Last Ditch Army

At one end of the living room of a Formosan cottage, incense from a burning joss stick rose fragrantly before an image of Buddha. Opposite, in a wicker chair flanked by two bold parrots, sat one of the most talked about and least known generals in the null century Orient. His long, hard body was encased in the folds of a grey Chinese gown and he jogged on one knee his five-year-old son, Yen.

General Li Mi, 50, is the handsome, scarfaced Nationalist who controls the Chinese Nationalist guerrillas entrenched in the chasmed wilderness that is Burma's border with China. His troops, who style themselves the Yunnan Anti-Communist and National Salvation Army, retreated into Burma after the Nationalist collapse of 1949; they claim to be preparing for a reinvasion of their homeland, and the destruction of the Communist regime.

To the weak Burmese government, which has never controlled its borders since the British Raj departed, Li's lawless veterans are "foreign bandits" who defy its writ, pillage its merchants and give the Chinese Communists an ever-ready excuse for threatening invasion. Last month, in a burst of near unanimity, the U.N. General Assembly condemned Li Mi and advised his guerrillas to get out or be interned. Li Mi refused, and in so doing defied the world. Last week, in Formosa where he is recuperating from a heart attack, he told TIME Correspondent John Meeklin his side of the story, in his first interview since the controversy began.

Willing Volunteers. "We have been condemned without a trial," said Li. "Why should not the U.N. first have sent somebody to investigate what we are doing instead of simply ordering us out?"

Li's version of the National Salvation Army's activities begins in spring 1950, when he salvaged some 2,000 stragglers from the wreck of the Nationalist Thirteenth Army Group and withdrew his demoralized troops to the Shan mountains on the Burma side of the border. In May 1951 Li attacked Red Yunnan with several thousand recruits gleaned from the borderlands, occupied eight hsien (Chinese counties), and appealed for volunteers. "Every able-bodied man in the district" stepped forward, he says; the National Salvation Army increased to 50,000 men.

Then came defeat. Communist regulars counterattacked, sent the Nationalists reeling back to their Burmese lairs. "It was bitterly pathetic," said Li. "Most of my men had no arms. Some sneaked back to their farms to wait for another chance, some took jobs on the Burmese government highway projects. Others were drowned when they tried to escape by swimming mountain torrents."

Since then, the Nationalists have managed to cling to a piece of Burmese real estate the size of West Virginia. One million primitive Burmans are now ruled by five Nationalist generals, loyal to Li Mi. The National Salvation Army, says its commander, has its headquarters on the forested plateau east of the Salween River, where the Burmese, Siamese and Indo-Chinese borders meet. It maintains an air strip, has reliable radio contacts with the government of Formosa.

Li says he controls almost 30,000 men but is quick to concede that only one in three has a firearm. His artillery consists of a few dozen mortars and 75 mm. cannon, but he has almost no ammunition. "We have done no plundering," he said. "We have really been fighting Communists." The general admits that his people levy "dues on visiting businessmen," but these are opium smugglers, he says offhandedly, and they expect to pay.

Most of Li's men live in mud and straw huts, raise rice and vegetables on tiny hillside farms. Some have settled down with Burmese girls but most still yearn for their families in Yunnan, and some secretly visit their kinfolk from time to time. A bold attempt last year to move large numbers of their dependents from Red Yunnan ended in bloody failure: the Communists seized 800 oldsters and children, and none has been heard of since.

Trouble in Rangoon. To drive out Li Mi, the Burmese government is spending a large part of its total revenues. Li Mi retorts that this is Rangoon's own fault. His relations with the government were reasonably trouble-free, he says, until Burma's Foreign Minister visited Red Peking last July and was pressured into a phony "peace" pact whereby Communist guerrillas in Burma would cease their depredations in exchange for a Burmese offensive against the Nationalist redoubt. Since then, says Li Mi, the Nationalist Salvation Army has been attacked on all sides by 1) Red Chinese regulars, infiltrating from Yunnan, 2) Burmese Communist guerrillas, 3) the Burmese army. In one incident, he says, the Burmans rounded up 100 of his men and turned 40 over to Chinese Communists, who drenched them in kerosene and burned them to death.

His situation, Li concedes, is now "very difficult." Why then does he reject the U.N. proposal that his men should be evacuated to Formosa, where they may live to fight the Communists another day? For one thing, he says, his men are determined to stay where they are. What's more, says the general, the U.N. and the U.S. have been duped by Communist charges that the National Salvation Army is a collection of bandits. Such "vilification," he says, actually included the charges that he personally had been riding around Bangkok in a fancy limousine, that he supports no fewer than twelve concubines. "I don't think my wife would permit it," says Li Mi drily.

Washington and Taipei have repeatedly denied sending military aid to Li, but the evidence is mounting that in 1951 some U.S. supplies were airlifted to the Nationalist redoubt. More recently, the traffic has ceased, presumably because the State Department or the Pentagon became convinced that Li Mi's enterprise is doing more harm to Burma than it is to the Red Chinese.

Yet removing the National Salvation Army from its lair in the Shan mountains will not be an easy matter. Says General Li Mi: "Rather than evacuate ... we could still turn to smuggling or even become bandits and plunder to stay alive. Look at my people. Now they have full freedom to fight the Reds. Here [in Formosa] they would be leashed."

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