartime China, Patrick J.
Hurley; famed Time-Life reporter Theodore White; OSS director
William ("Wild Bill") Donovan; Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander
of the Southeast Asia Command; and Jonathan Wainwright, who was in
command when the American forces in the Philippines surrendered in
1942, and who stayed for a few days at Caughey's Chungking
residence on his way home after several years as a Japanese POW in
Manchuria. In his writings, Caughey also revealed a more appealing
side of Wedemeyer, whose extreme political opinions in the postwar
era probably cost him the post of US Army chief of staff. By making
Caughey a member of his planning staff, Wedemeyer made possible an
extraordinary experience for the young colonel during the war.
Caughey also rubbed shoulders with Nationalist leader Chiang
Kai-shek and traveled to the battlefields in Southeast China with
the commander in chief of the Nationalist Army, He Yingqin, along
with a number of other Chinese and American soldiers. Following the
Japanese surrender, Caughey chronicled the resumption of the power
struggle between the Chinese Nationalists and the Chinese
Communists, largely postponed during the conflict. Shortly after
the war, he had a brief encounter with the number two Communist
leader, Zhou Enlai, whom he was to get to know much better during
the Marshall Mission to China.
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