Guerrilla One is both a memorial to a World War II U.S. Air Force fighter ace, Major John C. "Pappy" Herbst, and a fighting history of a unique squadron based "behind enemy lines" in a cut-off section of eastern China.
The 74th Fighter Squadron, 23rd Fighter Group, 14th U.S. Air Force, was among the units that officially took over from General Claire Lee Chennault's American Volunteer Group (the Flying Tigers) after Pearl Harbor. Gen. Chennault, like many of his men, simply stayed in position, becoming part of the official American armed forces.
The author, Colonel Luther C. Kissick, Jr., who refers to himself under the nickname "Luke Kaye" in his chronicle of the squadron, came to do this book so long after VJ Day as a result of a wartime event with a bizarre, almost movie-script, postwar outcome.
In the face of advancing Japanese forces, his squadron was ordered to burn its records and abandon its airfield. But gung-ho Lt. Kaye, intelligence officer for the 74th, couldn't bring himself to destroy the unit's history. With the help of his Chinese assistant, he buried the documents along with his private diary near a landmark pagoda. The assistant became, in more recent times, a successful Hongkong businessman, and from that vantage was able to recover the documents and smuggle them out of Communist China in the framework of a child's coffin.
China was divided in the early 1940s, occupied in great force by the Japanese, but with vast areas still free and fighting on under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. The ravages of the Japanese invaders put tens of millions on the roads as refugees; the uprooted war-torn country lacked everything. Spies and guerrilla teams for both sides were everywhere. Inflation, black-marketing, and dire poverty stalked the land. Within these circumstances, the Chinese Communists, supplied by the Soviet Union, concentrated on enlarging their spheres of influence. Still, Chiang's Free China doggedly fought on against the Japanese armies. Wherever an American pilot went down, in spite of general warfare and turmoil, he was soon contacted and ferreted back to safety by an extraordinary Chinese network operating under the very noses of the Japanese military.
Coordinating with the headquarters of then-governor of the southern Kiangsi administrative district, (now ROC President) Chiang Ching-kuo, Herbst's outnumbered "Guerrilla Squadron" made exceptional use of its fighting spirit and intelligence opportunities not only to carry the war to the overwhelming enemy forces, but finally to dominate its operational area of eastern China.
Pappy Herbst, who came to join Chennault after a combat tour with the famed Eagle Squadron of the RAF, went on to become the major fighter ace of the China-Burma-India theater. Under him, the 74th swept in ever-widening arcs across the skies of eastern China, taking an incredible toll of Japanese aircraft, ground and sea transport, and other Japanese war material.
Kissick's style embraces the understated factual vocabulary of a man who is himself a dedicated military history buff. Still, the breath of danger, of spies and plots, escapes and disasters, sifts through the laconic phrasing. Generous illustrations (113 of them) add to the volume's unmistakable World War II ambience.
As for Pappy Herbst, the prematurely graying squadron leader in his mid-30s, he never strayed from a real life role typical of an archetype American hero—parts played by Gary Cooper come to mind. Despite orders from his superiors after he had surpassed all combat norms, to stay at his desk, he continued to personally seek out the enemy—from some greater sense of duty, without fanaticism, a man among his men, and a model they all aspired to.
Then, after surviving extended and intensive action in both Europe and Asia, Maj. John C. Herbst died in the crash of a U.S. Air Force P-80 at a July 4, 1946, air show in San Diego, California, at the height of a silver-tipped, still youthful exuberance.