FBI and "Five Eyes" Warn Of Chinese Espionage Via LinkedIn And Job Platforms

 The FBI, in collaboration with the UK’s MI5, Australia’s ASIO, Canada’s CSIS, and New Zealand’s NZSIS (the Five Eyes intelligence alliance), has issued a joint advisory titled “Safeguarding Our Secrets” warning that China’s military intelligence services are using professional networking and job platforms to recruit Western officials and others with access to sensitive information. 

How the Threat Works

Chinese intelligence officers pose as online HR recruiters or consultants representing fake but legitimate-looking “cover companies” located outside China. They post job ads for roles such as foreign policy and defense analysts, think tank positions, or related fields. 

The recruitment process typically involves:

1.     Initial contact via LinkedIn, Indeed, Upwork, or similar platforms.

2.     Virtual interviews where recruiters probe for access to government contacts, military roles, or sensitive topics like the Indo-Pacific region, international trade, or Chinese foreign relations. 

3.     Initial reports on non-sensitive topics, paid for in cash or via third-party payment services.

4.     Escalation to more sensitive information via encrypted messaging apps, with higher payments for increasingly classified or privileged data. 

Who Is at Risk

The bulletin targets:

·         Security clearance holders in defense, foreign affairs, and intelligence.

·         Military personnel, especially in the Indo-Pacific.

·         Academics, journalists, freelance writers, think tank employees, and others with indirect access to defense, security, policy, or economic information. 

Why It Matters

The goal is to obtain privileged military, political, and economic intelligence that could give China a strategic and tactical advantage over the Five Eyes. Even without classified data, sharing certain information can still be prosecuted under U.S. espionage laws and pose risks to national security. 

How to Protect Yourself

·         Verify identities before sharing any information.

·         Avoid discussing classified or sensitive topics in public or unsecured channels.

·         Use encrypted communication for any sensitive exchanges.

·         Report suspicious activity to your employer’s security office or the FBI via tips.fbi.gov or 1‑800‑CALL‑FBI. 

This is not the first time the U.S. has warned about such tactics; similar LinkedIn recruitment schemes were linked to espionage cases in the past.                                                                                

Voyage To Victory: Novelist And War Correspondent Ernest Hemingway On The D-Day Invasion

In honor of the anniversary of D-Day below is novelist and Collier's famed war correspondent Ernest Hemingway's magazine piece on the D-Day invasion:

No one remembers the date of the Battle of Shiloh. But the day we took Fox Green beach was the sixth of June, and the wind was blowing hard out of the northwest. As we moved in toward land in the gray early light, the 36-foot coffin-shaped steel boats took solid green sheet of water that fell on the helmeted heads of the troops packed shoulder to shoulder in the stiff, awkward, uncomfortable, lonely companionship of men going to a battle. There were cases of TNT, with rubber tube life preservers wrapped around them to float them in the surf, stacked forward in the steel well of the LCV(P), and there were piles of bazookas and boxes of bazooka rockets encased in waterproof coverings that reminded you of the transparent raincoats college girls wear.

All this equipment, too, had the rubber tube life preservers strapped and tied on, and the men wore these same gray rubber tubes strapped under their armpits.

As the boat rose to a sea, the green water turned white and came slamming in over the men, the guns and the cases of explosives. Ahead you could see the coast of France. The gray booms and derrick-forested bulks of the attack transports were behind now, and, over all the sea, boats were crawling forward toward France.

As the LCV(P) rose to the crest of a wave, you saw the line of low, silhouetted cruisers and the two big battlewagons lying broad-side to the shore. You saw the heat-bright flashes of their guns and the brown smoke that pushed out against the wind and then blew away.

"What's your course, coxswain?" Lieutenant (jg) Robert Anderson of Roanoke, Virginia, shouted from the stern.

"Two-twenty, sir." the coxswain, Frank Currier of Saugus, Massachusetts, answered. He was a thin-faced, freckled boy with his eyes fixed on the compass.

"Then steer two-twenty, damn it!" Anderson said. "Don't steer all over the whole damn ocean!"

"I'm steering two-twenty, sir," the coxswain said patiently.

"Well, steer it, then," Andy said. He was nervous, but the boat crew, who were making their first landing under fire, knew this officer had taken LCV(P)s into the African landing, Sicily and Salerno, and they had confidence in him.

"Don't steer into that LCT," Andy shouted, as we roared by the ugly steel hull of a tank landing craft, her vehicles sea-lashed, her troops huddling out of the spray.

"I'm steering two-twenty," the coxswain said.

"That doesn't mean you have to run into everything on the ocean," Andy said. He was a handsome, hollow-cheeked boy with a lot of style and a sort of easy petulance. "Mr. Hemingway, will you please see if you can see what that flag is over there, with your glasses?"

I got my old miniature Zeiss glasses out of an inside pocket, where they were wrapped in a woolen sock with some tissue to clean them, and focused them on the flag. I made the flag out just before a wave drenched the glasses.

"It's green."

"Then we are in the mine-swept channel," Andy said. "That's all right. Coxswain, what's the matter with you? Can't you steer two-twenty?"

I was trying to dry my glasses, but it was hopeless the way the spray was coming in, so I wrapped them up for a try later on and watched the battleship Texas shelling the shore. She was just off on our right now and firing over us as we moved in toward the French coast, which was showing clearer all the time on what was, or was not, a course of 220 degrees, depending on whether you believed Andy or Currier the coxswain.

The low cliffs were broken by valleys. There was a town with a church spire in one of them. There was a wood that came down to the sea. There was a house on the right of one of the beaches. On all the headlands, the gorse was burning, but the northwest wind held the smoke close to the ground.

Those of our troops who were not wax-gray with seasickness, fighting it off, trying to hold onto themselves before they had to grab for the steel side of the boat, were watching the Texas with looks of surprise and happiness. Under the steel helmets they looked like pikemen of the Middle Ages to whose aid in battle had suddenly come some strange and unbelievable monster.

There would be a flash like a blast furnace from the 14-inch guns of the Texas, that would lick far out from the ship. Then the yellow-brown smoke would cloud out and, with the smoke still rolling, the concussion and the report would hit us, jarring the men's helmets. It struck your near ear like a punch with a heavy, dry glove.

Then up on the green rise of a hill that now showed clearly as we moved in would spout two tall black fountains of earth and smoke.

That is the only thing I remember hearing a G.I. say all that morning. They spoke to one another sometimes, but you could not hear them with the roar the 225-horsepower high-speed gray Diesel made. Mostly, though, they stood silent without speaking.

I never saw anyone smile after we left the line of firing ships. They had seen the mysterious monster that was helping them, but now he was gone and they were alone again. I found if I kept my mouth open from the time I saw the guns flash until after the concussion, it took the shock away.

I was glad when we were inside and out of the line of fire of the Texas and the Arkansas. Other ships were firing over us all day and you were never away from the sudden, slapping thud of naval gunfire. But the big guns of the Texas and Arkansas that sounded as though they were throwing whole railway trains across the sky were far away as we moved on in. They were no part of our world as we moved steadily over the gray, whitecapped sea toward where, ahead of us, death was being issued in small, intimate, accurately administered packages. They were like the thunder of a storm that is passing in another county whose rain will never reach you. But they were knocking out the shore batteries, so that later the destroyers could move in almost to the shore when they had to come in to save the landing.

Invasion Coast Dead Ahead

Now ahead of us we could see the coast in complete detail. Andy opened the silhouette map with all the beaches and their distinguishing features reproduced on it, and I got my glasses out and commenced drying and wiping them under the shelter of the skirts of my burberry. As far as you could see, there were landing craft moving in over the gray sea. The sun was under at this time, and smoke was blowing all along the coast.

The map that Andy spread on his knees was in ten folded sheets, held together with staples, and marked Appendix One to Annex A. Five different sheets were stapled together and, as I watched Andy open his map, which spread, open, twice as long as a man could reach with outstretched arms, the wind caught it, and the section of the map showing Dog White, Fox Red, Fox Green, Dog Green, Easy Red and part of Sector Charlie snapped twice gaily in the wind and blew overboard.

I had studied this map and memorized most of it, but it is one thing to have it in your memory and another thing to see it actually on paper and be able to check and be sure.

"Have you got a small chart, Andy?" I shouted. "One of those one-sheet ones with just Fox Green and Easy Red?"

"Never had one," said Andy. All this time we were approaching the coast of France, which looked increasingly hostile.

"That the only chart?" I said, close to his ear.

"Only one," said Andy, "and it disintegrated on me. A wave hit it, and it disintegrated. What beach do you think we are opposite?"

"There's the church tower that looks like Colleville," I said. "That ought to be on Fox Green. Then there is a house like the one marked on Fox Green and the timber that runs down to the water in a straight line, like on Easy Red."

"That's right," said Andy. "But I think we're too far to the left."

"Those are the features, all right," I said. "I've got them in my head but there shouldn't be any cliffs. The cliffs start to the left of Fox Green where Fox Red beach starts. If that's true, then Fox Green has to be on our right."

"There's a control boat here somewhere," Andy said. "We'll find out what beach we're opposite."

"She can't be Fox Green if there are cliffs," I said.

"That's right," Andy said. "We'll find out from a control boat. Steer for that PC, coxswain. No, not there! Don't you see him? Get ahead of him. You'll never catch him that way."

We never did catch him, either. We slammed into the seas instead of topping them, and the boat pulled away from us. The LCV(P) was bow-heavy with the load of TNT and the weight of the three-eighth-inch steel armor, and where she should have lifted easily over the seas she banged into them and the water came in solidly.

"The hell with him!" Andy said. "We'll ask this LCI."

Landing Craft Infantry are the only amphibious operations craft that look as though they were made to go to sea. They very nearly have the lines of a ship, while the LCV(P)s look like iron bathtubs, and the LCTs like floating freight gondolas. Everywhere you could see, the ocean was covered with these craft but very few of them were headed toward shore. They would start toward the beach, then sheer off and circle back. On the beach itself, in from where we were, there were lines of what looked like tanks, but my glasses were still too wet to function.

"Where's Fox Green beach?" Andy cupped his hands and shouted up at the LCI that was surging past us, loaded with troops.

"Can't hear," someone shouted. We had no megaphone.

"What beach are we opposite?" Andy yelled.

The officer on the LCI shook his head. The other officers did not even look toward us. They were looking over their shoulders at the beach.

"Get her close alongside, coxswain," Andy said. "Come on, get in there close."

We roared up alongside the LCI, then cut down the motor as she slipped past us.

"Where's Fox Green beach?" Andy yelled, as the wind blew the words away.

"Straight in to your right," an officer shouted.

"Thanks." Andy looked astern at the other two boats and told Ed Banker, the signalman, "Get them to close up. Get them up."

Ed Banker turned around and jerked his forearm, with index finger raised, up and down. "They're closing up, sir," he said.

Looking back you could see the other heavily loaded boats climbing the waves that were green now the sun was out, and pounding down into the troughs.

"You wet all through, sir?" Ed asked me.

"All the way."

"Me, too," Ed said. "Only thing wasn't wet was my belly button. Now it's wet, too."

"This has got to be Fox Green," I said to Andy. "I recognize where the cliff stops. That's all Fox Green to the right. There is the Colleville church. There's the house on the beach. There's the Ruquet Valley on Easy Red to the right. This is Fox Green absolutely."

"We'll check when we get in closer," Andy said. "You really think it's Fox Green?"

"It has to be."

Ahead of us, the various landing craft were all acting in the same confusing manner—heading in, coming out and circling.

The Tanks Were Stymied

"There's something wrong as hell," I said to Andy. "See the tanks? They're all along the edge of the beach. They haven't gone in at all."

Just then one of the tanks flared up and started to burn with thick black smoke and yellow flame. Farther down the beach, another tank started burning. Along the line of the beach, they were crouched like big yellow toads along the high water line. As I stood up, watching, two more started to barn. The first ones were pouring out gray smoke now, and the wind was blowing it flat along the beach. As I stood up, trying to see if there was anyone in beyond the high water line of tanks, one of the burning tanks blew up with a flash in the streaming gray smoke.

"There's a boat we can check with," Andy said. "Coxswain, steer for that LC over there. Yes, that one. Put her hard over. Come on. Get over there!"

This was a black boat, fast-looking, mounting two machine guns and wallowing slowly out away from the beach, her engine almost idling.

"Can you tell us what beach this is?" Andy shouted.

"Dog White," came the answer.

"Are you sure?"

"Dog White beach," they called from the black boat.

"You checked it?" Andy called.

"It's Dog White beach," they called back from the boat, and their screw churned the water white as they slipped into speed and pulled away from us.

I was discouraged now, because ahead of us, inshore, was every landmark I had memorized on Fox Green and Easy Red beaches. The line of the cliffs that marked the left end of Fox Green beach showed clearly. Every house was where it should be. The steeple of the Colleville church showed exactly as it had in the silhouette. I had studied the charts, the silhouettes, the data on the obstacles in the water and the defenses all one morning, and I remember having asked our captain, Commander W. I. Leahy of the attack transport Dorothea M. Dix, if our attack was to be a diversion in force.

"No," he had said. "Absolutely not. What makes you ask that question?"

"Because these beaches are so highly defensible."

"The Army is going to clear the obstacles and the mines out in the first thirty minutes," Captain Leahy had told me. "They're going to cut lanes in through them for the landing craft."

I wish I could write the full story of what it means to take a transport across through a mine-swept channel; the mathematical precision of maneuver; the infinite detail and chronometrical accuracy and split-second timing of everything from the time the anchor comes up until the boats are lowered and away into the roaring, sea-churning assembly circle from which they break off into the attack wave.

The story of all the teamwork behind that has to be written, but to get all that in would take a book, and this is simply the account of how it was in a LCV(P) on the day we stormed Fox Green beach.

Right at this moment, no one seemed to know where Fox Green beach was. I was sure we were opposite it, but the patrol boat had said this was Dog White beach which should be 4,295 yards to our right, if we were where I knew we were.

"It can't be Dog White, Andy," I said. "Those are the cliffs where Fox Red starts on our left."

"The man says it's Dog White," Andy said.

In the solid-packed troops in the boat, a man with a vertical white bar painted on his helmet was looking at us and shaking his head. He had high cheekbones and a rather flat, puzzled face.

"The lieutenant says he knows it, and we're on Fox Green," Ed Banker shouted back at us. He spoke again to the lieutenant but we could not hear what they said.

Andy shouted at the lieutenant, and he nodded his helmeted head up and down.

"He says it's Fox Green," Andy said.

"Ask him where he wants to go in," I said.

Leading in the Seventh Wave

Just then another small black patrol boat with several officers in it came toward us from the beach, and an officer stood up in it and megaphoned, "Are there any boats here for the seventh wave on Fox Green beach?"

There was one boat for that wave with us, and the officer shouted to them to follow their boat.

"Is this Fox Green?" Andy called to them.

"Yes. Do you see that ruined house? Fox Green beach runs for eleven hundred and thirty-five yards to the right of that ruined house."

"Can you get into the beach?"

"I can't tell you that. You will have to ask a beach control boat."

"Can't we just run in?"

"I have no authority on that. You must ask the beach control boat."

"Where is it?"

"Way out there somewhere."

"We can go in where an LCV(P) has been in or an LCI," I said. "It's bound to be clear where they run in, and we can go in under the lee of one."

"We'll look for the control boat," Andy said, and we went banging out to sea through the swarming traffic of landing craft and lighters.

"I can't find her," Andy said. "She isn't here. She ought to be in closer. We have to get the hell in. We're late now. Let's go in."

"Ask him where he is supposed to land," I said.

Andy went down and talked to the lieutenant. I could see the lieutenant's lips moving as he spoke, but could hear nothing above the engine noise.

"He wants to run straight in for that ruined house," Andy said, when he came back.

We headed in for the beach. As we came in, running fast, the black patrol boat swung over toward us again.

"Did you find the control boat?" they megaphoned.

"No!"

"What are you going to do?"

"We're going in," Andy yelled.

"Well, good luck to you fellows," the megaphone said. It came over, slow and solemn like an elegy. "Good luck to all of you fellows."

That included Thomas E. Nash, engineer, from Seattle with a good grin and two teeth out of it. It included Edward F. Banker, signalman, of Brooklyn, and Lacey T. Shiflet of Orange, Virginia, who would have been the gunner if we had had room for guns. It included Frank Currier, the coxswain, of Saugus, Massachusetts, and it included Andy and me. When we heard the lugubrious tone of that parting benediction we all knew how bad the beach really was.

As we came roaring in on the beach, I sat high on the stern to see what we were up against. I had the glasses dry now and I took a good look at the shore. The shore was coming toward us awfully fast, and in the glasses it was coming even faster.

On the beach on the left where there was no sheltering overhang of shingled bank, the first, second, third, fourth and fifth waves lay where they had fallen, looking like so many heavily laden bundles on the flat pebbly stretch between the sea and the first cover. To the right, there was an open stretch where the beach exit led up a wooded valley from the sea. It was here that the Germans hoped to get something very good, and later we saw them get it.

To the right of this, two tanks were burning on the crest of the beach, the smoke now gray after the first violent black and yellow billows. Coming in I had spotted two machine gun nests. One was firing intermittently from the ruins of the smashed house on the right of the small valley. The other was two hundred yards to the right and possibly four hundred yards in front of the beach.

The officer commanding the troops we were carrying had asked us to head directly for the beach opposite the ruined house.

"Right in there," he said. "That's where."

"Andy," I said, "that whole sector is enfiladed by machine gun fire. I just saw them open twice on that stranded boat."

Target for Machine Guns

An LCV(P) was slanted drunkenly in the stakes like a lost gray steel bathtub. They were firing at the water line, and the fire was kicking up sharp spurts of water.

"That's where he says he wants to go," Andy said. "So that's where we'll take him."

"It isn't any good," I said. "I've seen both those guns open up."

"That's where he wants to go," Andy said. "Put her ahead straight in." He turned astern and signaled to the other boats, jerking his arm, with its upraised finger, up and down.

"Come on, you guys," he said, inaudible in the roar of the motor that sounded like a plane taking off. "Close up! Close up! What's the matter with you? Close up, can't you? Take her straight in, coxswain!"

At this point, we entered the beaten zone from the two machine gun points, and I ducked my head under the sharp cracking that was going overhead. Then I dropped into the well in the stern sheets where the gunner would have been if we had any guns. The machine gun fire was throwing water all around the boat, and an antitank shell tossed up a jet of water over us.

The lieutenant was talking, but I couldn't hear what he said. Andy could hear him. He had his head down close to his lips.

"Get her the hell around and out of here, coxswain!" Andy called. "Get her out of here!"

As we swung round on our stem in a pivot and pulled out, the machine gun fire stopped. But individual sniping shots kept cracking over or spitting into the water around us. I'd got my head up again with some difficulty and was watching the shore.

"It wasn't cleared, either," Andy said. "You could see the mines on all those stakes."

"Let's coast along and find a good place to put them ashore," I said. "If we stay outside of the machine gun fire, I don't think they'll shoot at us with anything big because we're just as LCV(P), and they've got better targets than us."

"We'll look for a place," Andy said.

"What's he want now?" I said to Andy.

The lieutenant's lips were moving again. They moved very slowly and as though they had no connection with him or with his face.

Andy got down to listen to him. He came back into the stern. "He wants to go out to an LCI we passed that has his commanding officer on it."

"We can get him ashore farther up toward Easy Red," I said.

"He wants to see his commanding officer," Andy said. "Those people in that black boat were from his outfit."

Advice from a Wounded Ship

Out a way, rolling in the sea, was a Landing Craft Infantry, and as we came alongside of her I saw a ragged shellhole through the steel plates forward of her pilothouse where an 88-mm. German shell had punched through. Blood was dripping from the shiny edges of the hole into the sea with each roll of the LCI. Her rails and hull had been befouled by seasick men, and her dead were laid forward of her pilothouse. Our lieutenant had some conversation with another officer while we rose and fell in the surge alongside the black iron hull, and then we pulled away.

Andy went forward and talked to him, then came aft again, and we sat up on the stern and watched two destroyers coming along toward us from the eastern beaches, their guns pounding away at targets on the headlands and sloping fields behind the beaches.

"He says they don't want him to go in yet; to wait," Andy said. "Let's get out of the way of this destroyer."

"How long is he going to wait?"

"He says they have no business in there now. People that should have been ahead of them haven't gone in yet. They told him to wait."

"Let's get in where we can keep track of it," I said. "Take the glasses and look at that beach, but don't tell them forward what you see."

Andy looked. He handed the glasses back to me and shook his head.

"Let's cruise along it to the right and see how it is up at that end," I said. "I'm pretty sure we can get in there when he wants to get in. You're sure they told him he shouldn't go in?"

"That's what he says."

"Talk to him again and get it straight."

Andy came back. "He says they shouldn't go in now. They're supposed to clear the mines away, so the tanks can go, and he says nothing is in there to go yet. He says they told him it is all fouled up and to stay out yet a while."

The destroyer was firing point blank at the concrete pillbox that had fired at us on the first trip into the beach, and as the guns fired you heard the bursts and saw the earth jump almost at the same time as the empty brass cases clanged back onto the steel deck. The five-inch guns of the destroyer were smashing at the ruined house at the edge of the little valley where the other machine gun had fired from.

"Let's move in now that the can has gone by and see if we can't find a good place," Andy said.

"That can punched out what was holding them up there, and you can see some infantry working up that draw now," I said to Andy. "Here, take the glasses."

Slowly, laboriously, as though they were Atlas carrying the world on their shoulders, men were working up the valley on our right. They were not firing. They were just moving slowly up the valley like a tired pack train at the end of the day, going the other way from home.

"The infantry has pushed up to the top of the ridge at the end of that valley," I shouted to the lieutenant.

"They don't want us yet,"' he said. "They told me clear they didn't want us in yet."

"Let me take the glasses for Hemingway," Andy said. Then he handed them back. "In there, there's somebody signaling with a yellow flag, and there's a boat in there in trouble, it looks like. Coxswain, take her straight in."

We moved in toward the beach at full speed, and Ed Banker looked around and said, "Mr. Anderson, the other boats are coming, too."

"Get them back!" Andy said. "Get them back!"

Banker turned around and waved the boats away. He had difficulty making them understand, but finally the wide waves they were throwing subsided and they dropped astern.

"Did you get them back?" Andy asked, without looking away from the beach where we could see a half-sunken LCV(P) foundered in the mined stakes.

"Yes, sir," Ed Banker said.

An LCI was headed straight toward us, pulling away from the beach after having circled to go in. As it passed, a man shouted with a megaphone, "There are wounded on that boat and she is sinking."

"Can you get in to her?"

The only words we heard clearly from the megaphone as the wind snatched the voice away were "machine gun nest."

"Did they say there was or there wasn't a machine gun nest?" Andy said.

"I couldn't hear."

"Run alongside of her again, coxswain," he said. "Run close alongside."

"Did you say there was a machine gun nest?" he shouted.

An officer leaned over with the megaphone, "A machine gun nest has been firing on them. They are sinking."

"Take her straight in, coxswain," Andy said.

It was difficult to make our way through the stakes that had been sunk as obstructions, because there were contact mines fastened them, that looked like large double pie plates fastened face to face. They looked as though they had been spiked to the pilings and then assembled. They were the ugly, neutral gray-yellow color that almost everything is in war.

We did not know what other stakes with mines were under us, but the ones that we could see we fended off by hand and worked our way to the sinking boat.

It was not easy to bring on board the man who had been shot through the lower abdomen, because there was no room to let the ramp down the way we were jammed in the stakes with the cross sea.

I do not know why the Germans did not fire on us unless the destroyer had knocked the machine gun pillbox out. Or maybe they were waiting for us to blow up with the mines. Certainly the mines had been a great amount of trouble to lay and the Germans might well have wanted to see them work. We were in the range of the antitank gun that had fired on us before, and all the time we were maneuvering and working in the stakes I was waiting for it to fire.

As we lowered the ramp the first time, while we were crowded in against the other LCV(P), but before she sank, I saw three tanks coming along the beach, barely moving, they were advancing so slowly. The Germans let them cross the open space where the valley opened onto the beach, and it was absolutely flat with a perfect field of fire. Then I saw a little fountain of water jut up, just over and beyond the lead tank. Then smoke broke out of the leading tank on the side away from us, and I saw two men dive out of the turret and land on their hands and knees on the stones of the beach. They were close enough so that I could see their faces, but no more men came out as the tank started to blaze up and burn fiercely.

By then, we had the wounded man and the survivors on board, the ramp back up, and were feeling our way out through the stakes. As we cleared the last of the stakes, and Currier opened up the engine wide as we pulled out to sea, another tank was beginning to burn.

We took the wounded boy out to the destroyer. They hoisted him aboard it in one of those metal baskets and took on the survivors. Meantime, the destroyers had run in almost to the beach and were blowing every pillbox out of the ground with their five-inch guns. I saw a piece of German about three feet long with an arm on it sail high up into the air in the fountaining of one shellburst. It reminded me of a scene in Petroushka.

Landing on the Beach

The infantry had now worked up the valley on our left and had gone on over that ridge. There was no reason for anyone to stay out now. We ran in to a good spot we had picked on the beach and put our troops and their TNT and their bazookas and their lieutenant ashore, and that was that.

The Germans were still shooting with their antitank guns, shifting them around in the valley, holding their fire until they had a target they wanted. Their mortars were still laying a plunging fire along the beaches. They had left people behind to snipe at the beaches, and when we left, finally, all these people who were firing were evidently going to stay until dark at least.

The heavily loaded ducks that had formerly sunk in the waves on their way in were now making the beach steadily. The famous thirty-minute clearing of the channels through the mined obstacles was still a myth, and now, with the high tide, it was a tough trip in with the stakes submerged.

We had six craft missing, finally, out of the twenty-four LVC(P)s that went in from the Dix, but many of the crews could have been picked up and might be on other vessels. It had been a frontal assault in broad daylight, against a mined beach defended by all the obstacles military ingenuity could devise. The beach had been defended as stubbornly and as intelligently as any troops could defend it. But every boat from the Dix had landed her troops and cargo. No boat was lost through bad seamanship. All that were lost were lost by enemy action. And we had taken the beach.

There is much that I have not written. You could write for a week and not give everyone credit for what he did on a front of 1,135 yards. Real war is never like paper war, nor do accounts of it read much the way it looks. But if you want to know how it was in an LCV(P) on D-Day when we took Fox Green beach and Easy Red beach on the sixth of June, 1944, then this is as near as I can come to it.                      

Note: You can also read my Washington Times review of Hemingway at War via the link below:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Washington Times Review Of ‘Hemingway at War: Ernest Hemingway’s Adventures as a World War II Correspondent’ 

 

My Philly Daily On Crime Column On The importance Of Police Training: My Q&A With Retired Philadelphia Police Lieutenant Martin O’Donnell

Philly Daily ran my On Crime column today on the importance of police training and my Q&A with retired Lieutenant Martin O’Donnell.

You can read the column via the link below or the following text:

Paul Davis: The importance of police training: My Q&A with retired Philadelphia Police Lieutenant Martin O’Donnell – Philly Daily  

As I’ve noted here before, I attended the pilot class of the Philadelphia Civilian Police Academy as a reporter back in 1994.  

The idea for the Civilian Police academy was a simple one. Run 40 citizens through a modified police academy course that all recruit police officers attend in order for the citizens to better understand law enforcement and to forge better community relations. 

The pilot class included clergy and community leaders, town watch members, attorneys, political aides – and one newspaper reporter.    

One of the instructors I met at the Police Academy back then was Lieutenant Martin O’Donnell. He was articulate, knowledgeable and thoroughly professional. 

I reached out to O’Donnell, now retired, and asked him about his career and police training.  

O’Donnell: I loved my assignment at the Police Academy for a number of different reasons. Primarily, I was afforded the opportunity to mold people of various backgrounds and life experiences to be police officers. I got to see men and women graduate from the Academy and for the most part embrace the life of a police officer and the Brotherhood that those before them fostered.

The Training Bureau gave me an opportunity to learn more about the needs of officers both in the Academy and in the street. The needs are completely different. It also gave me the opportunity to establish lifelong friendships with those that I trained across approximately 10 different departments.

What was the most difficult part of your job at the Academy?

O’Donnell: The hardest part of the Academy, in my opinion, was two- fold. Watching these, for the most part, young men and women hit the streets, knowing how it was going to change them and their families’ lives. The second part was attending officers’ funerals. I always took it personally when an officer like Danny Boyle, John Pawlowski, Gary Skerski, Patrick Mc Donald Laureth Vaird, Bobby Hayes, Charlie Knox, and other officers that I taught were murdered doing their job. I always lamented that I missed something when I was trying them or something else, I could have told them or warned them about. With all of the officers who were shot, stabbed, or seriously injured during the performance of their duty, whose lives would be forever changed, was it something that I neglected in my training?

What was the high point of your career?

O’Donnell: The high point of my career was becoming a Philadelphia Police Officer. Everything else was a bonus. 

How does the training of police officers today differ from your day?

O’Donnell: It appears that the training today focuses a lot on social awareness. I’m old school, admittedly, and I believe that when you first encounter a police officer, their mere presence in their uniform and deportment should command respect. I feel that allowing sporadic compliance to an officer’s appearance is not helping officers today when they encounter the public.

Officers today have a much harder job with everyone video recording their actions, and the constant threat of being disciplined or even arrested for doing their job. It is easy to criticize or critique an officer’s actions or response sitting in an office looking at their response when they had, literally seconds, to react in a hostile, volatile situation. The only ones that are held accountable in these situations are the officers. People sitting in these offices aren’t experiencing the fear and adrenaline of the moment and therefore it’s impossible to judge the officers’ actions unless you look at the totality of the circumstances. 

Why is police training so important?

O’Donnell: Training is important to the public so they can experience a minutia of what officers’ life is like. There is no way for the public to experience what it’s like to be in a heightened state of alert, or more precisely, anxiety/stress, for 8+ hours, 24 hours a day. I know officers are only at work 8-12 hours, but they are constantly in a state of awareness and readiness.

What do you remember about teaching at the Civilian Police Academy?

O’Donnell: I had many different professions come through, from lawyers to doctors, to reporters, nurses, to homemakers. I would comfortably say having 300+ people come through is their impression of what an officer does changed dramatically, and they were more empathetic to an officer’s daily encounters.

I would also say, from an outside perspective, that today’s police officers are being taught to be a kinder, gentler police officer. The theory of this is great, but in a world where it is much more violent than it was 20 years ago, it allows for more injuries to police and a reduction in the pool of applicants. Police today are faced with a number of challenges that we never faced 20 years ago. They face a judicial body that supports the criminal element and doesn’t support the officer on the street. They face a legal system that promotes their personal agenda and has discard justice being “blind.” Justice now wears a robe of anti-law enforcement and embraces personal agendas.

Have cell phone recordings of police officers changed policing?

O’Donnell: Initially, I thought the cell phone would adversely impact police work, but I think it has actually helped support the police as it relates to the actions that they took were reasonable and prudent. The downside of the cell phone phenomenon is that it has emboldened the criminal’s interaction with police. The “bad guy” now provokes, assaults and intimidates officers, using their cell phones as a shield against an officer’s response. I believe in the “Pendulum Theory” and I believe that the public will tire of this total disrespect for police officers and the lack of the prosecutorial responsibility of the office that charges criminals. 

When I attended the Civilian Police Academy, we were told that car stops were the most dangerous police action. Has that changed?

O’Donnell: When I taught car stops at the Academy, along with Sgt Charles Ebner and the DT Staff, I based our scenarios on actual statistics where officers were shot or shot and killed. I kept a 3” binder of FBI reports and newspaper articles all relating to these incidents. Vehicle investigations will always be inherently dangerous, because of the mobility of the vehicle and the fact that the occupant/s can commit an armed felony or shooting in one part of the city and be in another part of the city in minutes, before flash information has been put out. This continues to make vehicle stops critical. Additionally, because of the current public opinion of officers, they tend to be more lenient in what they allow the occupants to do.

“I think that “domestics” or “domestic disputes” are slowly eclipsing vehicle stops. Officers approaching homes or businesses or other encounters seem to be gaining more deadly results.”

Martin O’Donnell did an excellent job of preparing scores of police officers, as well as this reporter, for life on the mean streets of Philadelphia.  

Paul Davis’s On Crime column appears here each week. He is also a contributor to Broad + Liberty and Counterterrorism magazine. He can be reached via pauldavisoncrime.com.              

A Look Back At the Vietnam War In Fact And Fiction

I was a bit angry when my granddaughter told me what her teacher had taught her and the other students about the Vietnam War.

He spoke about it being an unpopular war with draftees having to fight it, and that Vietnam was an unwinnable war of attrition. He stated that Vietnam was a civil war that we had no business being involved in – and that Aerica was defeated by the North Vietnam.

He was wrong on all accounts.

More than half of the American public supported the war, while perhaps a third did not. But even those who supported the war, like me, did not like how the war was being pursued. Most supporters of the war wanted the U.S. to go all out and defeat the Communists in North Vietnam.

Yes, draftees were sent to Vietnam, but there plenty of young men who volunteered to go there as well.

The Vietnam War was a proxy war in the Cold War. The Communist nations of the Soviet Union and Red China supported and supplied the weapons and advisors to the North Vietnamese and the U.S. supported and supplied the South Vietnamese. We sent advisors as well as combat troops and provided Air Force and Navy air support.

In 12 years of combat, the U.S. won every battle over company strength.

President Nixon pulled all combat troops out of South Vietnam by 1972, so when the North Vietnamese rolled into South Vietnam in 1975 there were no American combat troops there. The North Vietnamese defeated the South Vietnamese and not the U.S.

President Nixon negotiated a peace agreement with the North Vietnamese, and it would have held up had he not resigned in disgrace due to the Watergate cover-up.

The North Vietnamese saw an opportunity to invade the South as the American Congress was mostly made up of anti-war liberal Democrats. They passed the War Powers Act and denied President Ford’s request for military weapons to be supplied to the South Vietnamese under seize.    

I believe had not Nixon resigned Vietnam would be like Korea today with a divided North and South.

Vietnam was a complicated war, unlike WWII. I believe teachers should offer both sides of the conflict and allow the students to make up their own minds rather than drilling them with a one-sided false history lesson.

I suggest people read Philip Jennings' The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War. 

Amazon.com : Philip Jennings The Politally incorrct guide to the Vietnam War

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine piece on the Vietnam War via the link below:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Piece On The Vietnam War And The Lessons Learned For Iraq, Afghanistan And The War On Terrorism

My older brother Eddie was drafted in 1968 and served in the U.S. Army at Chu Lai in South Vietnam. My role in the Vietnam War was a modest one. I was a teenage sailor who served aboard an aircraft carrier during the war.      

One of the chapters of my so far unpublished novel Olongapo featured the divided opinions of two lowly aircraft carrier seaman – lower than “whale shit,” as we used to say – which echoed the debate going on across the country in 1971.

You can read the story via the link below:

Paul Davis On Crime: A Look Back At Life Aboard An Aircraft Carrier During The Vietnam War: 'The Compartment Cleaner'

My First South Philly Review Crime Beat Column Appears Online

My first weekly South Philly Review Crime Beat column appears online ahead of the print newspaper, which comes out this Wednesday.

You can read the column via the link below or the following text:

An interview with Inspector Jamill Taylor, commander of South Police Division

An interview with Inspector Jamill Taylor,

commander of South Police Division 

By Paul Davis

Crime is one of the primary concerns of most South Philly residents. I’ve been covering crime in South Philadelphia and beyond for many years and here in my Crime Beat column each week I’ll cover crime news, crime issues and crime prevention. 

I ventured to the 24th and Wolf Street Police Station and sat down with Inspector Jamill Taylor, the commanding officer of the South Police Division.    

The inspector said the South Police Division encompasses the 1st District at 24th and Wolf, the 3rd District at 11th and Wharton, and the 17th District at 20th and Federal. 

“We cover an area from the Delaware River to the Schuylkill River, and from Lombard Street down to the Naval Yard. So, I’m responsible for everything that goes on in this general area,” Taylor said.

I asked the inspector, a 32-year veteran police officer and South Philly native, having grown up in the 17th District, what were his major concerns about crime in South Philadelphia.

“We are experiencing theft overall. Each district has issues with package theft. Amazon packages are delivered to your house, and you get an alert saying it has arrived, but by the time you get home it’s gone.

“Stolen cars are also an issue. Right now the hottest cars that are being stolen are Hondas and Acuras. We have the occasional tire and rim thefts down under I-95 in the 3d District, which goes from Front Street to Washington Avenue and all the way down to Oregon Avenue, where neighborhood people park underneath I-95 and the various parking lots. With the tire and rim jobs, you come out, and your car might be up on crates.”

Taylor also said that retail theft from CVS, Walmart, Target and other stores is a concern.

“All of these stores experience a high volume of retail thefts, but we have a Retail Theft Task Force that is run out of the 1st District. I have officers that are assigned to investigate retail theft.”

What are your officers doing to combat these crimes, I asked?

“We have a variety of things. We have a Mapping and Analysis System that we utilize to track our hotspots,” Taylor replied. “It gives us a spike detector, so we go on the system daily and we see where we may have had a car break-in within a two- or three-block radius. We then set up a grid where the officers go out on foot or a bike or a patrol car. 

“On the graveyard shift, the overnight shift, between the hours of midnight to 8 a.m., what we’re doing division-wide is we’re having the officers go out, park and turn on their overhead lights and be a physical presence. You sit there for 15 minutes and then it is off to the next location to do the same thing,“ Taylor explained.

“We also utilize our VCRT teams, our Violent Crime Response teams. This is a group of eight officers and a supervisor that I’ll send out on a daily basis at night to those specific locations in uniform. They go out and gather intel on whatever they can find from the pole cameras and some of the citizens’ cameras that are tied into our Safe Cam Program, where we have access to the camera on their house and/or their Ring camera. 

Taylor said that they make arrests, but there is a certain prosecution threshold that has to be met to keep people in jail. So many are out of jail in only 24 hours. He said that it is beyond the control of the police, although he said they keep a check on those who they know are prolific offenders. 

I asked what is the police relationship with South Philadelphians?

“South Philadelphia loves the cops,” he replied. “But in the Grays Ferry area we are tasked with being a guardian to prevent shootings, so we have a lot of presence there. But overall, we have no problems with our communities or neighbors, and even in the Grays Ferry area we have contacts in the community.”

I asked if the police meet with community groups and residents.

“Every district has a community group. The lieutenants in each district have police service area meetings. The lieutenants are responsible to go out to their particular area and meet with the community groups, and each district captain has town halls and Police District Advisory Council meetings with the block captains and the clergy.”

South Philly residents can reach out to their police district to report issues or seek help. For emergencies, call 911.

Paul Davis’s Crime Beat column appears here each week. He can be reached via pauldavisoncrime.com.                                                                             

My Crime Fiction: 'Cat Street'

The story below is a chapter from my crime novel Olongapo, which I hope to soon publish. 

An earlier version of the story appeared in the Orchard Press Online Mystery Magazine. 

Cat Street

By Paul Davis

They say that anything stolen during the night in Hong Kong will be on sale on Cat Street the next morning. 

I heard that saying many years ago when I visited Hong Kong as a young sailor, and it recently came back to me while speaking to Salvatore Lorino at the Bomb-Bomb bar & grill in South Philly. 

After much discussion about Olongapo, Lorino and I spoke of our time in Hong Kong.

Lorino looked about the bar and then leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. Lorino asked me if I remembered Nichols and Johnson from the USS Kitty Hawk and I replied that I remembered Johnson very well. An amiable Northern Californian who grew up on a ranch, he was the only person I ever met, over the age of ten, who wanted to be a cowboy. He was murdered in a robbery in Hong Kong. Nichols, I recalled, was a sad sack who deserted the ship in Hong Kong with his new bar girl bride. 

Lorino did not contradict my recollection, but his grin widened above the rim of the glass as he drank his wine. 

“The statue of limitations is up, so I can finally talk about what went down,” Lorino told me. 

“Statute of limitations, not statue, like the Statue of Liberty,” I said, correcting him. 

Lorino shrugged. “What’s the difference?” 

“A second letter t.” 

Lorino ignored me and asked if I wanted to hear his story about a decades-old case of kidnapping, espionage and murder.

 

The USS Kitty Hawk sailed into Hong Kong Harbor in February of 1971. The aircraft carrier had just completed 70 days on "Yankee Station" in the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea, performing combat operations off the coast of Vietnam. During that time the ship’s 80 aircraft dropped a record tonnage of ordnance on North Vietnamese and Viet Cong supply routes, which were collectively called the "Ho Chi Minh Trail." 

During that line period on Yankee Station a Communist Chinese minesweeper came dangerously close to the carrier. The Chinese warship was adorned with oversized white propaganda banners in Chinese, so most of the American sailors couldn’t read them, but our captain had an intelligence officer translate the banners.  

The captain announced over the ship’s public address system, known as the 1MC, that the banners read, “Down with U.S. Imperialism,” “Down with Nixon” and “Down with U.S. Navy war criminals.” 

The captain informed us that he had sent the Chinese a message in response to the banners. “Since you are so down with everything, up yours!” 

All of Kitty Hawk’s nearly 5,000 sailors laughed loudly. I’ve always wondered what the Communist Chinese sailors thought of that. 

The carrier's crew worked long, hard hours during flight operations and the radiomen stood eight hours on watch and eight hours off watch continuously. We lost track of all time until the upcoming visit to Hong Kong was announced.

When the carrier dropped anchor in Hong Kong Harbor, a loud cheer rose from the crew and carried across the water. Heads must have turned towards the roar for at least ten nautical miles. 

Sharing the harbor with the Kitty Hawk that day were freighters, ocean liners, British destroyers, Soviet cruisers, commercial speed hydrofoils, sampans and junks. The contrast between the splendid modern ships and the ancient and decrepit fishing boats was striking. 

Visible from the carrier’s flight deck was Victoria City, the capital and business center of the then-British Crown Colony. Dark clouds circled Hong Kong’s famous peak mountain. Looking down from the flight deck we saw the approaching Chinese motor launches, which were called Walla Wallas. The water taxis lined up along the starboard side of the ship and waited to take the eager American sailors ashore. 

Those of us who were fortunate enough to have liberty that first day in port were ordered to assemble in the berthing compartment prior to our departure. A third of the division would remain aboard the ship in the event of an emergency and the watch bill would change two days later. 

Chief Radioman Lionel Shaw stood across from our three-tier racks. As security officer for the division, he was tasked with presenting a briefing to the first batch of sailors preparing to leave the ship for the exotic streets of Hong Kong. 

The chief truly loved the Navy. He left a poor family and a bad neighborhood in Chicago when he enlisted in the Navy and there was no going back for him. When he entered the Navy, black sailors like him were restricted to orderly duties and he was enormously proud of the trust the Navy now bestowed upon him. He held, as did all of the men assembled before him, a top-secret security clearance. 

Shaw was only 5’6" but he appeared to be much larger due to his muscular torso, his ever-ready fighter’s stance and a great, booming voice. A model sailor, his khaki uniform and black boots were immaculate. 

Most of us were in civilian clothes, but he advised those of us who wearing uniforms to tear off the radioman patch adorned on the left arm of our uniforms. The distinctive patch showed lightning bolts, which was the occupational batch that identified us as radiomen who handled highly classified war information. Wearing the patch was bad OPSEC, or operations security. 

"Listen up," Shaw bellowed. "Hong Kong is the Goddamned spy capitol of the world, so don’t be yakkin’ about your job or what the ship does, or what we’re goin’ to be doin’ next month. 

"Remember that we’re only a few miles from Red China, the ally of our enemy, and ain’t nothing better them Communists motherfuckers would like, then to haul your drunken, silly asses over the border." 

He paused for breath, and perhaps for dramatic effect, and then added, "And if one of them Chinese bar hogs ask you what you do on the great, big ship, tell ‘em you’re a Goddamn cook!" 

The people of Hong Kong were given the impression that American sailors lived really well. On a ship with nearly 5,000 men, 2,000 of them were cooks.

 

Not known to Shaw or any of us at the time, another Navy radioman, Warrant Officer John Walker, was feeding the Soviets a steady diet of vital information on Navy communications. Communist Chinese intelligence was also in the market for a source of information. They wanted a U.S. Navy radioman to call their own. 

Radioman 3^rd Class John Nichols was one of the men assembled before Shaw. He had been in the Navy for more than three years and this was his second combat deployment aboard the carrier. Returning to the combat zone was common for carrier sailors during the 12 years of the Vietnam War. Many of them made two or three 11-month-long Western Pacific (WESTPAC) combat cruises during their four-year enlistments. 

There was an unwritten but steadfast rule that there were only two ways to get off a carrier during the Vietnam War. One way was to be discharged from the Navy, and the other way was to die. Unlike other men who resented not being reassigned to shore duty or a non-combat ship after their initial combat cruise, Nichols was thrilled. It meant that he would be seeing Hong Kong again. 

Originally from a small town in Ohio, Nichols joined the Navy after graduating from high school. An only child, Nichol’s father had deserted the family when he was an infant. He was raised by an alcoholic and inattentive mother. 

He had been a below average student; a poor athlete and he had few friends. Looking forward to the great Navy adventures that lay ahead, he was soon disappointed to discover that he was as unsuccessful with girls in San Diego as he had been in Ohio. 

Nichols was of average height, but his poor posture made him appear to be much shorter. With stooped shoulders, a slight paunch, balding brown hair and nondescript facial features, Nichols was certainly not a matinee idol. No clotheshorse either; Nichol’s uniform and civilian attire were always unkempt and unflattering. While looks aren’t everything, Nichols also lacked what one would call a personality. 

Nichols’ disappointing young life changed one night in 1969 while he was on his initial cruise. On leave for two days in Hong Kong, he met a girl named Nancy Chen in the Wanchai District. The notorious red-light district was made world famous by Richard Mason's fictional character Suzy Wong. 

Like Suzy Wong, Nancy Chen was alluring in her black silk Cheongsam, a long slit rising invitingly up her left leg. Her long straight black hair, sleepy black eyes and doll-like figure were intoxicating to Nichols. She was the first, and only, woman that he had sex with. 

In her limited English, she told him that her family had escaped from China and came to Hong Kong when she was a young girl. As the family had no money, she was forced to work the bars. Touched by her story and madly in love for the first time, Nichols spent three months pay romancing her in two days of liberty. As he prepared to return to the ship, he grew bold and asked her to marry him. 

"You crazy!" was her curt response to his heart-felt proposal. Undeterred, he said he would come back for her when the ship again visited Hong Kong during the next WESTPAC cruise.

 

A little more than one year later, the Walla Wallas pitched and rolled across the choppy, blue-gray water as the boats carried the Kitty Hawk sailors ashore. Nichols’ wedding guests were aboard one of the boats. His wedding guests sat on his immediate right and left. Nichols had invited the entire radio division to his wedding, but only Seamen Dennis Johnson and Lorino accepted. 

Nichols was not popular with the crew. It was well known that his request to marry a foreign national was denied by the Navy. She still had family behind the "Bamboo Curtain" in Communist China and that presented a security risk. Nichols didn’t care what the Navy ordered; he was getting married. He talked of nothing else since the beginning of the cruise. His shipmates constantly ridiculed him, as sailors in close quarters aboard a ship can be crueler than school children. 

Johnson was Nichols only friend and that was due primarily to Johnson being everyone’s friend. A cheerful 22-year-old, Johnson was a real cowboy who amused everyone with his tales of growing up on the range in California. He enlisted in the Navy to avoid being drafted in the Army. 

Lorino, who often visited me in our berthing area, accepted Nichols' invitation as he had no other plans other than developing a local connection to buy some shabu. He figured that he might meet someone at the wedding who could steer him towards a shabu connection. 

I passed on the wedding invitation, as I didn’t much care for Nichols, and Mike Hunt invited me to join him at the Hong Kong Hilton, where he stayed on his previous visit to Hong Kong. Hunt and I went ashore and checked in at the Hong Kong Hilton. As we had just come off a long line period on Yankee Station, Hunt and I were flush with cash from our saved pay. 

I also had my considerable winnings from playing poker. As I had been playing poker since I was a kid in South Philly, I was a fair poker player. I played poker on the carrier against a good number of sailors new to the game of chance and skill, so I usually came away from the card games a winner. 

Once we settled in our luxurious room, I called room service and ordered caviar and a bottle of Dom Perigon champagne, the favorite drink of my teenage hero, Ian Fleming’s iconic fictional secret agent James Bond. After I hung up, Hunt picked up the phone and called a number he had from his last visit to Hong Kong. A half hour later, two young and pretty Chinese girls showed up at the door. 

“If I die tomorrow,” I announced to everyone in the hotel room as I held up my champagne glass. “I’ll at least have known what it’s like to be a millionaire.” 

The next morning, we visited a tailor Hunt knew and I had a black suit made, plus two shirts and two pairs of slacks. I could not believe how inexpensive the fine tailor-made clothes were. Mike also had a suit and a shirt made. After our fittings, the tailor said our clothes would be ready the following day. 

We returned to the hotel, took showers, dressed, and headed out to Aberdeen Harbor where we boarded the floating Tai Pak restaurant. The famous floating restaurant was featured in the 1950 films Love is a Many Splendored Thing and The World of Suzie Wong. 

We were served wonderful dishes of crabmeat with sweet-corn soup, fried prawns, crabmeat Fu-Young, sweet and sour pork, and fried garoupa. I also eat fried Sole, which was a favorite dish of James Bond in Ian Fleming’s novels. To my regret, the Sole was not bone-less. I had to use my knife and fork to separate the small bones from the fish, but it was delicious. 

After eating this splendid authentic Chinese meal at the Tai Pak, we headed to the Wanchai bars.  

 

Nichols’ wedding was set to take place above a store in Hong Kong’s commercial section. The happy couple would spend the night in a hotel. Nichols had been informed of these arrangements by his bride-to-be in a letter. 

Nichols, Johnson and Lorino piled into a taxi at the pier and were driven to Ladder Street. Ladder Street was not really a street in a traditional sense, but rather a series of wide steps spread out between rows and rows of shops. At the bottom of Ladder Street lay Morlo-Gai, or Cat Street. The area was locally known as the "Thieves Market." 

A "Cat," in Hong Kong parlance, was someone who bought stolen goods from thieves and then sold them at market.  

Cat Street was a bustling market where tourists and locals alike were herded through the ubiquitous shops and wooden street stands. Under colorful Chinese banners and signs, the merchants screamed out the praises of their wares and haggled over prices with their customers. Trinkets and inexpensive products, mostly manufactured in the People’s Republic of China, were laid across counters and tables. Pickpockets, beggars, prostitutes and lunatics fought openly over territory. 

Passing through the crowd, store touts and street urchins frequently accosted the three sailors, but they brushed them off in good humor. Nichols paid a small boy to take them to the address written in his letter. They were led up a set of back stairs and into a room where the Americans faced the waiting bride and her Chinese "family." 

Music from the American band Chicago blasted from an elaborate stereo system. A ten-foot wooden bar, amply stocked with bottles of liquor, stretched across the room. Three round tables were set up to create a small dance floor. On the tables were various dishes of Chinese food. Two young women huddled with Nancy Chen and giggled. Three Chinese men stood in the center in the room. 

The sailors stood in the doorway, momentarily overcome by the sights, sounds and smells of the scene. Nancy Chen walked towards Nichols and embraced him. He began to cry, and she laughed at him, making a comment in Chinese to her girlfriends that made them laugh. One of the men announced in English that he was Jimmy Lung and that he was the bride’s brother. He introduced the women as Lucy and Wendy. 

The two lean and gaunt men in white shirts and dark slacks were introduced as the Woo brothers, cousins to the bride. They were also serving as the bartender and waiter for the affair. Lung was as thin as a child’s crayoned stickman. His hair was a dark mop and sunglasses hung precariously on his skeletal face. He wore an open collared silk shirt under his expensive suit and his silver snakeskin cowboy boots drew Johnson’s envy. 

When Nichols stopped crying, they all took seats at the tables and began to eat and drink. The women danced seductively with Johnson and Lorino. During the festivity, Nichols put his arm around his future brother-in-law and asked him why he and Nancy had different last names. "Chinese custom," Lung replied bluntly. Nichols did not question the dubious explanation. 

The party ended abruptly when Lung leaped up and screamed "No one move!"

Swiftly extracting a foot-long knife from his left sleeve, Lung placed it roughly under Nichols’ chin. The waiter also drew a long knife and the bartender vaulted over the bar holding a long-barreled revolver. The three women huddled into a corner. 

"We are moving this party across the Sham Chum," Lung announced. The Americans sailors didn’t know that this was the name of the river that separated Hong Kong from Red China, but they got the idea when Lung added, "My friends on the other side want to talk to you about your little American Navy secrets." 

Johnson sat still and cursed to himself softly. Lorino casually crossed his legs and took a long draw from his cigarette, trying to look as cool as a South Philly gangster ought to under these extreme and unusual circumstances. Nichols was frozen and bug-eyed in Lung’s grip. 

To Lorino, who had personal experience in the field of armed robbery, Lung made two critical mistakes. The first mistake was that he took time to brag to his captive audience. Lung told them proudly that he was a member of a local Triad, one of the secret criminal societies in Hong Kong. He explained that in addition to routine criminal pursuits, he also gathered information that his girls extracted from American servicemen and passed it on to the Red Chinese. The pay for the information was generous, considering that he was dealing with communists. 

In Lorino’s mind, Lung's second mistake was that he took his eyes off Lorino for just a second when he turned his head towards a crash. Johnson caused the noise when he jumped up from his chair and tackled the Woo brothers. All three men slammed into the bar, causing it to split down the middle as if hit by a giant karate chop. 

At that moment, Lorino leaped up from his chair, hit Lung with a solid overhand right, and without losing momentum, bolted through the door. Lung collapsed from the blow and dropped to the floor with Nichols still in his grip. 

Like the thief that he was, Lorino jumped down the stairs, ran out into the street and quickly waded through the crowd for several blocks. He later stopped at a bar, had a drink, and bought shabu from a waiter. He hooked up with a bar girl and spent the night with her. He didn’t give the fate of Nichols and Johnson a moments’ thought. Lorino returned to the ship the following day and kept his mouth shut.

 

I recall that next day on the Kitty Hawk vividly. Nichols was reported to be UA, unauthorized absence, which surprised no one. The news that Johnson was murdered in a robbery was a surprise and the story quickly spread throughout the ship. There was much talk of "dungaree liberty," a time-honored naval tradition in which sailors donned working uniforms, armed themselves with knives, pipes and clubs and went ashore to wreak havoc on an offending liberty town. 

The captain wisely canceled all water taxis. A British police inspector came aboard and addressed the crew over the ship’s 1MC. 

"I wish to inform you that your Seaman Dennis Johnson was found murdered last night on Cat Street," the inspector said in an accent most of the sailors found familiar from old British movies. 

"A known criminal, one Jimmy Lung, was apprehended and I assure you he will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law." 

After hearing the British police officer, the crew’s anger was quelled. Johnson was given a memorial service and the carrier returned to Yankee Station and the war. 

After 30 days, Nichols was later declared to be AWOL, absent without leave, and he was officially proclaimed to be a deserter. The paperwork was processed, and Nichols was forgotten. 

I don’t recall the British police officer mentioning Nichols when he addressed the Kitty Hawk sailors, but after listening to Lorino's story, my guess was Nichols was abducted and taken to Red China, where the Chinese drained him of his classified information and then shot him. 

© 2024 By Paul Davis