Flying Mao over Shangai in his C-47

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Retired Air Force Maj. Gus Bender is standing in front of the dining room table of his Prestwick Chase apartment, navigating his finger across the black-and-white photos of a tattered copy of Life magazine.

''I landed right here,'' Bender says, as his finger finds the spot.
''There's the river. And there's the caves. See, there weren't any buildings at all,'' Bender says. ''It's a really barren land.''

August ''Gus'' Bender, a World War II Air Force pilot, began recounting his story - one that changed the course of history.

Bender was born and raised on his father's farm in Queens, near what is now LaGuardia Airport.
He remembers, as a young boy, relocating with his family to New Jersey. It was 1925.

On the other side of the world, military commander Chiang Kai-shek had assumed the leadership of the Nationalist party, eventually the ruling government of China.

The Nationalists found opposition, however. The Communists were led by Mao Tse-tung, who emerged as their leader after the historic long march that ended in 1936 in Yenan.

As the two enemies were preoccupied with their in-fighting throughout the 1930s and '40s,
the Japanese sensed an opportunity and began seizing Chinese territories.

What does all this have to do with Bender? Destiny has a funny way of tying people together.
In August 1945, in the days just preceding the United States' dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the fates intervened.

''They (commanding officers) showed me a map, and said 'You have to fly up to Yenan,'''
Bender said, his left leg pumping up and down as if he were pedaling the memories forward.

''I said 'Where the heck is Yeee-Nan?''' Bender laughed, pronouncing the name
as if you'd expect to find it located somewhere between Memphis and Nashville.
Then he turned serious. ''They showed me a map and told me, 'Look, this is a tough place
to fly.'''

Bender was drafted in April 1941 and sent up to Pine Camp, now Fort Drum. He was in the
4th Army Division and passed a test that got him into the Air Force.

''When the Air Force accepted me, they sent a notice that read: 'Stay where you are
until we call you.' I had to stay there until Dec. 8. That's when they called me - the day after Pearl Harbor,'' he said.

It was the same day that China joined the Allies in World War II.

While America was poised for battle following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Chinese were fighting a Japanese army that had launched its attack on China in 1937.

Bender spent the next few years flying military dignitaries around China and India.

In April 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt died, and Harry S. Truman stepped in. In early August, Bender was informed of his mission to Yenan.

''That's when they told me that I was taking Ambassador (Patrick) Hurley with me.
As soon as I heard that,'' Bender said, ''I knew something (big) was going on. The goal was
to try to bring Mao Tse-tung back to Chungking, to talk with Chiang Kai-shek.

''Our government told Hurley to try and get Chiang and Mao to come to some kind of agreement to stop fighting among themselves, at least until the Japanese war was over,'' Bender explained.

Being in the thick of things, Bender had more first-hand knowledge than the ordinary person.
''I know Chiang had troops ready for the Japanese,'' Bender said. ''But he wasn't using them because he knew he was going to have to fight Mao Tse-tung. That was the reason we went
up to get him. They were going to try to come to some sort of agreement.

''The next morning at the airport, Hurley came out and interpreters and some newspapermen were there,'' Bender said, remembering the journey of his C-47. ''The flight took about three, three-and-a-half hours.''

He remembers the vivid starkness of the terrain.

''I was amazed. When I see pictures today of Afghanistan on TV, that's just the way Yenan looked. Barren mountains and the caves where they lived,'' Bender said.

''They didn't have any trees to build huts, or anything else, for that matter.''

Bender and his crew lived on the airplane for three days while they waited for the party to convince Mao to come back with them. On the second day, Bender recalls Hurley coming back to the plane to see how the crew was holding up.

''(Hurley) took us down into the center of town,'' Bender remembered, ''to a marketplace
where people had come great distances with their camels, and had vegetables and a lot of different things that they were trying to sell.''

On the third day, the entourage emerged from their meetings in the caves, Mao Tse-tung among them. Bender flew them back to Chungking for the all-important meeting with
Chiang Kai-shek.

Shortly after their arrival, however, the first bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later,
the second one was dropped on Nagasaki. Within a week, Japan surrendered.

For Bender, though, there was other work to be done.

''I was there until October. Two days after the war ended, I had to fly a couple of generals to Shanghai,'' he said.

The reason for the mission was to maintain continuity in the cities that the Japanese had occupied.

''We didn't have any ground troops in China, and in Shangai the (U.S.) generals told them:
'Look, you have got to keep your troops doing just what you've been doing, policing the city
and everything else, until we can get some troops in from the South Pacific,''' Bender said.

''You don't think of these things, but the war is over so they just quit,'' Bender said, incredulously - ''Yeah you quit, but here's a population of 8 or 10 million people, and Shangai was a big city - you still had to police it.''

With Japan out of the way, the Communists and Nationalists renewed their battle. By the end
of the 1940s, Mao Tse-tung and the Communists emerged victorious, establishing the
People's Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalists were forced to flee to Taiwan.

Bender said people still ask him what he thinks happened after he dropped off Mao for meetings in Chungking.

''I know Mao was there for six weeks, then the meetings finally split up. We didn't fly him back, so I don't know how he got back,'' Bender said. ''I guess, since the war had ended and Mao and Chiang Kai-shek didn't see eye-to- eye, there never was any agreement afterwards.''

When Bender finally returned home, his mission had made history. ''When I got back, my brother told me 'Hey, you made Life Magazine!'''

Bender points out the photograph - ''That's Hurley, there's Mao, and that's Chiang Kai-shek's general,'' Bender said, going right to left across the bottom row. Bender is in the center of the second row.

After the war, Bender moved back to New Jersey, got married and went into the farming.

He and his wife (who passed away a year ago) moved to Saratoga Springs in 1973.

''My wife went to Skidmore many years ago, and we liked it up here. I wanted to get some acreage to farm. We used to plant Christmas trees, and cut them down, and sell them
wholesale, right up there,'' he said, pointing to a colorful photo on the living room wall.

As for his time in the military, Bender said he enjoyed being in the thick of things.

''My job was interesting, flying all those intelligence fellows around. I liked being in the middle
of it all.''

by Thomas Dimopoulos
published in the Saratogian, May 26, 2002.