..............Katherine Ward

A Birthday in China

(Photo: Passport photo taken in 1925, 2 years before the described event) The year was 1927. Chiang Kai Shek's army was marching north from Canton, trying to unify the country. He marched with one division toward Shanghai. Another division which had a Russian advisor and was reported to be anti-American was marching toward Nanking, where I was a language school student. Our American Consulate had warned all "nonessential" Americans in the city to be ready to leave on a moment's notice, if the Consul deemed it necessary.

To this end each of us had packed a "flee" bag with some nonperishable food and a thermos bottle to be filled with boiled water whenever evacuation orders arrived. Since there were no telephones in this city of a million people, the Consul had appointed a contact person in several different areas who would receive emergency messages.

As the invading army neared Nanking, contact persons were notified by Consulate messengers riding bicycles, and our area man reached us. We grabbed our "flee" bags, hopped into a rickshaw, and rushed to the Consulate, which was near the city wall and the Yangtze River. We climbed the city wall from the inside and jumped down on the outside upon a narrow strip of land that bordered the river.

Sailors from an American gunboat that was anchored in the middle of the river put us in small boats and quickly headed away from shore. Before we reached safety in the middle of the mile-wide Yangtze River, shots were fired at us by soldiers who had reached the city. When darkness arrived we were removed from the gunboat and taken up river to a British freighter that had unloaded its cargo but could not reload. We climbed up a rope ladder to the ship's deck and then climbed down another ladder to the empty cargo hold. As we stretched out on gunny sacks to sleep, my neighbor looked at her watch and realized it was after midnight. A new day had arrived, my birthday. So she sang "Happy Birthday," to me--on this, my most memorable birthday!

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