Twin Stars Of China: A Behind The Scenes Story Of China's Valiant Struggle For Existence
(Lang:- English, Pages 377. Reprinted in 2016 with the hel...)
Lang:- English, Pages 377. Reprinted in 2016 with the help of original edition published long back1940. This book is in black & white, Hardcover, sewing binding for longer life with Matt laminated multi-Colour Dust Cover, Printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, there may be some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want to know more about our old treasure so we brought it back to the shelves. (Customisation is possible). Hope you will like it and give your comments and suggestions. Original Title: Twin Stars Of China A Behind The Scenes Story Of China S Valiant Struggle For Existenc 1940 Hardcover, Original Author: Evans Fordyce Carloson
Evans F. Carlson, marine corps officer, was a talented professional soldier and a flinty individualist who espoused the brotherhood of man, being the leader of a famous "Carlson's Raiders" during the World War II.
Background
Evans Fordyce Carlson was born on February 26, 1896 in Sidney, New York, United States; the first of four children of Rev. Thomas Alpine Carlson, a Congregational minister, and Joetta Viola (Evans) Carlson. Thomas Carlson, the son of a Norwegian immigrant who had prospected for gold and silver in the High Sierras, owed his middle name to the mountainous county in California where he was born in a mining camp. He had attended theological seminaries in San Francisco and Auburn, New York, and he maintained a strict household, but he was close to his son and told him stories about his youthful adventures. Joetta Carlson, whose Welsh forebears had come to America during the colonial period, was a sensitive, charming, self-possessed woman. Evans grew up in three New England towns where his father held pastorates: Shoreham, Vermont, Dracut, Massachussets, and Peacham, Vermont.
Career
A restless youth, Carlson left home at fourteen to work on a farm near Vergennes, Vermont, where he attended but did not graduate from the local high school. He found jobs as a laborer in Connecticut and New Jersey, and then, in 1912, joined the army. He was stationed in the Philippines and in Hawaii and was discharged with the rank of master sergeant in 1915. Recalled to active duty in 1916 during border trouble with Mexico, Carlson served as an instructor to the National Guard Artillery at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. After the entry of the United States into World War I, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the 13th Field Artillery. Two promotions brought him to the rank of captain, and late in the war he served briefly in France on the staff of Gen. John J. Pershing. He resigned his commission in 1919, believing that life in the peacetime army would be too sedate. For the next two years he worked as a salesman for the California Packing Corporation, but he was not content and resolved to reenter the service. When he learned the army would only take him back as a second lieutenant, Carlson balked at the prospect of being outranked by former friends and, deciding to start afresh in a new branch, enlisted as a private in the Marine Corps in 1922. It was primarily as a Marine that Carlson earned public distinction. Commissioned a second lieutenant in 1923, he held several domestic assignments over the next four years. From 1927 to 1929 and again from 1933 to 1935 he served as an operations and intelligence officer in China.
Carlson was promoted to captain in 1935 and was appointed second-in-command of the military guard at President Franklin D. Roosevelt's retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, a fortuitous circumstance that led to a personal relationship with the president. Carlson's interest in China grew during these years, and despite his lack of a college education at some time during this period he took graduate courses in international law at George Washington University in Washington, D. C. Beginning in 1937, when Carlson returned to China, he carried on a private correspondence with Roosevelt, thereby providing the commander-in-chief with eyewitness accounts of Chinese developments. In pursuit of his attempt to gather information on the Sino-Japanese War, he became the first foreign military observer to scrutinize at first hand the operations of the Chinese Red Army, or as it was called at the time, the Eighth Route Army. He made two extended cross-country tours with this army in December 1937 and during 1938, often accompanying Communist guerrillas behind Japanese lines. Excited by his historic experiences, Carlson overstepped the bounds of his diplomatic position and granted extensive press interviews, in which he highly praised Communist military and political institutions. He was especially impressed by the unreciprocated willingness of the Communists to form a united front with the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek to defeat their common foe, the Japanese; and he was highly critical of the selling of American supplies to Japan. Cautioned by his superiors to exercise more discretion, Carlson resigned from the Corps in 1938 in order "to be free to speak and write. " He was requested to give his resignation further thought but he officially resigned Apr. 30, 1939. Returning to the United States, Carlson for the next two years delivered anti-Japanese lectures, contributed pro-Chinese articles to magazines, and published two books: The Chinese Army: Its Organization and Military Efficiency (1940), a technical treatise, and Twin Stars in China: A Behind-the-Scenes Story of China's Valiant Struggle for Existence by a U. S. Marine Who Lived and Moved with the People (1940). The latter book, which tended to view the Chinese Communists as selfless democrats, aroused a good deal of attention. He visited China again as a civilian in 1940 and in 1941, primarily to study Chinese cooperatives, and returned to the United States to write and lecture on the movement. Convinced that war with Japan was likely, Carlson returned to the Marine Corps and was commissioned a major in the Reserves in 1941. In 1942 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and given command of the 2nd Marine Battalion, with the president's son, Major James Roosevelt, as his executive officer. This was the group that became known as "Carlson's Raiders. " Drawing on the knowledge he had accumulated in China, Carlson patterned his battalion after the Eighth Route Army. The Raiders' rallying cry was "Gung Ho!" an adaptation of the Chinese slogan for "working together. " Insistent that every Raider subordinate himself for the harmony of the group, Carlson abolished officers' mess and other privileges, directed that all wear the same garb and live alike, invited suggestions about his battle plans in open discussions before each engagement, and afterward encouraged self-criticism.
Carlson's Raiders first saw action on August 17, 1942, when they landed from submarines on Makin Island in the Gilberts, attacked the Japanese garrison there, and destroyed many installations. Although the Makin raid was not of great military consequence, American successes against Japan were then so rare that the Raiders captured the public imagination. Their only other significant military campaign came late in 1942 on Guadalcanal. Operating behind Japanese lines, they killed nearly 500 enemy troops while suffering but thirty-four casualties. A Marine historian has called this "one of the great combat patrols in the history of the Corps". Guadalcanal was Carlson's last assignment in combat leadership. His unorthodox methods did not please his superiors, and in 1943 the 2nd Battalion was merged with three others into a Marine Raider Regiment. The remainder of the war was anticlimactic for Carlson. In 1943 he was an official observer at the assault on Tarawa, and in 1944, while serving in the same capacity, he was seriously wounded on Saipan while rescuing an enlisted man. He retired from the Marine Corps on July 1, 1946, and at that time was given the rank of brigadier general. During the last year of his life, Carlson became increasingly active in groups opposing the foreign policy of the cold war.
Carlson called for the immediate withdrawal of United States troops from China and the termination of all support for the regime of Chiang Kai-shek until Chiang agreed to establish a coalition government with the Chinese Communists. He also deplored the growing rift between the United States and the Soviet Union, asserting that they could peacefully coexist. Following his retirement Carlson settled with his wife in Oregon on the slopes of Mt. Hood. In 1947, at the age of fifty-one, he suffered a fatal heart attack and died in Portland, Oreg. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. Less than five years after his death, Carlson's strong advocacy of the Chinese Communist movement led Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy to condemn him as a hero of international communism and a "disciple" of the radical journalist Agnes Smedley. Carlson had indeed been a close friend of Smedley in China, yet he was anything but a Marxist.
Achievements
He was a decorated and retired United States Marine Corps general officer who was the legendary leader of "Carlson's Raiders", during World War II crediting him as the forefather of one of America's first U. S. special operations forces. He is renowned for the "Makin Island raid" in 1942, and their "Long Patrol" (aka Carlson's patrol) behind Japanese lines on Guadalcanal, in which 488 Japanese were killed.
Carlson is also credited with introducing the term "gung-ho" into the Marine Corps.
In 1930 Carlson was awarded the Navy Cross for heroism in combat against guerrillas in Nicaragua. Among his many citations were the Legion of Merit, three Navy Crosses, two Purple Hearts, and three Presidential Unit Citations.
Carlson was a Bible-quoting New Englander who believed deeply in egalitarian democracy. Almost totally unconcerned about political dogma, he can be faulted for underestimating the ideological commitment of China's Communists, but he had realistically appraised their dynamism and their military potential.
Views
Quotations:
When criticized for his defense of the Communists as the "only democratic force" in China, Carlson responded: "People in this country don't like that word, 'Communist. ' But I've learned it's wise to go behind words and find out about action".
Personality
The "Old Man, " as he was affectionately called, inspired intense loyalty among his men, both by his fearlessness and by his sympathetic and unpretentious manner. He was always at the "point" on the march; as one Raider said later, even when his tall, gaunt figure could not be seen through thick jungle foliage, the smell of his "wonderful, stinking, large-bowl pipe" gave reassurance to his men.
Connections
Carlson married Dorothy Seccombe of Perris, California, in May 1916. They were divorced about six years later, and on April 29, 1924, he married Etelle Sawyer. This second marriage also ended in divorce, in 1943, and on February 29, 1944, he married Peggy (Tatum) Whyte, a divorcee and the daughter of an army colonel. Carlson had two children: Evans Charles by his first marriage, and Anthony John by his second.
