"What Are We Usually Doing?"

For almost 20 years of war and revolution the pilots of the China National Aviation Corp. have flown some of the most hazardous commercial schedules in the world. Last week TIME Correspondent Robert Doyle accompanied C.N.A.C. Captain Herbert MacWilliams (TIME, Nov. 25) on his last two flights into embattled Suchow. Doyle's report:

At 3:30 a.m. Captain MacWilliams banged into the C.N.A.C. ready room at Shanghai's Lunghua airport. He went up to a blue-suited Chinese at a long counter marked "Briefing." "You going to Suchow, eh?" said the Chinese. Then, in a positive tone, he added: "Suchow will fall in the near future."

"Never mind that," said MacWilliams. "What's my load?"

"Rice. 47,000 Ibs. gross."

MacWilliams checked the weather and the military situation. A chalked caution on the briefing board read: "Suchow general situation calm. Fighting going on southeast ten kilometers away. Never circle over or come down to look at fighting area." MacWilliams stopped to talk with other pilots warming their hands over a coal stove. Like MacWilliams, a former U.S. Navy search pilot, they had come to China after the war because they liked flying and could make good money. In a busy month they could net as much as the equivalent of U.S. $1,900.

Outside on the apron, MacWilliams walked up to his silver twin-engine C-46--one of seven being readied for take-off--and rubbed his finger on its heavy underbelly. "Frost," he said. He called for a crew of men with long-handled mops to swash off the wings with antifreeze. "With this load," said MacWilliams, "we need every bit of lift we can get." He climbed into the plane, checked the guy ropes holding the huge burlap rice sacks, moved on to the cockpit and, with the help of his Chinese copilot, got his engines sputtering, then roaring. The plane took off.

"No Hero." Two hours later, as a belt of pink light appeared around the edge of an umbrella-like overcast, MacWilliams spotted his first landmark--the Huai River, a glint of grey on a black ground. On the plain below, the first signs of China's civil war appeared. The orange flashes of shell explosions pocked the grey blanket of half light. Just south of Suchow's loess hills, five villages arched in a semicircle burned brightly.

At Suchow, MacWilliams eased his plane into position beside a string of C-46s. A truck pulled up to his plane to unload the rice; his return load of soldiers was already waiting to board the plane. MacWilliams joined a group of American pilots beside one of the planes. As they talked the thump of artillery and aerial bombs was audible in the distance.

One pilot pointed toward four olive drab Chinese air force transports across the field. "Looks as if the Chinese air force has just about pulled out," he said. "What are we doing here?" "What are we usually doing?" snorted another pilot. A short, young Chinese chief mechanic broke in: "You take me back to Nanking tonight, huh? I don't want to make no hero."

Within half an hour MacWilliams was winging south toward Nanking. There he waited nearly four hours for gasoline. He ate a meal of rice and meat stew scooped out of a big pot in the chow tent, and at regular intervals argued with the ground crewmen to get going on gassing. By noon he was on his way back to Suchow with another load of rice.

"Rubber Planes?" When he landed again at Suchow, evacuation jitters had already seized the troops awaiting air transport. Soldiers, ignoring orders, were fighting their way on to planes already on the field. Intermingled in the disorderly jam of troops, women dressed in soldiers' uniforms struggled to keep squalling infants from getting crushed. "My God," drawled a tall Texan, "they must think these planes are made of rubber."

At the open hatch of one plane, a man climbing up the ladder was blocked by another soldier. They wrestled at the hatch, lost their footing and thumped heavily to the ground. A C.N.A.C. ground crewman, a tall youngster in a black cap, screamed at the soldiers: "Stop! Stop! You are mad!" An angry red crawled up the taut vocal cords in his neck. "You are a disgrace, a disgrace to China!" Heedless, the soldiers stepped over their comrades still pummeling each other on the ground and jammed into the plane.

After MacWilliams' rice load had been shoved out on to the ground, supply troops and a group of Chinese army wives began clambering aboard his plane. The manifest for this trip listed a load of 36 pieces of baggage and 36 soldiers. Forcing his way into the packed cabin, he counted 126 crates, bundles and gunnysacks, and 69 people. MacWilliams shouted for the commanding officer and forced him to toss off half the luggage and cut the number of people to 50. "I'm still 5,000 pounds over," he said as he gunned his engines, "but it's a good day. With all this high pressure we'll make it."

How to Relax. It was 5 in the afternoon before MacWilliams had hustled the second load of soldiers off his EUR-46 at Nanking's military airfield. Soon he was cruising back over the Yangtze Valley rice paddies toward Shanghai. Flicking on the automatic pilot, he leaned back and hung one leg over the arm of his pilot's seat. "One thing you learn fast out here," he said, "and that's how to relax. You just have to put the plane up there, snap on the auto pilot and sit back. It's the only way we can fly as much as we do." In a single year MacWilliams had piled up more than 1,800 hours flying time, more than 150 a month. "They pay well," he said, "but it's tough. I don't get to see much of my wife and little boy."

He had ranged all over China in 2 1/2 years--Shanghai, Nanking, Hong Kong, Peiping, Mukden. "Today was especially tough," he said. "By the time we get back to Shanghai it will be 16 hours out for me --and only eight hours flying time. We get paid only for flying time. Then all that scrapping at the field to keep from getting overloaded. It was Mukden all over again. You can tell when they get that look in their eyes."

MacWilliams swung straight in his seat, buckled his safety belt and started to let down. Darkness was closing in. "This is the time I hate. I'd much rather have full darkness." He shrugged. "Wonder where it'll be tomorrow."

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