Oral History Interview with Earle Soper, September 3, 2004 Page: 3

                                
particular outpost we were at there was generally eighteen marines and we would be there
for a month. Occasionally the Chinese communists would try to remove us from these
locations, and it was our job to discourage those attempts.
MR. COX: Would they do this at night or in the day time and would they be in force or
would they be like gorilla tactics?
MR. SOPER: Generally it would be at night and most common tactic was to take over a
train be it a freight train or a Chinese Nationalists army train. Probably some miles from
the outpost they would put a mine on the tracks and blow the tracks up thus causing the
train to stop. They would destroy the nationalist people who were running the train. Re-
lay a track and then come down on the train and as they would go through our outpost
they would try to shoot it up. On one occasion that happened when I happened to be
there one night. The train came down and went through the outpost and fired a few
rounds at us but kept on going.
MR. COX: Now did the marines or the nationalists pursue these trains? They knew it
was on a track it's not going anywhere except on that track.
MR. SOPER: Frankly, after it left our area, I can't tell you what happened. I don't
know. Occasionally they would cause some civilian casualties along the way when they
put a mine in the track. On one occasion I can remember several Chinese men came in

with the long poles over their shoulders with a basket on each end and one particular
occasion they had children, made you feel uncomfortable thinking about it because these
children had been caught in a mine explosion. All we had was a medic with us and all we
had available was some sulfa powder to put on the wounds. Fortunately a train came
down several hours later, we were able to stop it and put the children on to take them into

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