During the final weeks of World War II, John Birch, a 27-year-old intelligence officer in China, began mulling the same question facing American GIs all over the world: What am I going to do after the war?
Birch wondered if he should resume the Baptist missionary labors that brought him to China in 1940. Or go west to Tibet and beyond as an evangelist. Or return to the states to marry and find a role in his church.
He died a few days before the Japanese surrendered to the United States, shot in an unexpected run-in with Chinese communist soldiers. He did not have a post-war future as a man: His future was as a legend.
