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New Chinese Teacher

“We have a teacher for you,” Mrs. Murray said. “She  is Chinese,  and from a very prominent family here in Tsingtao. Her name is Mrs. Djung. I have told her all about you, and she is looking  forward to meeting you. She has two very lovely daughters.”

It was several weeks before the Murrays left and I spent as much time with them as I could. Col. Roston agreed to my continuing with my studies and had Stevenson extend my gate pass. With Mrs. Djung’s address written in both English and Chinese characters I set out one day soon after the Murrays left to meet my new teacher. I wanted to take a rickshaw but none of the rickshaw boys could read so I walked. I knew the general location of the address, along the seawall that I had often walked after my Chinese classes.

Often on my long walks from the Murrays into town I wondered who lived in these grand stone houses that faced the sea. They had to be rich. Some of the houses had shiny black rickshaws parked in front. I soon found the house I was looking for, set back from the road behind a high stonewall. Like on most walls in Tsingtao, along the top, pieces of glass were embedded in the concrete. Stone steps led up to the doorway. I rang a bell and listened. I could hear it ring inside the house.

An amah in black-and-white dress opened the door. I said in my best Chinese that I would like to see the lady of the house. She put her hands to her mouth and chuckled. I was used to this by now. Chinese didn’t expect white men to speak their language, and if they did, they laughed. It was annoying. I was about to admonish her when Mrs. Djung appeared. She wasn’t anything like I expected. She was quite stunning, a very proper Mandarin Chinese lady.

She was, indeed, handsome, and very dignified. She was unusually tall, for a Chinese, standing about five-eight or nine. Her hair had strands of gray and was drawn back into a bun. She wore octagonal glasses, without rims. She reached out her hand and smiled. It was a frozen smile, like on a porcelain figurine.

“Mrs. Murray has had nothing but nice things to say about you,” she said. Her accent was very British. Her coldness vanished, and I found I was beginning to like her. As she led me into the house, still holding my hand, two young women appeared from another room. “These are my daughters, Mae and Rose,” Mrs. Djung said.

“Mother is very pleased that a foreign student is coming to spend time with us,” the girl named Mae said.

She was dressed in western clothes, a woolen plaid skirt and a heavy knit sweater. Like her sister Rose, who was dressed much the same, she was very pretty. I stumbled for words and didn’t quite know what to say. I could feel the palms of my hands grow wet, and I wished to drop Mrs. Djung’s hand.

“Mae is right,” Mrs. Djung said. “We are looking forward to having you with us. So come in and sit down and tell us about yourself.” I explained briefly about my studies with Mrs. Murray, and we conversed for a bit in Chinese. At first I was embarrassed, speaking Chinese, but that soon passed when neither she nor her daughters laughed. The conversation returned to English, and it was obvious they wanted to practice their English.

“We are having an early dinner,” Mrs. Djung said, “and we hope that you can stay. We can get better acquainted, and tomorrow we can begin our lessons.” I said I could stay. “Dr. Fenn will be here. He’s a professor at the University  of Shanghai, visiting Tsingtao for a few days. You will like him.” “Maybe you will be more comfortable in the study,” Rose said. “We have to leave you alone while we get ready for dinner. Mother supervises the kitchen. We are having northern Chinese food. I hope you like Chinese food, do you?”

The study was paneled in dark mahogany with fine oriental rugs on the floor. Behind a glassed-in bookcase were rows of books. I glanced at the titles, some Chinese, a few French but mostly they were English. Several photograph albums sat on an oval table near the windows. “You can look at the albums if you wish,” Rose said and left. I was alone. I felt like I was ma museum.

I was curious about the albums. There were three, and I began looking at them starting with the largest one first. Captions under the photographs were in English. The shots were unlike any I had seen before. There was a beach scene, two people walking up a sandy beach, but you could not see their faces. The photograph was taken from the back and showed their footprints in the sand. Another was a silhouette of two people sitting on a wall, facing one another, but they were totally in the dark,  and again you could not see their faces. The background  revealed an open sea with a setting sun reflecting  upon the water. Junks in the far distance left their wakes upon the still water. These were not like the photographs  we Marines took-photographs  of us standing posed in front of temples, sitting in rickshaws, clowning around at the beach, and with us always facing the camera. These were so different. Whoever it was, they took photographs  of details rather than whole subjects. There was a close-up of the peeling bark on a tree. Another one was the crevasse between two rocks, with a blade of grass growing in the opening. They reminded me of pictures you see sometimes in LIFE magazine, when the photographer  tries to be creative.

Dinner was a formal setting: napkins  in silver holders, cutlery laid out in proper order next to the plates, two types of drinking  glasses,  both cut crystal. There was no revolving centerpiece like I had seen in most restaurants. When we were seated, with Mrs. Djung at one end of the table and Dr. Fenn at the other, the servants began to arrive with platters of food. Mrs. Djung explained each dish. They were delicious. I favored most,  a dumpling  called  djow-dze. Mrs. Djung  was very pleased when I had several servings.

Dr. Fenn was very polite. He spoke slowly, choosing each word carefully. He was a frail man. He was dressed in a long robe, like the Chinese gentlemen I had seen in cabarets, with wide sleeves in which he often slipped his hands when he wasn’t  using them. His fingers were long and delicate,  and his wrists so slender they appeared  they might break if he picked up a weight. He didn’t talk directly to me but through someone else. “How does Mr. Stephens like Tsingtao?” he would ask Mrs. Djung, and the others at the table would all turn to me for my answer. I didn’t mind. Maybe it was the custom, I being the youngest  one there. I found it rather amusing.

“Does Dr. Fenn live in Shanghai?” I asked Mrs. Djung, and everyone turned to Dr. Fenn. I could play the game too.

The conversation drifted from one thing to another, with occasional questions as to what my thoughts were about the matters they were discussing, and then it turned to literature. “Dr. Fenn and I were discussing an issue the other day,” Mrs. Djung said, “and maybe you can help. We have read so much about Western culture, and now we have a foreign student among us to explain it.” I smiled, and said I would be pleased to help in any way I could. I liked Mrs. Djung.

She continued. “Tell me,” she said. “Do you think the philosophy of Kierkegaard had much influence on Christianity or led to the philosophical existentialism movement?”

“Huh?”

“Kierkegaard,” she repeated. “You know, Jean-Paul Sartre.” “Huh?”

Our conversation after that changed to other more mundane topics, like how much effort it takes to make a good djow dze. “You know, no two cooks make them the same way.” I said that was nice to know, and no one bothered to ask me any more questions.

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The Rape of Nanking

“In 1937, Japan launched a full scale invasion of China,” he began. “That same year the Nanking Massacre took place, better known as the Rape of Nanking. The American gunboat USS Panay was bombed and sunk near Nanking. Japanese troops soon occupied all of North China. All foreigners, non-Chinese that is, were herded into concentration camps. The Murrays were among them. “

The three of us, Lt. Harper, Whittington and me, became mesmerized by the tone in his voice. He spoke with conviction. To win a point, like the Sophists, he asked questions that we couldn’t answer. “Do you know where I am leading? No. Well, let me tell you, the Japanese didn’t travel alone. They brought their women with them. Their women! Only they were special women. They were sex slaves. This is what Clara Murray became, a Japanese sex slave.”

The words came as a chill wind but without the cold. Lt. Austin hesitated, as though waiting for a question he knew we wouldn’t ask. Letting his words sink in, he continued: “Instead of sex slaves, the Japanese called them jugun ianfu, meaning military comfort women. It’s a euphemism for enforced military sex labor for the Japanese Imperial Army in the name of Emperor Hirohito. It’s the Japanese way of hoping to obscure the dreadful reality behind the term. The number of victims involved is estimated at nearly 200,000, though it is possible that the figures are even higher. Who were they? Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipina, Indonesian, as well as Dutch women taken prisoner in the Dutch East Indies.”

Incomparable Japanese Atrocities

Suddenly the world before me lit up, as if one of those Nip memie bombs had exploded right before my very eyes. This was no dud. Lt. Austin’s words were a sledgehammer blow right in the midsection. As a movie opens up on the silver screen, suddenly it was all there. Ever since Okinawa, something had been deeply puzzling me. I had found it too horrible to talk about, even with my Marine buddies. There are some things we bury deep inside ourselves and this was one of them. When we were mopping up in the south, we entered the caves where the Japanese had been holding out. Only after intense shelling and with Napalm poured into the air vents were we able to flush them out. Not many surrendered, and those who did came out with their hands up, heads shaven, wearing only strips of loincloths for covering. Their Emperor wouldn’t be happy with them now, surrendering as they did, but still, we felt pity for them, until we entered the caves. Those who didn’t die from our shells and Napalm lay dead from their own hands. They had committed harikari. But there was a sight even more dreadful than dead Japanese soldiers who split their guts open with sabers or ended their miserable lives with bullets in their heads. Almost without exception, in nearly every cave, we found women who had been massacred, and all were completely naked. They had not a stitch of clothing on their bodies. Many had their hands bound behind their backs with cord or wire, wire that had cut so deeply into the flesh their hands were nearly severed. They had struggled. Sometimes it was less than an hour after a shelling when we stormed the caves, and already by then maggots began their work. It was a horrid sight that was to haunt us long after, one that had no explanation, until now.

The G2 officer must have been able to read my mind. “You saw it on Okinawa,” he said. Turning to Whittington, he asked, “And you too. What did you see?”

“I especially remember one clear, warm day,” Whittington began. “It was sunny, about our 79th or 80th day of fighting, and we were on the southern tip of the island. We were on a high cave-infested bluff overlooking the South China Sea. Navy ships were cruising just off shore blaring surrender messages through their PA systems. Navy sailors with rifles were exchanging fire with Japs we could not see. I was in a group of ten or fifteen Marines wrestling with 55-gallon barrels of napalm. We were pouring the stuff down the cave air vents. Gunfire and grenade noises were everywhere. Every once in a while a Jap soldier or an Okinawan woman would appear out of nowhere and jump off the cliff. I remember it as one of the most surreal moments of my life.”

“Did you go into the caves?” Lt. Austin asked.

“Yes, and there were the women who didn’t jump. They were dead.”

Lt. Austin began again. “Toward the end of the war, the supply of women was dwindling, and there was more indiscriminate kidnapping of women by the Japanese Imperial Army under the enforcement of the Military Compulsory Draft Act in 1943. This is what you saw on Okinawa. At the end of the war, survivors of military sexual slavery were not informed of Japan’s defeat. During Japan’s retreat, to keep the facts from becoming known, they massacred these helpless women, by driving them into trenches or caves and either bombing or gunning them down.”

Lt. Austin went on to explain how each woman was made to serve an average of thirty to forty soldiers per day, with more soldiers waiting in line. Women who were not submissive were brutally beaten and tortured. Escape was impossible due to strict surveillance. Japanese soldiers were reminded that women were their common property.

“Women from the working class and farmer families were assigned to lower-ranking soldiers, while Japanese and European women were for higher-ranking officers. Clara Murray became officers’ property.”

Lt. Austin read from the dossier, a horror story from real life. It was part medical report, and mentioned things like antisocial personality disorders, shared psychotic disorder and psychotherapy. The report listed eyewitness confessions by prisoners who stated that every woman caught by the Japanese had been raped, without exception. When Japanese soldiers couldn’t  find women to rape, they had been seen copulating with sows in some districts. In places where the villagers had not had time to hide themselves  effectively,  the women were captured,  herded together, stripped naked, and driven forward by the imperial  army as beasts of burden until  they reached their destinations.

“Witnesses  reported  that Mrs. Murray was raped when she was eight  months  pregnant,”  Lt. Austin  continued. “On resisting,  she was beaten and her lower jaw was broken. Her daughter was born a month later. Clara Murray was twelve when they were captured. Age meant nothing to the Japanese. She spent six years handed from one officer to another, until she no longer had her senses. We want to treat this as war crimes,  but our difficulty  is that no one wants to come forth with their own testimony. Every witness points a finger at someone else. We had hoped Mrs. Murray and her daughter might help, until this last incident with the sergeant.”

“And you want me to see what I can do?” I said.

It was an ugly  affair and I didn’t think I could confront Mrs. Murray by asking such horrid questions,  but I had to agree that I would at least try. But there was no need. When I arrived at the Murrays the following  Monday afternoon, Mrs. Murray announced Clara was out of the hospital and that they were returning  to England. She  used the pretext  that they thought  it was best for Mr. Murray who could recuperate back home and regain bis health so that they could return to China.

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War Victims

One terribly cold afternoon in March as I walked through the pines on my way to the Murrays for my Chinese lesson, I seriously thought I might freeze in my tracks before I ever got there. Even with my parka pulled over my head, with only my eyes exposed, I could not keep out the cold. It was so bad Sammy and the other maintenance men couldn’t get the Jeeps nor any of the vehicles in Motor Pool started. To add to my misery, a biting wind blew in from the sea causing the tops of the pines trees above to quiver and moan mournfully. The wind, the cold, the stark bleakness, it all seemed to be a kind of premonition that something terrible was going to happen. When I reached the Murray’s house, I knew my instincts were right. Something was wrong. Little Sally wasn’t at the window. She had gotten into the habit of waiting for my arrival each afternoon, and I could count on seeing the curtains move as she peeked out a window. And when I knocked on the door, she’d open it slightly, quickly dash away, and I’d shout out, “Whoop, who was that?” I would look around and mutter aloud that it must be a ghost. I could then hear her giggling in another room. No curtains moved now; I had to wait several minutes before someone came to open the door. This time it wasn’t Sally. It was the amah. She said nothing and led me to the study and asked that I wait. I sat there for the longest time, wondering what could have gone wrong. It seemed an eternity, like on Okinawa when we heard a “screaming memie” overhead and braced for an explosion. More often than not, they were duds. Those were the worst kind, when nothing happened and you still waited. This was the same. The shell was overhead but when was it going to land?

Finally Mrs. Murray appeared. I could immediately see that she was distraught. She had been crying. “Clara is in the hospital,” she said sadly. She was searching hard to find the right words. “She attempted to take her life last night,” she said in a voice hardly audible.

I didn’t know what to say. Her words came like a powerful poison dropped into a crucible. Clara attempted suicide! I knew that she had been acting strangely and I suspected something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what it was. But I did reason that it had something to do with the war and the Japanese. Mrs. Murray turned away while she wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. Turning to face me again, she spoke of her husband. “Mr. Murray is taking it very badly,” she said and asked to be excused. I mumbled a few twisted words and quietly left. I didn’t feel the cold this time as I hurried through the pines and went straight to Fox Company headquarters.

“I’m glad you came straight here,” Whittington said with some urgency in his voice when I entered the office. “Lt. Harper, the new exec officer, said he wants to see you. The guy from G2 is with him now.” Before I went into his office, as I stood over the kerosene stove warming  myself, Whittington and Stevenson briefed me on Lt. Harper, USMCR. He had just arrived a few days before by ship from Stateside, Officers’ Candidate School in Quantico. “He’s a 2nd lieutenant wonder boy still wet behind the ears,” Stevenson said. Whittington agreed. The regiment had been getting a fresh lot of officers and green troops for replacements, and the old battle-hardened Marines had a difficult time accepting orders from noncombatants wet behind the ears. I gathered after talking to Whittington and Stevenson that this new man, Lt. Thomas P. Harper, was one of them.

I knocked and entered his office. I really didn’t expect to find Falstaff sitting behind the desk but I did. There he was, a fat, flushed-face Marine officer in full green uniform with an expert rifleman’s  badge on his chest above the left pocket. He was smoking a cigar, more for effect than for pleasure. I’m sure he wasn’t enjoying it, not like Col. Roston enjoyed his cigars. For a moment, I thought he might get sick as he took a puff. He was fat but I can’t say he was jolly. In fact, he was rather  grim and to the point. I wouldn’t  have taken  him seriously except for the question he fired at me.

“What do you know about Clara Murray?” he barked. I noticed at a glance that he had my record folder on his desk. His question threw me completely off guard. Why did he want to know about Mrs. Murray’s daughter? He didn’t tell me to “rest at ease” but I did anyway. I told him all that I knew, that Clara kept pretty much to herself, and not once had I talked to her directly, and that the Murrays had private matters they kept secret. It was true. I often wondered about the two girls, how they  fared  in a Japanese prison,  but it was never mentioned, and I didn’t ask. “That’s  about all I know about her,” I said.

I had forgotten all about the G2 officer that Whittington mentioned until I saw Lt. Harper glance in his direction. He was sitting in a chair to one side. Lt. Harper motioned to him and he stepped up to the deck. I recognized  him, Lt. Austin, the baby-face  officer from G2 who held the briefing before we first came ashore in Tsingtao.

“Did you know  she was dating a Marine from Baker Company?” Lt. Austin asked.

“I knew she was seeing someone from the base here. Mrs. Murray told me, and she was concerned who he was. But I didn’t know him.”

“You say you didn’t know him. You never saw him around?”

The lieutenant was trying to trick me into a trap, like a teacher does in school when she doesn’t believe a student.

“Sir, I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t know him but I saw him once when he came to pick up Mrs. Murray’s daughter in a Jeep.”

“But you do know that the girl is under age,” the lieutenant from G2 spoke up, “and that the sergeant could be charged with rape if the Murrays wanted to press charges.”

Good lord! My heart began to quiver, like the quivering of those trees in the pine forest that I had just walked through. The poor Murrays, all that they had suffered, and now this. My face must have registered my disbelief, and there was still more to come. Lt. Austin continued: “Then you didn’t know she was under age?”

“I never thought about it at all,” I said. The trees stopped quivering. I was being accused of something and wouldn’t let it happen.

I must have been convincing. Lt. Harper got up from his chair, walked around to the front of the desk where I stood and laid a folder down before me on the desk. He opened it and pointed to the heading. It was a dossier on the Murrays.

“Sir, you asked about the sergeant and Mrs. Murray’s daughter. What is it you want me to tell you?”

Lt. Austin came to my defense. He asked Lt. Harper that we all sit at the conference table in the adjoining room. He called for Whittington to join us. When Whittington came in and was seated, he began.

“The sergeant that’s involved with Clara Murray, we are transferring him immediately back to the States. The Murrays can still press charges-the girl is barely eighteen-but that’s not why we are here.”

That’s the way to go, I thought. Transfer the guy and forget about the girl. What agony had she suffered? Obviously, she loved the guy, enough to attempt suicide, but that didn’t matter, not with the Marine Corps reputation at stake. The two officers waited for my response. “You’re packing him off. Why are we here then?” I finally asked, bluntly.

“We are trying to gather evidence against Japanese, for their war crimes, and we want the Murrays to testify.”

I was more confused now than ever. Why did the Murrays have to testify? About what? Lt. Austin could see the puzzled looks on the faces of both Whittington and me. He spread open the Murray file on the table and once again began talking like a college professor.

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Emergency Rescue (Broken Arrow)

It was a nasty cold morning on December 17, 1945, when we boarded LST 755 in Tsingtao harbor. The rope flag halyard at the bow had to be thawed out before we could raise colors. There appeared to be even more junks in the harbor than when we first arrived three months before. We felt sorry for the Chinese sailors who stood on their decks, tending lines with trembling fingers. They shivered in the cold and we could just imagine them at sea in their leaky ships with waves of icy seawater breaking over their decks. It didn’t seem much better for the sailors aboard a rusted freighter who lined the deck and watched us depart.

A sharp, biting wind blew in from the sea, and regardless of us not being accustomed to the cold winters of north China, we braved the weather, lined the railing and watched the shoreline disappear into the distance. I had my Brownie box camera with me but my fingers were so numb I couldn’t click the shutter.

We arrived at Peng Lai the following morning. Col. Roston and a small landing party were the first to go ashore. Whittington with a radio strapped on his back went with him, along with a LIFE photographer, an interpreter, two enlisted men and the Duck crew. I was pleased that we had an official interpreter, especially when I learned, even though I was beyond “what is the color of your rice bowl,” that he was to contact the communists and offer them reward money for caring for the pilot and crew member. He would also ask the communists for a “guarantee of safety” while our landing parties went to the downed aircraft to see what could be done.

Col. Roston and his men carried a briefcase packed with Chinese money. We watched them as they pulled alongside the LST before going ashore. “Hey, Whittington, you know how to use that thing,” Terry called out and Whittington gave him the finger. The second rifle squad and our machine gun squad were ordered to stand by. We would be boarding the second Duck to escort aviation personnel to the aircraft.

From the deck of the LST, we watched Col. Roston and his party draw near to the shore. About 500 yards before they reached their destination, a rowboat manned by four armed soldiers approached. From the LST, with rifles ready, we watched the soldiers board the Duck and place the rowboat in tow. Whittington reported over the radio that all was well, and that the soldiers were guiding them to an unmined stretch of beach. The Duck reached the beach, and as Whittington later reported, they caused concern when they left the water and drove up the embankment. Suddenly about a hundred Chinese troops appeared from nowhere and came running to assume positions along the parapeted top of a 50-foot wall fronting the sea. We lost no time boarding the remaining two Ducks and headed toward shore as fast as we could.

As we were rapidly closing the distance to the shore, we noticed the Chinese troops had disappeared; then but minutes later they had reappeared, this time wearing Japanese steel helmets. Whittington who was on the beach guided our two Ducks through the mines whereupon we entered a massive seagate. The Duck with our aviation personnel aboard headed directly for the downed aircraft. The others headed off in the opposite direction toward the town, with the briefcase filled with money. We were fearful for their safety.

The Tiger cat was undamaged, but the hardened ground began to thaw, making take-off impossible. We attempted to pull the plane to higher ground with the Ducks by attaching cables to each landing gear but that too failed. I was trying to get photographs with my Brownie when Stevenson came running. “I can’t believe it,” he said, out of breath. “Those commie bastards brought a carpet bag filled with American money and wanted to buy the plane.” There was no sale.

The lieutenant from G-2 took charge of operations. He lost little time climbing aboard the plane followed by the aviation mechanics and a demolition man from headquarters. We took position around the plane. Several dozen Chinese troops arrived and were helpful when they formed a cordon around the plane and kept the local Chinese from approaching closer than 500 meters. The men with the moneybag left.

We had to complete our mission before nightfall and get back to the LST. The men worked quickly. They removed heavy cameras from the nose of the aircraft, and stripped the navigation equipment. They carried two 5-gallon Jerry cans of fuel aboard and returned with empty cans. The last Marine to leave the aircraft was the demolition man. He set a charge, timing it to go off in an hour, enough time for us to get back to the beach. We returned to the seagate as quickly as we could. The third Duck with Col. Roston and his party had not returned. We waited for them as long as we could. Night was falling.

We still were standing on the beach, preparing to board the Ducks, when there came a terrific explosion. We turned to see the plane on fire. Darkness was almost upon us and still the other Duck was not in sight. We had no alternative but to follow orders and return to the LST. We could only make wild guesses what had happened to Col. Roston and his men. As we returned to the LST, we could see the silhouette of the burning plane against the night sky.

Back aboard the LST, we stood at the railing searching the darkness, looking for some sign of the others. We were thinking the worst when we heard shouts coming through the darkness. The Duck was returning. We gave a shout of victory. They had made it! They had out-smarted the communists. A few minutes later and we could hear their voices, more clearly now, and then their laughter. We knew that sound. Oh, how we knew it-drunken Marines. The LST opened the gate, lowered the ramp and the Duck drove aboard.

Whittington gave the account of what had happened. The town of Peng Lai had anticipated the arrival of the Marines and was waiting with full honors. The streets through which they were escorted were emblazoned with freshly painted posters in English, decrying US interference in Chinese internal political problems, and at the same time fervently wishing long life for Presidents Harry Truman and Mao Tse Tung.

They were taken to the office of the Mayor, Mr. Ba Nan Kong, and introduced to Brigadier General, Sun Rai Fu, and Commander of the Tung Pei Hai Military area, and Mr. Chang Hsao, editor of the local newspaper. A banquet hall where they dined was also plastered with banners, together with pictures of Mao, and a flaming red map of China. “According to the map,” Whittington said, “practically all of China was in communist hands.” Gen. Sun Rai Fu refused to accept the money offered by Col. Roston for safeguarding the aircraft.

The dinner party at the Mayor’s house was a full-blown ten-course affair with various wines, brandies and palate cleansers, served by a battalion of waiters. After almost a week onboard the LST, the banquet meal was an unexpected treat. The Marines were completely baffled by the feast, and after months in the field, they were certainly not the most refined dinner guests ever to share the Mayor’s table. The drinks were generous. One Chinese host became a bit loud and offered continuous toasts, which only served to increase the guests’ alcohol intake. Whittington admitted he tried to follow the Colonel’s lead, as far as table manners went, and thought he did fairly well for a slightly tipsy 19-year old kid from Saugerties, N.Y. However,  the  Marine  next  to  him,  to everyone’s dismay, drank the contents of his finger bowl, which he thought  was just  another  exotic  course. “It was like something from out of Terry and the Pirates,” Whittington said, “although no ‘Dragon Lady’ ever appeared.”

With the sky over Peng Lai ablaze in a red glow from the burning aircraft, LST 755 departed that same evening for Tsingtao. It was a two-day voyage at best. We spent Christmas Day at sea. To brighten up morale, several men put on a skit, which ended abruptly. Terry went drag with a mop for wig and padding under his shirt for breasts. A sailor made a witty remark, Terry punched him out, and the fun ended in a brawl. No sooner was calm restored than an oil line broke and sprayed oil over all our bedding: We spent the night cleaning up the mess. But Fox Company, 29th Marines, did have a Christmas feast, a day later on December 27^th back at the Strand Hotel.

On December 31^st I took Ming-Lee to a dance at the Shantung University Gym, and Stevenson took Judy. Ming-Lee looked very lovely in a western dress and high heels. I was experiencing a feeling I never had before. Could it be that I was falling in love? But Marines don’t fall in love.

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