Stephanie Croston

    It's been 50 years since Gene Gausman of Seward served in Taiwan, and he's recently been recognized for his role.
     Gausman received two medals from the Republic of China that are awarded to members of the U.S. military who helped with operations against Red China in 1958. He has applied for an Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal issued by the U.S. but has not yet received it.
     The Badge of Honor or the 823 Bombardment is awarded to U.S. and ROC personnel who were part of operations against Red China between Aug. 23, 1958, and Jan. 1, 1959. The Mutual Defense Medal is awarded to those who served on Taiwan between 1955 and 1979. Both are awarded by Taiwan, Gausman said.
     "I always wanted to be a Marine," he said. "I joined at the end of Korea and left and the beginning of Vietnam."
     Because he was a single man, he volunteered for different assignments to allow the married men to stay with their families, he said.
     One of the reasons he chose the military was so he could travel.
     "All my life I've had problems with the horizon," he said. "I want to know what's on the other side."
     Gausman was a staff sergeant and an avionics technician for the U.S. Marine Corps and repaired electronics and radar systems on airplanes. He was the NCO in charge of night radar for the Marine Corps jet fighter squadron VMF-314, he said May 14. The squadron was one of three fighter squadrons deployed from Atsugi, Japan, to a Nationalist Chinese Air Force base near PingTung, Taiwan. He was there from August, 1958, to April, 1959.
     "I'll always remember PingTung, Taiwan, as being a place where strange things happened," Gausman wrote in his notes.
     "Our first night at PingTung was memorable. We Marines weren't aware that the entire perimeter of the base was ringed with anti-aircraft emplacements. The Nationalist Chinese Air Force also neglected to advise us that they had chosen 9 p.m. that evening to test fire all of the emplacements. Things got interesting for awhile."
     Their normal routine was to work from 4 to 11:30 p.m. or when they were done, whichever came first, he said. Each crew included eight to 10 people, and each member specialized in a certain area. His crew focused on radar systems, while another worked on radios.
     As the one in charge, Gausman was responsible for assigning jobs, making decisions and helping solve problems.
     The Marines had a "hot pad" with four planes, pilots and crews ready to launch on a moment's notice. They were ready 24/7, he said. The goal was to have two planes in the air within two minutes when the order was given.
     During his time in Taiwan, the Marines supported the Nationalist Chinese government during a confrontation with Mainland China over the Quemoy and Matsu Islands in the Taiwan Strait. Fighting began Aug. 23, 1958, with an artillery bombardment of the islands by the Mainland Chinese.
     "The role of our squadron and two sister squadrons was to fly continuous combat air patrols over Taiwan," Gausman said. "Nationalist Chinese planes were shot up fairly frequently. The Americans were not in a lot of firefights."
     That was because the Americans were ordered not to engage unless fired upon, he said.
     When the firing system was locked on a target, he said, pilots heard a constant 800-cycle tone in their headsets. One pilot insisted that the tone was broken in every plane he flew, but sub-sequent checks found the system was working fine.
    
    Eventually, that pilot got his hearing checked and found he simply could not hear the 800-cycle tone.
     The Marines flew the Douglas F4D "Skyray" fighters, also known as "Fords," he said. In addition to the combat patrols, the pilots also flew cover for night air drops and surface supply runs to the islands.
     "In military slang, 'we had their backs,'" Gausman said.
     The F4Ds were all-weather night fighters, as opposed to the American F-86s the Nationalist Chinese used and the MiG-17s the Red Chinese flew. In addition, they held the world's record then for time from a dead stop to 50,000 feet. Each also carried four Sidewinder missiles.
     The Sidewinder air-to-air heat-seeking missile was in its developmental stage during the 1950s, and it was used by various fighter squadrons, including Gausman's.
     "In an operation so secret even the Sidewinder's manufacturer wasn't aware of it, two Marine Corps officers and five technicians retrofitted 20 National Chinese F-86s to each carry two Sidewinders," he wrote. "Jury-rigged might be a better term than retrofitted, as the F-86 was never designed or hard-wired to carry air-to-air missiles."
     The Sidewinders allowed the Nationalist Chinese to shoot down MiGs from a half-mile away instead of engaging in dogfights, he wrote.
     Other planes Gausman and his crew serviced included the F3D "Sky Knight," the F2H "Banshee," the F9F8 "Baker Cougar," and the F4 Phantom 2, which was the workhorse in Vietnam, he said. The Sky Knight had a rear-view radar system, he said.
     "They were fairly complex systems," he said.
     When he started, they still used vacuum tubes. By the end of his tenure, they were switching over to transistors.
     "We Marines arrived on Taiwan the last week of August, 1958," Gausman wrote in his notes. "On the eighth of September, no less than Mao Tse Tung himself announced that any Marines still on Taiwan on the 11th would die on Taiwan. We ignored him and went about our business of setting up operations. On the 10th, he gave us a two-day extension and made the deadline the 13th. The 13th came and went with no further threats."
     It wasn't all serious, however. Gausman recalled a couple incidents that showed the lighter side of life on a military base.
     "Imagine, if you will, a taxi strip a half mile long and 200 yards wide, with nothing or no one else on it but a buddy of mine, Don Stull, and I walking down the middle," he wrote. "Somehow, a Nationalist Chinese Air Force Lieutenant on a bicycle managed to run into us from behind. We all three wound up on the deck. The Lieutenant jumped up, apologizing profusely. The whole scene was so utterly ridiculous all Stull and I could do was lie on the concrete and laugh."
     He also described Marines who wanted to make their tents more comfortable with benches, wash stands and other amenities. Lumber, however, was hard to come by and the lumber yard on the air base was heavily guarded. One evening, two of Gausman's men got caught taking a couple boards.
     "The next night, they recruited two more men, swiped a 2 1/2 ton truck and drove right out into the middle of the lumber yard. Three men loaded lumber while a third stood looking official with a clipboard, calling off dimensions and quantities," Gausman wrote.
     The sentry watched but did nothing.
     "After the lumber had been distributed among the various tents, the truck was returned to its origin," Gausman wrote. "'Never let it be said my men were not well trained in the fine art of mis-appropriation."
     While in Taiwan, Gausman learned some of the language and remembers enough to use it on telemarketers, he said with a smile.
     His initial training came in Memphis, Tenn., and then he spent eight months in Jacksonville, Fla., before being sent to Taiwan. When he returned from his tour, he spent nine more months in Memphis.
     Taiwan was not Gausman's first tour of duty. He was first sent to the Middle East where he was stationed on the Lake Champlain, an aircraft carrier. During that tour, which was at the peak of the Cold War, he was able to visit Spain, France, Italy, Turkey and Greece.