Dung, Frogmen, a
Future President and Hemorrhoids
by Don Drewniak
The origin of
the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)
dates back to 1941 as the Foreign Broadcast
Monitoring Service. It monitored radio broadcasts
from foreign countries, particularly those of the
major World War II Axis powers – Germany,
Italy and Japan.
By the time I was drafted into the U.S. Army in
1967, it had been renamed the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service. I was stationed in the
United States Taiwan Defense Command in Taipei
from September 1968 to June 1970.
Although drafted for two years, I extended my
time in the Army to two years, nine months and
sixteen days (but who's counting?) Why? I had the
good fortune to have been promoted to Sergeant E-5
three weeks after my arrival in Taiwan. This
allowed me to bring my wife, Dolores, to Taiwan.
She secured a teaching position at the Taipei
American School several days after her arrival.
By extending my service time, she was able to not
only complete the 1968-1969 school year, but the
full 1969-1970 year as well.
There was a second reason. I worked in a
communications center in one of four watches,
each staffed with a combination of Army and Navy
personnel. Each watch was supposed to be run by
an E-8 or an E-9. However, the E-8 running the
watch I was in disappeared under mysterious
circumstances in February 1969 and rank-wise I
was next in line and became the watch supervisor.
This allowed me the luxury on days and nights
when the number of messages we processed (both
incoming and outgoing) was low-to-moderate to
read incoming messages that FBIS obtained by
monitoring mainland China and those of the Taiwan
government. Of the over one hundred that I read,
there are two that I have never forgotten.
Mao Zedong was born in 1893 and passed on in 1976.
He was a poet, politician, revolutionary,
military strategist and Marxist theorist who
founded the PRC (People's Republic of China). He
was the leader of China from 1949 to his death.
During his autocratic rule of China, it
transformed from a semi-colony to a world power.
While improving women's rights, literacy,
healthcare, education and life expectancy,
Chairman Mao, as he was known, was also
responsible to between 40 to 80 million deaths
due to persecution, starvation, prison labor and
mass executions.
Dung: My favorite FBIS report
came from mainland China wherein a farmer
supposedly fell from a second-floor hayloft into
a massive pile of dung. Sinking deep into it, he
was cut off from oxygen to the same extent as he
would have been submerged in water. He was
rescued after spending forty-five minutes in his
dung imprisonment. According to the Chinese
government, his survival was due to his non-stop
recitation of quotations of Chairman Mao.
One of 287 known Mao quotations: “When there
is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It
is better to let half the people die so that the
other half can eat their fill.”
Frogmen: The following came from
a radio broadcast by the Taiwan government. A
Chinese farmer escaped from mainland China by
leaving in a rowboat and heading to Taiwan. He
was found adrift two or three days later by a
Taiwan naval vessel. Both radio and television
carried coverage of his daring escape to freedom.
However, a subsequent report not available to the
public painted quite a different picture: A
farmer living on mainland China was kidnapped by
Taiwan frogmen and brought by them to Taiwan
where the combination of money and freedom
persuaded him to go with the daring escape story.
Ronald Reagan: Dolores and I
were meandering through a downtown Taipei area on
a Saturday afternoon. We passed by a number of
small shops stopping whenever there was something
of interest. The first was a shop that sold
televisions. A small black-and-white set was in
one of the two windows and on the screen was a
Ronald Reagan movie. The sound was loud enough
for us to hear. Chinese subtitles scrolled along
the bottom of the set. We broke in laughter when
Reagan asked, “Do you think I'm speaking in
Chinese?”
Hemorrhoids: We came to a dead
stop several shops past the television store. The
two windows were filled with large photos taken
before and after hemorrhoid removal.
My first day in Taiwan proved to be one of
the most memorable: "What Matta, GI,
No Work?"
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