China Maintains Respect, and a Museum, for a U.S. General

[bemildred]

Old Vinegar Joe Stillwell.

CHONGQING, China — Early in his tenure as commander of the United States’ World War II mission in China, Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell expressed a grudging fondness for the damp, ramshackle capital deep in the country’s southwest that would be his base for the next several years.

“Chungking isn’t half bad when the sun shines,” the plain-spoken general wrote in his diary, using the spelling of the period. But his tolerance for the underserviced, refugee-laden town perched high above the Yangtze River did not last.

A year later, he composed a five-stanza poem that went, in part:

“The garbage is rich, as it rots in the ditch, / And the honey-carts scatter pollution.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/world/asia/chongqing-joseph-stilwell-museum.html?_r=0

[unhappycamper]

1. Did you ever read "The Stillwell Papers"?

Vinegar Joe Stillwell was an interesting man.

[bemildred]

2. I read Tuchmann on Stillwell, long ago, while adolescent.

Didn't take up History again until I retired.

The Magistrate took the time to talk about him some here too. I like the curmudgeonly respect that he showed as opposed to the usual smarmy racism.

[Baobab]

3. Thank you, I will definitely check him out. I also have a lot of respect for Peng Dehui

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Dehuai

He was the commander of the Chinese forces during the Korean War era and he was the only one of the original Chinese leadership who had actually grown up poor.

He stood up to Mao during the Great Leap Forward disaster, which killed at least 30 million Chinese (probably many many more, it was literally one of the worst disasters in human history and utterly avaoidable) and paid for his candor with his life.