MAN WHO BEAT DOCTORS

Evening Star, Issue 22458, 1 October 1936, Page 13

MAN WHO BEAT DOCTORS

DISCHARGED TO DIE Steel fingers gripped mine, hard blue eyes twinkled, thin lips twitched in something resembling a grin. “ I’m a dying man,” said Gunner Leary, “ but I’ve got a charmed life.” He draped his loose figure in a chair beside mine, writes a special correspondent of ‘ The People,’ helped himself to a_ cigarette, blew smoke rings at the ceiling. “ Yeah,” he added, “ I’m dying. They invalided me out of the [ Mountles,’ gave me nine months to live. . . . “ 1 saluted my captain, shook hands with the doctor, and said: ‘ All right, gentlemen, watch me live! ’ And I’ve lived every exciting moment of my life since then, and that was 17 years ago. “ I joined forces with Tracy Richardson, soldier of fortune, and Sam Drebben, the ‘ Fighting Jew.’ “ Together we high-tailed it for Mexico, revolutions, and fun. We joined up with General Dias’s mob, fought Obregon’s army and Pancho Villa, the bandit. “ I was a machine gunner. I had to remain behind and keep the enemy at bay when our troops were forced to retreat.

“ I was doing my job just outside Vera Cruz when they captured mo and clapped me in gaol. “ I knew what my fate would be—the law of the fugitive. They would open the doors of the prison one day, tell me to walk, and then I would get it in the back.

“ It all happened just as I knew it would. They opened the doors of the gaol, told me to walk. I walked and walked, then broke into a shambling run.

“ But still they did not shoot. I turned my head fearfully, wondering when it would come.

“ The greasers were leaning on their rifles, grinning like mad. I did not wait to inquire the reason for the joke; ran on and on till I met a bunch of Dias’s soldiers.

“ They rolled with laughter when they saw me running. I gripped one little greaser by the scruff of the neck and demanded to know what was so funny. “ ‘ Why, why, sonor,’ he spluttered, ‘ you run away from your friends.’ Then for the first time I heard what had happened. That section of Obregon’s army had gone over to Dias. Vera Cruz was his.

“ It was too much of a joke to stick around after that. I just waited long enough to get some money and dusted the highways and byways of Mexico off my shoes. “Back to New Orleans for a bit; then I shipped to the Orient. I got to Shanghai in 1927, when trouble first broke out there, joined up with Wei Pei Fui, the Christian general, for 700 dollars a month, all found. “ Our attack had come so swiftly, so surprisingly, that the Chinese troops were taken by surprise. We were almost out of range before they had gathered their scattered wits, discovered what had happened , and started firing. “ But we made the safety of our own lines without mishap, having, as Sutton expressed it, ‘ beaten the Szechuen rats at their own game.’ ” Gunner Leary shook his head sadly. “ Poor Sutton,” he sympathised, “ if ever a man earned a fortune and deserved to keep it, it was he. But he lost every penny he had in the Wall street crash of ’29.

“ Back in Shanghai I joined up with Bud Taylor, the famous American airman and adventurer, and together we made for Newchwang in the Gulf of PoichjTi, where wo knew there was trouble stirring. “'On arrival Bud and 1 were grabbed by the Jaipaneso authorities, and sent bade to Shanghai by a Japanese steamer.

“ The indignity of this made Bud as mad as a bear with a sore tooth, and 1 felt pretty burned up myself We decided we were going back to that country, anyway. “ We boarded the British steamer Ling Chow, disembarked at Tsingtao, called at a bar for a drink, and were accosted by two Russians. “ They warned us that there was trouble ‘stirring. ‘ Hub.’ said Bud, 1 that’s how wo make our living.’ “ They talked to each other in Russian for a bit, emphasising their words

with much head-wagging and shaking. Then they went over to join a Chinese coolie.

“ The coolie beckoned to us to join them, bought bottles of beer, and spoke to us in his own language, one of the Russians interpreting. “ ‘ He wants to know,’ said the Russian, ‘ if you will work for him.’ “ ‘ No,’ said Bud indignantly, ‘you don’t catch us working tor coolies.’ “ ‘ The man you refer to as a coolie,’ said the Russian, and there was a dangerous edge to his voice, ‘is Chiang Kai-shek. He is in hiding here.’ “ That was a name to conjure with, and Bud and I apologised. Big as his name was in China then, it is bigger now, for Chiang Kai-shek is none other than the present Dictator of the Chinese Central Government. “ He told us then that he was trying to get sufficient arms and men to march on Nanking. So Bud told him we’d play ball as long as the money was right. “ The Marshall took us to Foochow and there gave us our jobs—whipping his recruits into the rudiments of an army.

“We made a good job of it. John Chinaman maikes an excellent soldier. Chiang thanked us for what we had done, and sent us to join the Jewish general, Charlie Levy, a great fighter, and the only outsider to-day the Cantonese trust and will do business with.

“ From, poor material he whipped up one of the finest armies in the world. “ We marched with the 19th Route Army to Shanghai, and that’s when the real trouble started between the Japs and the Chinese, and Johnny Chinaman proved himself one of the finest soldiers in the world.

“ Contrary to public opinion, 1 found the Jap far from being the calm and collected soldier he is cracked up to be. I found 1 could hold whole batches of them easily from my sector with one machine gun. “No quarter was given or shown by either side. The Japanese refused to take prisoners, and their treatment of white soldiers who fell into their power was cruel. “ Whenever they found a white soldier of Chiang’s army they would bayonet him in the stomach—so that he would die slowly and in extreme agony—a grim warning to other whites to keep out of tho war zone.”-