About a week after our rescue, word flashed around camp that eleven more planes had been sighted on the horizon. This time they were coming from the opposite direction, the east. As they flew closer, it became obvious that these planes were no ordinary B-24's but the famed B-29's whose origin must then have been Guam or Saipan in the Pacific. Magnificent and silvery as they circled far above us, they seemed almost to fill the sky. To our amazement, these monsters also opened their bellies, and great cases of goods, literally tons of it, hurtled down all over the countryside around us.

At once the men, greatly excited, ran out into the fields to bring these cases back into camp. This job had to be done quickly if it was to be done at all. When anything unusual happens in China, no matter how isolated or deserted the landscape might appear to be, in a few minutes' time hundreds of Chinese will appear from goodness knows where. It is hard to conceive of a more unusual event for the farmers of Shantung than that fleet of B-29's dropping cases of supplies in their fields. As poor as they were, such a scattering of good things was not an opportunity to be missed. Almost before we in camp had recovered from the shock of this bombardment, we found the fields already swarming with Chinese, understandably pocketing and lugging away as much as they could. Naturally we rushed out to salvage as much as we could.

It was only when we got out there that we realized what a job lay before us. Those drops must have been hastily organized. In most instances, two oil drums had been welded together to make a hollow metal container about the size of a large sofa. Since the giant drums had then been packed solid with tin cans, they must have weighed at least a ton. Then that great load was hitched to one parachute—which was clearly marked: MAXIMUM LOAD, 350 POUNDS. Of course the parachute cables snapped at once and the loaded drums plummeted to earth like bombs. We found them split asunder, their contents of crushed cans scattered everywhere. We spent a hectic afternoon gathering in all those broken tins and carting them the mile or so back to camp.

Our problems that day were not confined to the haul work. Soon after the first drop, the eleven planes circled around in a wide sweep. Then to our mingled joy and horror, the big devils headed back toward us with their bellies open again. The crucial difference was that the fields were now crowded with both Chinese and internees. Still the planes came on and emptied their lethal loads in approximately the same spots. Amid shrieks from the farmers and, I must admit, a great deal of trembling and frantic running on the part of the rest of us, the great drums crashed to earth all around us. None of them came near me, but some missed four of my fellows by no more than fifteen feet. I shall never forget the sinking feeling when I saw four double drums thunder to earth just behind a large crowd of Chinese. Why no one was hit, I never knew.

The B-29's were not the only Western artifact which the farmers had never seen before. Many of the goods in the cases were equally strange to them. One was eating happily the contents of a large tube when, spying an internee poring over the same broken drum, and wanting to show off his English, he pointed proudly to the word "cream" on the label. Unhappily, his vocabulary did not include the word "shaving" just above it. Still another "rescued" a box of medicines. Before a nearby internee could stop him, he had downed in one gulp an entire bottle of vitamin pills. When Knowles told this story in our dorm that night, Sas Sloan said from his double bed in the corner, "I wonder if that poor chap has stopped running yet!"

Gathering in the scattered goods was more than worth the trouble. After the delicacies had been brought from the fields and stored away, the camp had a feast the like of which none of us had had for years: soup, meat, and tinned fruits—even fruitcake from home!

These visits of the B-29's continued for the next three or four weeks. Every four days or so the big birds would be seen again; the warning bell would sound, and the women and children herded back into the camp. Then, with mingled expectancy and dread, the men would go out again into the fields. The delivery improved steadily. Small wooden cases replaced the oil drums, and so fewer objects hurtled down without parachutes. Still the possibility of miscalculation remained; in every drop, there were three or four one-hundred-pound cases that came down without the aid of parachutes.

There appeared to be little communication between the air force at Saipan and the army from West China who bossed us. For that reason, signals were always getting crossed. Once the none too bright captain in charge of our morale, Captain Spofford—who will be described later—had, in preparation for a children's party, spread a yellow parachute over the backstop of the soft ball diamond. It was on this open space that all the women and children of the camp used to gather to watch breathlessly "the drops on daddy," as one child put it. Evidently the pilot of a B-29 took this yellow marker to be the drop signal, and let go with a large load right on target. To the horror of those of us looking on helplessly from the fields, we saw twenty or so cases crash among the terrified mothers and children and ten more go singing through the roofs of several rooms. Again, by some astounding miracle, no one was injured. Each time this sort of thing happened, one could not help saying, "This luck just can't hold!"

When the next flock appeared, those of us in the countryside almost got ours. We had now learned to wait on the edge of the fields while the vultures swooped twice. After two drops, they always turned east and fled home to Saipan. As usual, after the second run, we moved out to forage for the dropped supplies. Suddenly we all looked up. There, coming right at us was one lone plane that had turned back and was just about to open up for a final drop. It was too late to try to run anywhere so, for whatever reason, we all stretched out flat in the grain and cowered there waiting for the end to come.

Seven free boxes and many more gallon-sized tins came down. They fell with great earth-shaking thuds all around us—one of them about twenty feet from me. But none of us was hit. When at last, shaking in every limb, I lifted my head, I saw with relief the great plane winging east. I also saw crouching near me and white as a sheet, a large Scot named John McCracken, a man whom I admired very greatly as one of the wisest and strongest in the camp. I said to him, "That was the closest call of the whole damn war for me. This is the last time I go out among the corn to forage for Spam!"

"Yes," he replied, panting. "I don't think I'd mind dying protecting my country or someone I love. But I'll be damned if I want to be killed by a can of Del Monte peaches!"

To our great relief, this was the last we saw of the B-29's. In all fairness to the energetic and generous souls who sent them and who flew the planes, it should be added that those same peaches had the best taste of anything I ever put in my mouth.

In the first days after the rescue, we were ruled by the god kings: so, despite the bombings, we lived in a paradise of excitement. But such an ecstatic level of life can never last for long in this imperfect world. Ten days after our liberation, we heard with dismay of a coming change: our rescuers were to be replaced by a regular army unit. Poor souls, I thought. I would not want to be one of these merely human rulers, fated to succeed the gods!

Their entrance into our midst was befitting this pedestrian destiny. They came in by truck, rather than from the clouds. As we watched the thirty or forty of them clamber rather stiffly and glumly out of these mundane vehicles, it was plain to every disappointed internee that they represented the ordinary, run-of-the-mill G.I. rather than the Apollos of our liberation. In the thick-set, heavily mustached Colonel Brooks we had an able but—in comparison to the Gary Cooper who preceded him—unglamorous leader.

The G.I.'s never understood the resentment that greeted their arrival—how could they? It was inherent in the situation and mood of the camp, even before they set foot on the ground.

After all, we still had to remain in the squalor, the inconvenience and innate confinement of internment camp life. Shortly after he got there, the colonel had to announce this to us in a sober speech. There was, he said regretfully, no hope of the immediate repatriation by plane promised by our first rescuers. Most of us were far too healthy for that luxury. Unhappily, guerrilla bands had cut the railroad lines to Tsingtao so that there were, for the present, no means available of transporting us to a coastal port. The dismal result was we would have to remain in camp for at least another month, and possibly two, while the colonel tried to arrange some sort of transportation for us to our homes.

In spite of our additional supplies and freedom, the camp became suddenly more distasteful than ever. Now its tawdriness and drudgery were seen in contrast to a hope of immediate repatriation and long-forgotten tastes of civilization. What we had accepted as necessities of war became now unbearable irritations stemming from the inefficiencies of peace. As we listened to this dreary news on a chilly, gray afternoon, feelings of letdown burst in all their fury over the camp morale.

Apparently Colonel Brooks had already sensed the growing disenchantment; like every good officer, he was prepared with the army answer. Sagging spirits in the armed forces called for a trained morale booster. After he had made his sobering speech about repatriation, the colonel called Captain Spofford to the stand and introduced him to us as the man who would make our lives happier by bucking us up.

The good captain, in consequence, had most of us against him in advance. With his first words, he quickly lost more ground.

We all felt by this time a kind of alumni loyalty for "our camp." We were proud of the way the place had been organized and run; of how well it looked with its flowers and awnings, of what we had made with our equipment, and above all, of the ingenious ways we had found to entertain ourselves. We all found ourselves resenting it deeply when a newly arrived soldier would look at our compound and mutter, "God, what a dismal mess," or "How could you live in such a dreary place?"—in spite of the fact we had been making similar remarks ourselves for over two years.

When Spofford announced that he knew we'd had no good entertainment, and that his job was to bring us some "real amusement straight from Uncle Sam," our backs went up. He promised to get for us "as soon as humanly possible" baseball bats and balls, to organize checker tournaments for "oldsters and youngsters alike," and to run a father-and-son track meet the next day. He ended this part of his speech on a note of high passion—"And if I carry any weight at all with the higher-ups in the army, you'll have rubber horseshoes before the week is out!"

At this astounding promise, we looked at one another in wonder. One Belgian importer near me whispered to an English friend, "But zees man ees crazy!"

More was yet to come. He commented sadly on the fact that we had enjoyed no radios in camp, and that therefore, "You have not heard any music since the war began." Apparently in the captain's world, music came only from radios and phonographs. He continued, saying that he had a final surprise for us, one we would find "unbelievable." He could not have been more correct.

"At this very moment, I am having my man put up a public address system that will bring gags and pop tunes to every corner of the camp. Private Bodkins, turn on the P.A. equipment!"

At this command, the pitiless blare of popular music sounded out over the camp. We shuddered. His promise to reach every nook and cranny was more than fulfilled. One would have had to climb the walls to escape that screech! "This is the greatest horror of the war!" muttered one British lawyer to an elderly man next to him.

The strange fact of the matter was that Spofford's speech really did buck us all up: it gave us something to laugh about. Poor old Spofford, he became the favorite topic of every conversation and the butt of every joke. Two days afterward, the B-29's roared once again above us. Faces grim with no little trepidation, we marshaled our courage to go out again after the goodies. Just as we were leaving the dorm, the lordly Cal Coolidge gave us his reassuring blessing from his high bed in the corner, where he was perusing a copy of True Confessions.

"Don't worry about your heads this time, boys. The packages will bounce. They're full of rubber horseshoes!"

The most hilarious result of Spofford's efforts on our behalf occurred about a week later. One rather demonic soul among the internees approached the innocent G.I. in charge of running the new P.A. system. After talking in friendly fashion for a few minutes with the ingenuousness of the serpent in Eden, he asked, "You want to do something to make these people happy, don't you?"

"Yeah, sure," said the soldier eagerly, "tell me what to do."

"Well," said our Mephistopheles, "these poor folks haven't wakened in the morning to popular music since they got here. No radios, no nothin'! They'd just love it if you'd put on a real peppy record just when they are getting up—say about 6 A.M."

The eagerness on the soldier's face was momentarily clouded,

"Gee, do you think they'd really like that?"

"Oh, yes, I've talked to lots of them, and I know they would."

The next morning was all that a practical joker's soul might desire. Sharp at six, the quiet air of the camp was rent by the blare of "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!" As soon as I realized what was happening, I went out on the balcony of our dorm to enjoy the fun. The camp was a chaos of furious inmates. After three years of rising at seven for roll call, in rain, sleet, or snow, on Sundays, Christmas, and weekdays alike, everyone had luxuriated in lazy risings since August 17.

Everywhere I looked, angry people were rushing about. Enraged fathers poured out of the little rows of family rooms; elderly women in curlers, hurriedly putting on their bathrobes, stumbled from their dorms. Each of them charged out looking for blood! Then, some of them, realizing they hadn't the least idea where the music was coming from, began, each in a dazed and blind sort of way, to go off in different directions. Some kicked the loudspeakers in helpless fury. Still others stood there holding their heads and trying to think out calmly where the ultimate source of the blare might be. Soon, stopping up their ears, all marched off to the section commandeered by the army. I laughed as I imagined the scene when that irate throng of bath robed internees finally located the good-hearted G.I. in charge of the record player. He said to me later with some awe, "It was a strange experience to face so many really crazy people, all mad at you! My gosh, hadn't I played the latest popular tune, one they hadn't even had the chance to hear before? You know I honestly think all of you must be a little touched in the head by all your troubles. I hope you can get back to normal again all right."

If this G.I. was troubled by our "strangeness," Spofford was tortured by it. His face took on a baffled, almost haunted look. No one appeared to want to cooperate with him on his many morale-boosting schemes. As he said one night over some bourbon, very close to tears, he just couldn't understand it. People kept complaining about his loudspeaker. Sas Sloan had called out one night as Spofford walked by, "Bring back the war—we want some peace!" Another time somebody managed to cut the main line to the loudspeaker just outside Spofford's door!

"My God," he continued, shaking his head sadly, "anybody'd think we were your enemies! Why, when I read to them the United States Army lectures on world affairs, it is unbelievable but true that these foreigners called it propaganda! What makes it all so puzzling is that these same games, contests, and lectures went down so well with the kids in the service. You should have heard them cheer when I put a loudspeaker for popular music in their barracks! Why, for God's sake, is everyone so upset? Folks keep telling me that Europeans—especially older ones—don't really want the same things that American G.I.'s do. If that's true—and I still find it hard to believe—then people are a lot stranger than I thought, and I'm not even sure I understand them any more."

It was not only Spofford who found the new world of peace strange, disillusioning, and even bitter. To the permanent British residents of China, who made up more than half our number, the glorious end was like waking from a bad dream to discover that reality was worse. (Their situation resembled that of the resident of New Haven who, his eyes and ears having been buffeted by the film The Hurricane, staggered out into the night to find himself tossed about by the famous New England hurricane of 1938.)

Like all of us, these people had lived through the war in hope, buoyed up by the conviction that Weihsien camp was not "real life," but only an accidental and temporary incursion into experience, a nightmare which would of course vanish with the dawn of peace. When the war ended, real life—a life of prospering business in the treaty ports, of comfortable homes and chatter on the club porch, of weekends in the hills—would begin once more. The hardest part for them came when the war was over, and that day of promise arrived. What it brought was the resumption—but in real life now—of the same utter absence of life's usual security and meaning.

On a chilly gray day in mid-September, some four weeks after our rescue, a British colonel showed up to address the British subjects. As he said at the opening of his speech, this would be a sobering hour for them, since his purpose was to tell them with all possible candor what the reality they had now to face would be like.

"Your small businesses in the cities of China, in the three years since you left, have been almost all destroyed beyond repair. Shops have been looted of their stock; Chinese merchants have moved into the premises; go-downs have been ransacked, wrecked, and abandoned, and are almost useless. Everything that has not been shattered has passed into Chinese hands. There is little or no hope of reparations with which to get started again.

"Above all, I must say to you with all the force and authority at my command, that the days of 'colonial life' in Asia are over. Our rule in the treaty ports is a thing of the past; favored treatment of foreign firms under British law is gone; our control of residential areas has become impossible.

"Those of you who worked for firms worldwide in scope can probably find work in your company's other offices. Although you, too, must move from China, you are among the luckier overseas British.

"Those of you, however, whose roots lie in China alone had best resign yourselves to the loss of the old life. We cannot force you now to leave China; you may still find work here and there for the time being in Tientsin, in Shanghai, or as advisers to Chinese firms. But the future here is a bleak one for the self-employed Britisher. Our official advice to you is to give up in East Asia, find what refuge you can with relatives in England or seek new jobs in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the other places where British life is still going on. An era has ended, and with it has ended your own past lives. I'm sorry, but these are the facts."

The British people listened to the colonel with rapt attention. Not a word was lost on that silent, stunned crowd. Quite unprepared for this by their own vivid dreams and hopes, they found what he was saying to them completely unbelievable. It was a terrible world they were hearing pictured, emptied of all familiar security and meaning, devoid of all ground or "place" to stand on and of all recognizable structure for life, and one without possibilities. Immediately they felt cold, adrift and alone in a directionless void. Some were quiet, in a state of shock; others wept openly; still others merely clung together mute, emptied of life. Yet at the same time, try as they might, they could not argue with patent and obvious truth. This was, as the colonel had reiterated, reality. I said to one middle-aged man, ashen and almost in tears, who had had a small goods shop in Tientsin, "But surely you can go back to England. You have people there, don't you?"

"No, I have no people there. I have never been there, and I know no one. My entire life, and that of my father before me, was spent in North China. When that is taken from us, we have no place on earth that is ours."

When those China residents glimpsed the real future, as they did for the first time that afternoon, it was as void of place and of meaning as had been their "unreal" life in camp. But beyond it there was no further hope of a glorious day of release. The precariousness of all historical life had rudely thrust itself upon those poor Westerners in Asia by the devastation of their colonial world when peace had come at last and they were free.

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