Circle Three Times and Land in Chihkiang

Chihkiang, Peishiyi, Kweilin - names now remembered by few. Dialing back to World War II, Chihkiang, Peishiyi and Kweilin air bases, posted in south China's far reaches of nowhere, were stationed to support US Army Air Force missions in the Asia-Pacific Theater. "Circle Three Times and Land in Chihkiang - War-Torn China 1940s" is set in the heart of this far-flung region. The narrative traces the journey of one soldier tagged, shipped, and consigned to duty with the 397th Air Service Squadron in General Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force and the regrouped Flying Tigers. Hurled over "The Hump" in a C-43 transport from northern India to Kunming, China, this untested conscript became part and parcel of the massive logistics needed to sustain crucial US and Chinese flight operations. Together with more than 90 period photographs, "Circle Three Times and Land in Chihkiang" documents this wartime effort and the teeming Chinese masses trapped in it, wracked by war-inflicted poverty, ruthless Japanese invaders, and the utter degradation of Shanghai's International Settlement. The narrative ends with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, ramrod straight, greeting thousands of Chinese partisans marshaled in the grounds of Shanghai's immense racetrack, celebrating the Nationalist victory over Japan. At that same moment, Chiang's bitter opponent Mao Tse-Tung was busy, seizing the north. The tectonic plates of history were shifting beneath everyone's feet.