... amongst the first evacuations from Weihsien,
September 1945 ....
September 10, 1945: Six Chefoo School children lined up to board U. S. cargo plane at Weihsien for flight to OSS base in Si-An: Left to right: Raymond Moore, David Allen, John , Mary, Jamie, Kathleen Taylor. The four Taylor children were reunited with their parents, Reverend James and Alice Taylor, the next day after a separation of 5 1/2 years. They were also introduced to a little brother, Herbert, , almost 5 years old, whom they had never seen before. Notice children wearing winter coats in September's heat.
I remember September 10, 1945, the day six of us Chefoo children were flown out of the camp from the air strip beyond the walls -- Raymond Moore, David Allen, and four Taylors -- Kathleen, Jamie, John, and me. We were only the second planeload out. For how many weeks the B-24s and the B-29s had been dropping food and clothing into the camp. It seemed so easy. So onto the plane I carried my own tiny relief and memory package to drop to the girls who for almost three years had been my dorm mates in the Lower School Dormitory. Sorrow of sorrows! When the plane got into the air, Weihsien shrank to a tiny, unreachable target beneath us and I don't think the airplane windows opened. I curled up and went to sleep on a heap of used parachutes piled on the floor of the plan. When the plane touched down in Sian, the men at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) base served us ice cream and cake and showed us a Humphrey Bogart movie . I think it was "Casablanca." Kathleen and I slept that night in an officer's tent -- unaccompanied by bedbugs.
