Shadow Warrior (3 page)

From 1912 to 1914, Elbridge was a Proudfit Fellow in Letters at Columbia. In 1914 he was accepted into the Ph.D. program in English at the University of Minnesota. While employed as an instructor there, he met and fell in love with Mary Margaret Egan, the daughter of one of nearby St. Paul's most prominent Catholic families. They were an unlikely couple. Elbridge, though still a young man, was evidencing that austerity, rigid self-discipline, and severity that would characterize the rest of his life. “Converts are painful people,” Elbridge's granddaughter would later observe. Margaret was pretty, outgoing, liberal, and liberated. Her father, William H. Egan, born in St. Paul in 1859, was the son of Irish immigrants. Like Elbridge's Puritan ancestors, he had grown up on the frontier; the upper Midwest was the scene of the last sustained fighting between Indians and whites. As a young man, however, William Egan had learned Sioux—even producing a Sioux-English dictionary—and he had made a fortune trading with the natives rather than killing them. The family archives boasts a photo of little Margaret sitting in the lap of the famous Sitting Bull, who was clad in native garb and top hat. The Egans lived in a small mansion on Summit Avenue just down the street from railroad executive Jay Gould. By the 1890s, William had accumulated enough capital to take the family on an around-the-world tour. John, Margaret's elder brother, attended Harvard.
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Margaret was an English major at the University of Minnesota when she met Elbridge. It was still rare for women to go to college, and she was one of the few female students on campus. Margaret and Elbridge had very different personalities—Margaret was affectionate and carefree, and Elbridge stern and intense—but they shared common values. First, there was their Catholicism, which at that time began to emphasize the Social Gospel that later developed into the Catholic Worker Movement led by
Dorothy Day. Elbridge had inherited the educated New Englander's enlightened attitudes toward race, and the Egans were Democrats in a region where Progressivism was at its strongest. The Colby's exhibited enlightened racial attitudes early on. Elbridge's great-uncle, Lieutenant Colonel Ebenezer T. Colby of the 4th Massachusetts, writing to his brother in April 1863, had said, “Several hundreds of the able bodied men have joined the Negro Regiment forming here. Their condition arouses my sympathies. I am becoming more and more interested in this oppressed race every day. I hope the Government will adopt a liberal policy respecting them.” Both Margaret and Elbridge also had a strong sense of service and a determination to make a difference.
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In 1915, Elbridge interrupted his studies—and his courtship—to volunteer for service with the Serbian Executive Committee of Mercy, a creation of the American Red Cross. Following the outbreak of World War I, the committee had devoted itself to aiding the wounded and displaced of the various Allied countries, especially Belgium and Serbia. Elbridge spent several months in the Balkans driving ambulances, delivering supplies, and helping to set up refugee camps. He was a Progressive abroad—a miniature Herbert Hoover—sharing American largesse and striving to make a better world. For his efforts he was awarded the Serbian Red Cross's Gold Medal and, after the Versailles Peace Conference, the Order of Mercy by Yugoslavia, Serbia's successor state.
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In 1916, Elbridge returned to his teaching post in Minnesota; he married Margaret the following year.
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When America entered World War I in 1917, Elbridge enlisted, hoping to be sent to France, where he could establish a combat record. Instead, to his deep chagrin, he was posted to Panama to serve in the detachment guarding the canal. The one bright spot was that Margaret was able to accompany him. At war's end in 1919, he resigned from the army, and, with a pregnant Margaret in tow, returned to Minnesota to resume his studies and teaching duties.

William Egan Colby was born in St. Paul on January 4, 1920. A year later, Elbridge earned his doctorate and then abruptly decided to reenlist in the military. In his memoirs, Bill recalled that his father “became anxious about his ability, as a struggling writer and underpaid teacher, to support his family of my mother and myself.” Indeed, so strapped was the young couple that they found it necessary to live with the Egans after returning from
Panama. “I went into the Army to keep the family decent,” Elbridge would later tell one of his grandsons.
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It was clear that eventually Margaret would become a modest heiress, but her Yankee husband had no intention of living off his wife. There was more than machismo involved; from an early age, Elbridge had had to assume familial duties; he was raised to be responsible, to take responsibility for those dependent on him, and then, of course, to breed responsibility. The army recognized Elbridge's previous service and advanced degree and granted him a commission. Thus, at the age of twenty-nine, Second Lieutenant Elbridge Colby embarked on a military career that would span four decades; ultimately, however, he would be noted more for his intellectual and pedagogical attainments than for his battlefield achievements.

The interwar army was small and dominated by southern whites—and as such its culture was a bit alien to Yankees like Elbridge and Margaret. The Colbys bounced around from post to post, landing, in 1925, at Fort Benning, Georgia, where Elbridge became involved in a racial incident that would change the course of his career. That year the army, rather unwisely, had assigned the all-black 24th Infantry Division to Benning, which was situated in the heart of the ex-Confederacy. The 24th had been established in 1869 and at that time had included African American veterans of the Union Army as well as freed slaves. The regiment was one of the “Buffalo Soldier” outfits that had served in the Indian Wars on the western frontier, in the Spanish American War, and in General John J. Pershing's punitive expedition against Pancho Villa in 1916. In 1917, 150 members of the unit had become involved in a vicious race riot in Houston.

While Elbridge was at Benning, a black soldier from the 24th was shot dead in nearby Americus, Georgia, when he refused to give up the sidewalk to a white. Subsequently, an all-white jury acquitted the shooter. Elbridge, then serving as Benning's publicity officer, wrote an outraged letter of protest for the post's newspaper, calling upon all soldiers, black and white, to declare support for their wronged comrade. His eloquent appeal was reprinted in
The Nation
magazine, creating a national uproar. With the Georgia congressional delegation calling for Elbridge's head, the black press and the biracial NAACP came to the young officer's aid, but the army also felt that it had to act. As punishment, Elbridge was to be assigned for a period to the 24th.
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Although the idealistic young officer hardly viewed his assignment as punishment, the Benning incident would mar
his career, and many in his family, including Bill, would later believe that it had kept Elbridge from attaining the rank of general.

In 1929, Elbridge, now a captain, was assigned to the 15th Infantry Regiment in Tientsin (Tianjin), China. Bill, who was nine years old when his father received the assignment, would spend the next three years in the Orient; it would be one of the formative influences of his life.

The 15th Regiment had initially served in China as part of the relief expedition that had ended the siege of foreigners in Peking during the Boxer Uprising (1899–1900). Although the regiment was withdrawn after the Great Powers crushed the rebellion, it was ordered back to China following the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912. Headquartered in Tientsin, it took its position astride the Peking-Mukden railway in January 1912; it labored to protect American interests during the tumultuous years of the 1920s, particularly when the Chinese Nationalists ousted the ruling dynasty and then split into communist and noncommunist factions. A prolonged civil war between the two groups ended with Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists driving Mao Tse-tung and the communists into the far northwestern reaches of the country.
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Despite this unrest, China was an attractive post for many Americans: alcohol was legal and plentiful, and the Great Depression lay half a world away. Elbridge was particularly excited about the assignment. China had occupied a special place in the hearts and minds of American Progressives. Bankers and businessmen dreamed of a “great China market,” while missionaries and engineers like Herbert Hoover labored to bring a better life to the inhabitants of the land that Pearl S. Buck would so movingly profile in her novel
The Good Earth
. Progressives had launched the “Open Door Policy,” which sought to preserve both Chinese markets and sovereignty, and many had embraced Chiang as the avatar of modernity. Tientsin promised to satisfy Elbridge's yearning for adventure and provide an outlet for his missionary impulses.

Elbridge, Margaret, and Bill began their journey to Tientsin on the East Coast in the fall, boarding a US Army Transport (USAT) in Brooklyn. The voyage proceeded down the eastern seaboard, where it encountered one of the gales that regularly visit the mid-Atlantic states with winter's approach. Farther south, the travelers encountered warmer weather and the stunning blue waters of the Caribbean. After a brief stop to allow passengers
to see the Canal Zone and the sights of Panama City, which were new to Bill, the ship continued on to San Francisco. There Elbridge and his family boarded the “doughboy special,” the USAT
Thomas
, a veteran of many transpacific runs. Following weeks at sea, the ship anchored at Chinwangtao, a major Chinese port on the Gulf of Chihli that served much of northern China, including Peking and Tientsin. Disembarking, the new arrivals boarded railcars for a six-hour trip along the Peking-Mukden railway to Tientsin, 167 miles to the southwest. At last, the replacements for the 15th arrived at Tientsin's East Station, there to find the regiment's service company waiting with teams of horses and baggage wagons. The new arrivals were soon marching along Victoria and Meadows Roads bound for the American compound situated in the old German concession.
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Tientsin, a city of four thousand foreigners and a million Chinese, was situated on a vast alluvial plain extending beyond Peking to the Gulf of Chihli on the Yellow Sea. It lay at the head of the Hai Ho, the “Sea River,” a short waterway formed by the confluence of the Grand Canal entering Tientsin from the west and the Pei Ho River flowing from the northwest. The Sea River meandered 40 miles to the southeast, where its mouth was guarded by the Taku forts. The Sea River was an important commercial waterway navigated by small steamers, seagoing junks, and gunboats of the international concessionary powers, those nations that during the past century had forced various Chinese rulers to grant them territory and economic monopolies.
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As far as the eye could see, the surrounding countryside was absolutely flat, dotted with small villages, brick kilns, and the mounds of countless graves. The climate in northern China was harsh. Summers were stifling and winters bitterly cold. Situated on the banks of the Sea River, Tientsin was sometimes flooded, especially in typhoon season. In the spring, northeastern China choked under a veil of dust blowing in from the Gobi Desert located 65 miles to the northwest. Because it was the gateway to Peking, the imperial seat, Tientsin was known as the Ford of Heaven.

The United States had obtained a concession in Tientsin in 1860 when it had become a treaty port. The Americans had formally ended their residency in 1896, and although US troops had joined in putting down the Boxer Rebellion in 1901, there was no official presence until the United
States took over the German concession in the aftermath of World War I. By 1924, Tientsin was garrisoned by British, French, Italian, Japanese, and American troops.

Foreigners were struck by the squalor and despair of the native sections of the city. The population—as initially perceived by the soldiers, at least—consisted of masses of dirty, crippled, stinking, terrible-looking beings. The half-clothed “coolies” sweated in the summertime and shivered in the winter. There were the ever-present rickshaw drivers, while other members of the lumpen proletariat, “like beasts of burden,” loaded and unloaded coal and other cargo from ships and barges. The natives' day-to-day existence seemed perpetually precarious. During times of famine, peasant families could be found around the rail station trying to sell their children.

By contrast, the foreign business sections of the city featured wide, paved streets flanked with stores whose windows displayed as varied an assortment of articles as any thriving Western city. One American, finding himself on Victoria Road in the British sector, observed that he might as well be on Bond Street in London or Fifth Avenue in New York. “The glamour of the place is beyond my power of exposition,” he wrote in a letter home. “[It is] the most cosmopolitan place I . . . have ever seen. In one block one may see an English, a French, an Italian soldier, a dozen Jap soldiers, a Jew drummer, an American expatriate [
sic
], a Russian . . . and a Capuchin monk.”
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Money went a long way in Tientsin. American soldiers were paid in gold, and the exchange rate was excellent. A bachelor officer could rent a room above the officer's club, but officers with families—such as Elbridge—had to find quarters outside the US compound, though still within the International Concession. The Colbys occupied an abode that would have been considered a mansion back in the States. Like other American families, they employed a domestic staff, including a “number one boy,” a cook, two maids, a gardener, and an amah (nanny) to look after Bill. Almost all manual labor in the concession was performed by Chinese. Even when in the field, the 15th Regiment had coolies to set up camp and do the cooking and washing. Low rent and cheap labor, unfortunately, rode on the backs of squalor and disease. Foreigners had to take extraordinary measures to protect their health. Virulent diseases such as smallpox and cholera were constant threats. Drinking tap water “was an open invitation to the agonies of amoebic dysentery,” according to the 15th's official historian.
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