The Battle Group was going to Taiwan for an exercise with the Nationalist Chinese Airborne Division. We would parachute in, affect a linkup, and then each conduct its own separate exercise in adjoining areas of operation. Our company was assigned the job of linking up. It would involve a trek of about 20 miles to the assigned linkup point, and then a return of unknown length, depending on where the rest of the company had gone in the meantime. Captain Losik, the company commander, and I had decided that since the platoon we had picked to make the linkup had no platoon leader, that I, the company executive officer, would accompany it just to make sure everything went right.

The day before the jump a new lieutenant showed up and was assigned to the linkup platoon. I was pleased that I wouldn’t have to make that long hike, but, after getting to know the new officer a little better, Losik and I decided that I was going along. It wasn’t clear that the new officer had the necessary self-confidence to lead a platoon that distance through a foreign country.

When you fly a long distance to a parachute jump, the odds are that you started in the middle of the night. That turned out to be true in this case. We reported to the company at 0430 for an 0700 takeoff and an 0930 jump over Taiwan. For all practical purposes, no one slept that night. After assembling the company and establishing an airhead with the rest of the battle group, I went over to the 1st Platoon and told the new lieutenant to get them moving. It was probably about mid afternoon by then.

The hike to the linkup point took all night. (Enroute) We arrived at the designated place, a bridge over a river, at around 5 in the morning for an 8 o’clock linkup. There were no Chinese units there so I had the lieutenant put his platoon into a defensive position, just as you always should when you’re on an exercise. There was a dense woodline along the river so the platoon nicely disappeared into the woods.

At about 0730 I heard a commotion out on the road served by the bridge. I looked out and saw the battle group commander, Col Fudd, in his jeep followed by a truck full of photographers with both movie cameras and still cameras. Fudd stopped right in the center of the bridge and started looking frantically around. I knew he was looking for us and decided I had better get out there to report to him.

As soon as he saw me he started squawking.

"McGwew, where the hell have you been? Where’s the platoon you’re supposed to have heah? I don’t see anyone."

I explained that we were in the middle of no man’s land and that I had placed the platoon into a proper defensive position. He wasn’t happy.

"Do you see all those photographers? They need a lot of action to shoot. I need you to get all those soldiers out here where they can take their pictures. Got it?"

No, I didn’t get it. It took me about 10 minutes to convince him that we needed to leave the platoon where it was. I would be happy to take the photographers into the woods....

Col Fudd wasn’t at all happy. Still, he deferred to my plea to remain as we were. He started giving me detailed instructions on how to make contact with the Chinese unit when it arrived.

As it turned out, he and the army of reporters and photographers were still on the bridge when the Chinese showed up, so all his elaborate instructions were for naught. I had intended to allow the new platoon leader to make the actual linkup, I was just along for the walk, but Fudd would have none of it. He had enough trouble remembering the lieutenants he had known for a couple of years, and didn’t want to be bothered with trying to remember the name of a new one. He told me to make the linkup.

I had no idea what would happen. I hadn’t really thought about it. I assumed I would say "hi" and we could head back, or something like that. Even Fudd didn’t have any instructions about what to do after we had made contact.

Since the bridge was covered with Americans anyway, I walked out to the center of the bridge to greet the Chinese captain. I was surprised to see that he had apparently just stepped out of a dressing room somewhere. I had been walking all night in high temperatures and was soaked with sweat. He had on a perfectly starched uniform and boots shined to perfection. He couldn’t have walked more than a half mile.

He looked at me with obvious disgust. Immediately he asked me, in perfect English, to give him the location of all our units. I was fairly sure I didn’t know those, but, upon reflection, I remembered that I had put our locations on my map the afternoon before so that I could figure out how to get back through our lines upon our return. They might not be accurate anymore, but at least I had something to show him.

I reached into my shirt and pulled out my map, which was as soaked with sweat as I was. It was like a limp washrag, dripping malodorously. The pencil marks I had made the day before had nearly rubbed off. I spread it out on the ground and was going to talk him through it when he said, "Those were your unit locations yesterday. I want your current locations."

I had to admit that I had no other information for him. Since I was well out of radio contact with the battle group there was no hope of getting more recent data. Fudd probably didn’t know and he wasn’t supposed to be there anyway, so I ignored him. Again the captain looked at me with disgust.

Then he turned to his sergeant and asked for his map case. The sergeant produced a marvelous looking map case. I had often admired that very map case at the bookstore of the Infantry School, but felt it was more expensive than I could afford. With snap of his wrists the map unfolded perfectly and revealed a five-color overlay, obviously drawn by an artist, showing the Chinese unit locations. I looked like an idiot, I knew, and to make matters worse, all my friends and relatives would see me thus humiliated at their neighborhood theaters the next week. That was how events like that were shown to the public in those days, in newsreels before the main features.

The only thing that could have made it worse was to be facing an all-day hike back to the unit, which, of course, we were. It had been a long, long time since any of us had gotten any sleep.

When I returned to the company, Losik said he had heard nothing from Fudd so he assumed that the linkup went well. I told him the story and he was a little surprised. Apparently the photographers had obscured Fudd’s view of the affair and, since they were happy, he was happy. I hoped it was the end of the story.

And it was, at least for many years. While I was a student at the Command and General Staff College, I found myself often fixing the movie projectors which were well worn and usually malfunctioning. I had operated lots of movie projectors and could usually get the balky ones running right. Soon, all the instructors knew that when they came to our section they should just put me in charge of the projector.

Thus it was that I was showing a movie in class one day, a class on "combined", meaning international, operations. At one point the film referred to coordination between adjacent forces from different countries and suddenly I saw myself standing in the middle of that bridge talking to that Chinese captain. At once all the members of the section, some 50 in all, recognized me, too. They watched with interest as the Chinese captain thoroughly humiliated me, the whole event preserved for posterity and made into a training film. That film would be shown to all 24 sections that day. You may have had some bad days in our life, but I doubt you ever had one that bad.