When I was awakened at 0400 hours and called to the base orderly room and 
told to report back at 0600 with duffle bag for a few days trip, I thought 
that another general somewhere up the line had wrangled an American water 
closet from the base engineer, complete with installation -- the last time 
this had happened we had picked up an air conditioner and a 50 KV 
generating plant in return for the "niceties" of life. But then the 1st 
sergeant added, "remove all insignias from the clothes you bring along."

Returning at 0600 after Raj, the native bearer had done a meticulous job 
of removals, I was given 5 sets of orders to report to Col. H. W. Ehright, 
for temporary duty, with transportation as directed, and was told that 
Captain McHenry would take me to my destination. A moment later he walked 
in, sans any insignias, and we started out by jeep for the pier. The only 
way to get from our base to the airfields is to take a launch across the 
Hooghly river. The jeep stopped at another orderly room.

The captain jumped out, returning with Mac Williams carrying a duffle bag. 
We piled out at the pier, put our things aboard a launch and headed across 
the river. Mac asked me what the hell was going on. His orders were a 
duplicate of mine. Finally the captain told us we were going to Kunming 
and that was all he knew at this time. Mac had spent a year in China 
before he was transferred to our base. All I knew about Kunming was that 
it served as the final destination for most of the material flown over the 
hump. the jeep we had taken from the other side of the river made the trip 
to the airfield at Barrackpore in record time and we stopped directly in 
front of a C-45 which, we subsequently found out, had been unloaded 
sufficiently to accomodate our party of four. 

The captain introduced us to Deng Fow, a tall Chinese lad, as we got into 
the plane, and then we were off. A few minutes later the first part of the 
mystery resolved itself. Deng was to be our interpreter and we were going 
from Calcutta to Kunming to play BRIDGE.

A few weeks before Mac and I had won the bridge tournament which had been 
sponsored by the American Red Cross, and here was a prize worthy of 
"Travel With Goren."

For reasons known best to the military, the flight over the hump is made 
at night and so we were finally escorted into the office of Col. Ehright 
in Kunming at 0400 the following morning. The colonel leaped up from 
behind his desk saying, "Thank God you are here" - they had misunderstood 
and have been waiting since 4 yesterday afternoon. He ushered us down the 
hall into a conference room which had been rearranged. The large 
conference table stood at one end of the room, laden down with plates of 
food, some of which were appreciably dented. In the center of the room was 
a square table around which were the four chairs occupied by three men and 
one woman all dressed in tight fitting, high buttoned plain blouses. They 
were in the midst of bidding a bridge hand and we sat down in the empty  
chairs spread about the room near the square table. Deng fow translated  
the bids after they were made, which were certainly gambling and the play 
of the hand that followed was reasonably good both in dummy play and 
defense. At the conclusion of the hand, the four players, all Chinese, 
stood up and Deng Fow introduced us to them and told us their names: ___ 
___, ___ ___, ___ ___, and ___ ___. 

___ ___ then spoke to Deng Fow who translated. They had been playing a 
four deal version of rubber bridge where both sides are vul from the first 
deal, the dealer vul against non-vul the second and third deal and both 
vul the last deal. Inasmuch as all of them would like to play against the 
American champions, would we mind continuing against two of them for one 
turn and then against the others? With Col. Ehright nodding assent we 
agreed and then Deng asked us if stakes of one dollar American per point 
was agreeable. At this point the Colonel announced this was fine. Mac and I 
gulped and sat down opposite ___ ___ and ___ ___. 

Mac got the high card on the flip for deal and as he started to shuffle a 
Chinese soldier in a magnificent uniform burst into the room, went over to 
___ ___ and started talking excitedly. ___ ___'s face blanched. He reached 
for a pen inside his blouse, took some papers from the General (as we were 
told later) signed them and pushed them away disgustedly, barked out a 
reply and then turned to Deng Fow, speaking quickly to him. The General 
had already left. Deng translated that ___ ___ was very sorry but they had 
been called back to Cheng-Tu, but they would complete the first deal. Mac 
dealt and looked at the following assortment

	A
	A
	A
	AKQXXXXXXX

and remembering the one hand he had kibbitzed, bravely bid int. ___ ___, 
visibly distraught at this being the first and last hand, looked at

	XX
	XX
	QJ10XXXXX
	X

and bid 2 clubs. 

Holding
	
	J10987
	J10987
	X
	JX

I decided to try 3 clubs in the hope that Mac would bid a major. ___ ___, 
with

	KQXXX
	KQXXX
	KXX
	---

in the face of the bdding decided to take the bull by the horns and bid 5 
clubs. Mac nonchalantly bid 6 clubs, still betting on his opponents. ___ 
___ bid 7 clubs, determined not to show her diamonds yet. I passed and ___ 
___ now decided his partner must have had a tremendous club hand and 
passed. Mac doubled and ___ ___ reconsidering gave her partner credit for a 
similar holding in clubs as her diamonds and passed. When it came back to 
___ ___ after some thought finally concluded that this was not the best 
suit. How to get a choice -- he redoubled. After Mac's pass the moment of 
truth landed in ___ ___'s lap. She thought for a few seconds and stood with 
her previous decision. I innocently led my singleton D, hoping for a rough. 
Mac won the ace and spread his hand announcing he was playing three rounds 
of trump.

___ ___ drew himself to his full height, reached into his shirt and pulled 
out a key with which he opened an attache case beside his chair. He counted 
out 152 one-hundred dollar bills, turned to ___ ___ and spat out one word, 
"idiot" and stalked from the room.

"Anti-Mao Leader is Accused of Too Much Bridge-Playing."

A brief excerpt:

"HONG KONG, March 23--A fondness for bridge that virtually amounted to an 
addiction was a cause of the downfall of Teng Hsiao-ping, general secretary 
of the Chinese Communist party, in the purges of Mao Tse-tung's Cultural 
Relovution, according to a Red Guard newspaper.
Mr. Teng's "derelictions" are portrayed in the Feb. 18 edition of Tung Fang 
Hung (The East Is Red), a Peking tabloid newspaper, received here recently.
...The Red Guard paper said Mr. Teng often had documents brought from his 
office to the club and would interrupt his bridge game briefly to put his 
"stinking signature" to the papers...
..."He was really a revisionist to the bone," said Tung Fang Hung.