September 1923
The Earthquake in Japan had caused a firestorm. Literally. It had come in at lunch time after all, put sky scraping waves into the coast with untold devasation. They hadn't had all the fires out until Monday morning... and if one were superstitious the typhoon off the coast sure looked like heaven or ... a dragon was furious at someone in Tokyo.
Then the killing had started.
Allen paced, "The acting consul is dead?"
"That's what Wood cabled." Cullen replied having stopped pacing. "He says that the ambassador is going to Wright's hotel." This sparked eyebrows to raise from the handful of other officers, "Which isn't even the funny thing." He informed the men, "Tell 'em brother John."
Allen scowled, because very little about this was funny, "I received a cable from a friend in Japan's army intelligence. He received reports that the fires were caused, or at least exasperated by communist sympathizers."
Waite groaned, his eyes shifting from Cullen towards Allen a mix of incredulity and a pang of nervousness at the possibility, "Is he kidding?" Either case would be bad. If he were wrong, if the reports were wrong it was potentially stoking paranoia, but if the reports had any veracity then, "Bad enough the 'quake came in while folks were cooking." There were nods of agreement. "What's he suggesting?"
"He plans to push his concerns out to England and the states, with a warning about potential arsonist attacks." They'd all grown up on stories of the great chicago fire, but arson was the anarchists tool of choice, "I don't want to say he's shrill, but I'm also hoping that he's wrong." Arson was a capital offense in Japan, and here in China too. They'd hang men who started fires that killed folks...assuming the mob didn't lynch them first given the devastation... and that was just for the fire... political motivations that was sedition.
Cullen turned thumb tucked in his belt, "I'll pass consideration along to the public security section and if we get any suspicious fires i'll have my detectives ready to investigate it." There was a pause, before Cole pushed on, "I want to hit the opium shipments going to Shanghai from Szechwan. Their grain union barges," The Green Gang, "I want to use the boats to do it."
"And?" Shellman asked, "if its the usual," route, which spoke of complacency from the shanghai gangsters, "right its the Han right, down to Wuchang?" But Allen in contrast to the Navy man knew Cole had also considered notion, discarded though they might have been, but consideration to take the Gendarmes small flotilla down to Chunking circuitously from Qinghai... it was too much of a logistical burden to countenance but it was a thought exercise in expeditionary warfare that the Gendarmes and 8th Division's staff had begun to work on based off of Hodges water survey considerations that had been ordered by the now deceased man. "That should be doable right?"
"Its doable... I know the 5th is on the border right now. I want the 6th moved to the Bashan frontier and 8th moved to come get me if I get into trouble."
"Is now really the time to be poking the hornet's nest?" Waite cautioned taking his usual position of conservative caution in matters, rather in contrast to some of his social positions. "We've kept things mostly calm , I know you think Xiong Kewu is a problem, but if you go in there and humiliate him its still us versus him, and he's from the province."
"Are there weapons going to Xiong Kewu Cole?" Allen asked.
"Yes."
Cullen's response was a single word, and firm, seven general officers almost immediately accented to the proposal if there had been any resistance to the idea it crumbled immediately. For good reason beyond just weapons going to Szechwan from Shanghai, Xiong Kewu had been Sun's man... which by itself had been tolerable up until the end of June. June had been with the Lincheng mess all over the papers when Sun had sent out his manifestobut also started a fresh round of the 'canton southern nationalist government' whatever they were calling themselves at the moment to lead an anti bandit army in szechwan. Such a claim was ridiculous on the face given that half his troops were bandits at least some of the time.
Waite was the only flag officer who had reservations, and that was not for reasons related to who was or wasn't a bandit or a gangster or benefited from trade with them. It was the question of how it might be perceived and what happened, what was the reaction after they took their action, and what would their reaction to that reaction need to be. "If we hit the Green Gang, I guarantee you some asshole in the French or British legation in Shanghai is going to go to bat for them, oh they might only say its because Big Ear got the hostages sprung but everyone knows how Shanghai is." ... and how money passed hands.
Cullen gave a near feral grin, "That why I'm going in person."
"And if Shang has to come get you?" Waite nodded to the Commanding General of the last of the three Rifle Divisions, "If we have to get tied down? If it really drops into the pot,"
He tilted his head, and smirked, "Then brother John will come down on Xiong like an avalanche with 1st and 3rd in tow I reckon." Cole replied flippantly, "But what I plan for is to treat this as much as possible like that visit to Ekatrinburg. We get in, we accomplish the objective and we fight our way off the X and back over the line."
The engineer spluttered, "And you plan to accomplish that by what magic?"
"Air cover," He replied, "I've been talking to Bill," Who was unfortunately absent for this discussion, "He's has a major on his staff, I plan to have planes with radios tied in and communicating with ground stations and my boats." They had found that the boats worked very well as mobile radio stations, being better suited to it than airplanes, ;but then that shouldn't have been so much of a surprise given radio telegraphy on ships being as mature as it was, "Every step of the way, I'll b e in contact, and those planes while not carrying a lot of bombs will have enough that if they need to come in they'll spook the bandits on the ground while the boats can defend themselves."
They were now well away from the original discussion of the catastrophic Earthquake that had rocked Tokyo at the end of the previous week. Bill absence was notable, as was that of Yan Xishan... and as Reinsch, who had passed back in January, would have noted any of the members of the cadre who he deemed to be the more 'civilian' side of the nominal hundred man body. That Reinsch had passed away in Shanghai had been noted in Xian's papers in part for the former ambassador's opposition to the Shantung Settlement clause of Versailles.
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Notes: We probably will not actually cover, as we largely in this format have not been covering Xian's conflict with the Green Gang, Cullen's expedition down the river. This is an evolutionary step towards special forces as we understand this has a long history in the US Military.
The Civil Service side of the Army did Green Beret stuff before US SF was a thing, Ranger style tactics and application date back to US Cavalry before the Civil War (and that goes to a lot of Cavalry in the civil war was trying to force cavalry units into a role on the line that they weren't suited for because of prestige postings), and also because here there is not conventional line generals going 'get out of the army if you don't want to go back to a line unit' (this was a thing after Vietnam with Green Berets, this is a thing now, with the Marine Corp with MARSOC). The Cadre doesn't have this problem because by and large from an intuitional narrative they still think of themselves as a small unit tactics organization and have things like the White Wolf Rebellion, and the Ekatrinburgh rescue of the Tsar, and actions in Zhengzhou during the manchu restoration, and so forth as an example of elite units deploying at Regimental and below levels.
Eventually Xian will transition to the unit identity is largely the Division rather than the Regiment for its regular army but that is post Japanese surrender cold era army reform. Here, unit command is emphatically your officers are on the front line leading commanding, directing objectives to other officersdown the chain. This continues into the war against japan where generals are in harms way on the front line, where colonels are indirect contact with the enemy seeing shells land (and Xian is a very artillery heavy service land wise). Operationally though this is themajor undertaking that pushes Xian's Air Force to undertake aconcerted effort to have more say in communications and coordination both for air based command and control as awell as coordinating fromground based radio stations and early warning centers. It is alos,in the much longer term where Xian's Air Force traces its cold warera SF lineage though that it much much later in the timeline.
From here we push on into the lastmonths of 1923 before moving into 1924.
