Invasions, Ltd.

On the rocky island of Tungyin, 50 miles off the coast of Red China, is the headquarters of a little-known military unit called the Anti-Communist National Salvation Army. The secret army, 30,000 strong, is Chiang Kai-shek's instrument for the long-promised return to the mainland. The troops are trained as guerrillas, armed with U.S. weapons, and come largely from the mainland coastal provinces.

But where the troops go or what they do is a tight secret.

That secrecy made a news item from Red China all the more interesting last week. Radio Peking trumpeted an announcement that Communist security forces had "wiped out" 172 commandos who had secretly landed in coastal Kwangtung province last fall. The Communists claimed that the interlopers planned to set up a "guerrilla corridor" in Kwangtung "to open the way for a subsequent military adventure of invading the mainland." To back up the story, Communist newspapers splashed front-page pictures of the captured agents and their stockpiles of U.S. rifles, grenades, and plastic demolition equipment.

The story might have been brushed aside as another propaganda tidbit, but the official Nationalist Central News Agency quickly verified it. What's more, claimed Taipei, the guerrillas tied up 100,000 Communist troops for three months, inflicted 700 casualties, shot down a Red reconnaissance plane, and engaged in a widespread campaign of sabotage.

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