In this hour he found too a letter from Chiang Kai-shek ordering the issue of a watermelon to every four men. Nothing in the course of Stilwell’s theater command was to have a more baleful effect. Coming at the darkest time in Allied fortunes, when Burma was crashing about his ears—due in large part, as he believed, to the G–mo’s other interferences—the watermelon order clinched his contempt for Chiang Kai-shek, and since this ultimately became known, it in turn angered the Generalissimo. The mutual effect was far-reaching.
