SWORDS, BAYONETS CAN BEAT JAPS, SAYS CHINESE SOLDIER

Basing his opinion on three months' experience fighting with the Chinese National Army, David Chwang, now a student in the Business School, stated yesterday "that the best way of stopping the Japanese infantry is by hand-to-hand battle with bayonets and swords."

As proof that it can be done, he told how the ill-equipped army with which he was fighting in the summer of 1937 had held its hastily improvised line against Japan's massed forces, which included naval squadrons, vastly superior artillery and planes, and far better-armed-infantry.

Swords Deadly

"The Japs especially disliked the Chinese swords," he said, "which we found especially effective in close-up fighting because of the greater case of withdrawing them."

Not all the fighting was done with such medieval weapons, however. As an example, Chwang cited the occasion when as a college military student serving three summer months as a reserve officer in the Supply Corps, he had sat behind a machine gun and helped rout a surprise Japanese attack.

Chwang was bringing ammunition and daily supplies to a machine gun crew in the front lines, when the Japs sprang the attack. "It soon became apparent that the gunner on the next machine gun down the line was not crossing his fire properly and his gun was not very effective in stopping the advance," he continued.

"I hurried along the french and took over the gun, corrected, the fire, and began to rake the enemy." The Nipponese tide was sent fleeing in disorder.

Chwang did not escape unscathed, for a bullet wounded him in the hand. "I didn't realize it until the battle was over," he reported; "my hand just felt hot where the bullet had hit."

"All this makes it hard for me to understand why the Japanese were able to fight their way down the Malayan Peninsula so quickly," he added.

At present a member of the Quartermaster Corps, Chwang feels that he will best be able to serve as a liaison officer with the combined Chinese-American armies because of his specialized knowledge of the military organization of the two forces.