The Dead

Well, Frank Bessac was seriously, strenuously awesome. Sadly, he died this month at the age of 88.

You know an obituary is going to be good when it contains the words scholar and adventurer.

In 1949, as the forces of Mao Zedong routed the nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist revolution spread north and west across the vast Chinese frontier, Frank Bessac, a 28-year-old Fulbright scholar in anthropology, was living among the Mongols near what is now Alashan in the Gobi desert. 

Mr. Bessac was well informed about the conflict. As a former intelligence agent in China with the Office of Strategic Services — the World War II precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency — he had seen it coming. And when the Communist march threatened Inner Mongolia, where Alashan is situated, he knew he would be forced to leave the country. 

But rather than return to the United States by plane, Mr. Bessac, an adventurer by inclination who died this month, decided to take what he thought would be his only opportunity to explore the more isolated provinces of western China, which remained under nationalist control, so he set out over land. It would be a yearlong trek of about 2,000 miles layered with danger, privation and violence.

This guy was like friggin' Indiana Jones without the whip fetish!