Thread by @simonbchen

You know things are going into the toilet when your boss’s boss secretly gets your boss out without telling anyone else.
In late stage of Liaoshen Campaign of Chinese Civil War in 1948, as Republic of China Army (ROCA) strength got annihilated in successive battles of Tashan, /1

Jinzhou, and Heishan, the only reserve of strength left was garrison in city of Shenyang (Mukden). The overall ROCA commander for the region, General Wei Lihuang, was doomed with the rest of his troops in that encircled city, to defeat and eventual capture.
Or he thought.
His /2

boss, Chiang Kai-shek, who for so long had insisted upon ROCA holding every square inch of Manchuria to the last man, woke up to reality and finally honestly recognized the wretched catastrophe facing ROCA in Manchuria. Of course, by that stage, the entrapped troops /3

themselves were beyond hope of rescue.
So he secretly dispatched a C-47, to get Gen. Wei Lihuang out only, because clearly saving only the senior man mattered by then.
When Gen. Wei Lihuang’s Staff gathered at garrison headquarters the morning after for Daily Briefing, there /4

was of course no Gen. Wei Lihuang there. They waited and waited. He never showed up.
They shrugged. They left. They guessed at what had probably happened.
By the time the communists finally attacked and entered Shenyang, officers and men just casually shrugged their /5

shoulders and surrendered to communists—after all, once their own commander-in-chief had vanished without a trace and without telling anyone else, what’d be the point?
Also, that kind of reminds you of MacArthur bailing out of Corregidor under FDR’s orders in 1942, doesn’t it? /e