Convoy for Quemoy

One murky night last week a Chinese Nationalist convoy steamed west from the Formosa Strait's Pescadores Islands toward the China coast. It consisted of a creaking, World War II-type LSM, two small gunboats and a minesweeper. For two nights in a row it had turned back in the face of Communist gunfire before accomplishing its mission: delivering supplies and 400 Chinese Nationalist reinforcements to the island of Quemoy. This time some 30 newsmen and photographers were also aboard, among them TIME Correspondent Jim Bell. Bell's report:

By midnight we were approaching the island and could clearly see the air bursts of artillery as Tatan, Little Quemoy and the south shore of Quemoy itself took their nightly lacing. Six miles south of Quemoy's shallow coast we dropped anchor, and three scuttle-nosed landing barges approached LSM 249. The sea was wicked, and the three landing craft had a hard time coming alongside. The transfer started about 12:30, but by 12:45 only half of us newsmen and 20 troops had managed to crawl down the nets and jump into the pitching boats. At that moment shooting broke out all around us.

Our coxswain made a quick personal decision to execute the classic naval maneuver known as getting the hell out of here. Our escorts and minesweeper broke off and began firing back at the Communist PTs and gunboats that had ambushed us. Blood-red tracers zipped, skipped and finally floated out like spent skyrocket bursts as they sought targets. Brilliant, diamond-bright air bursts from Communist shore batteries to the east rained shrapnel down. Over the roar of small boats' motors rose the baritone whump of Nationalist three-inchers and the chatter of both sides' machine guns.

Barbed-Wire Landing. In our landing craft we felt big as a whale. Several times tracers sought us out but did not find us. The battlewise Chinese coxswain kept his head, stayed out of the line of fire, refused to allow his gunners to fire their two machine guns and give our position away. We were not touched, nor were the two other landing craft. For once the battle broke, it became a fire fight between the attacking Communists and our escorts. The Nationalists later claimed all but one of the attacking PTs and gunboats sunk, but I saw no explosions. One of the Nationalist gunboats got hit and was towed back to the Pescadores lying low in the water. The LSM also turned back, its troops and supplies still on board.

Our landing craft finally ducked clear of the firing and headed into Quemoy's south coast. At 1:30 the bowlip slammed down, revealing a ghostly white beach. Communist shells were pounding over. We ran for it, and came smack up against barbed wire. Ducking into a bunker, we watched the second landing barge glide by like a sea monster. The third landing craft, carrying a group of U.S. military assistance advisory personnel, tore its bottom on an underwater barricade, and the U.S. officers, their gear lost, slogged ashore through neck-deep water.

"Where Is There to Go?" The Quemoy we saw in the three days and nights before the Chinese Nationalist plane flew us out did not look as though it had been plastered with 140.000 rounds of artillery. Only four shells have hit Quemoy City, where by day life goes on as usual in narrow streets lined by two-story houses, each with a shop below and family quarters above. You can buy pretty much what you want in Quemoy, although quality is very shabby. Children scurry past, and dogs, pigs, ducks, chickens.

Outside Quemoy City, smaller villages with their gracefully upswept, red tile pagoda roofs show more signs of war. In those parts of the island lying nearest to the Communist guns every other house has been hit. Yet surprisingly few have been demolished. Officially, 6,000 houses have been damaged, 600 totally destroyed. Civilian dead since Aug. 23 now approaches 40. The 53rd General Hospital, glaringly identified by two 40-ft. red crosses painted on the roof, has been repeatedly hit. In the villages of Kuning-tou (Horsehead Point), opposite the big Communist port of Amoy, virtually every house has been hit. But the peasants remain. "Where is there to go?" shrugged an old man standing by a blown-out wall. "The shells go everywhere. We leave when we think there is going to be a shelling, but we have to live."

Dignity & Dugouts. Commander of all forces on Quemoy and outlying Nationalist-held islands is General Hu Lien, whose men threw back 15,000 Communist invaders trying to land on Horsehead Point in October 1949. The general is a man of dignity. Asked if he had any response to Red surrender demands like U.S. General Anthony McAuliffe's World War II "Nuts" to encircling Nazis, he said stiffly: "You forget General McAuliffe was only a brigadier general, and I wear three stars."

His dignity, however, has not kept him from doing a beautiful job of preparing Quemoy against assault. Everywhere on the hilly island guns are dug in with concrete and mountains of sandbags. The beaches are all mined, studded with nasty underwater barricades, and zeroed in for defensive fire. Back of every beach is a red-earth cave filled with well-equipped, well-trained troops and back of them amid the black boulders that cover Quemoy's hills are more positions, more troops. Whoever comes at these islands is going to get hurt. But. like any island. Quemoy is vulnerable to blockade. The 44.000 islanders do not even grow enough on their sandy hillsides to feed themselves; food for the 100,000 Nationalist troops on Quemoy must, like their ammunition, be brought in from the outside.

Whispering Nights. At night Quemoy and the surrounding islets are blacked out. It is then that life tenses on Quemoy. Normally. Chinese talk at the top of their voices. But on Quemoy Chinese speak in whispers after dark, though the Communists are miles away. Far out toward the China coast lies the outpost of Tatan. with its Nationalist garrison barely three miles from Amoy. The nights I watched, every 15 minutes or so a searchlight on Tatan snapped on and scanned the water for any sign of an assault force setting out from Amoy. which lies so close that Tatan's garrison can often smell its cooking odors. When the searchlight switched off, the Red guns would start up again.

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