[Excerpts] ...

[...]

Margo had befriended several other war-brides whose husbands were in military camps, and they helped each other out.

She also volunteered to work in the hospital as a nurse’s aide and had started pretty rigorous training. She admitted one evening that it was nothing she planned to do for the rest of her life, but it was a change from secretarial work and a great way to help others.

I was restless. Everyone seemed to be finding their niche except me, and although I was getting used to the routine, I was definitely not enjoying it.

[excerpt]

About six weeks after the show closed, Margo came off her hospital shift, shaken and depressed.

I was reading in the cell when she came in and couldn’t help asking what was wrong. “It’s the Reverend Simms-Lee,” she said, with a catch in her throat. “They brought him in on a litter. He has terminal cancer... only days to live.”

“Do you think he knew it when he did the play?”

“Of course, he knew it!” And then softly,
“You know, of all the church people I’ve known, he’s the only one I felt comfortable with. The only one who showed real love and compassion.

I was broken up inside when you and Ursula weren’t able to be at my wedding, and somehow he was able to turn my mood around and make it the most beautiful day of my life. He loves people, and it shows in everything he does.”

He “passed gently by” a few weeks later, and became our fifth loss.

[excerpt]

The sump coolies were only one source of our black marketing enterprise.

We had a much bigger operation run on our side of the wall by a zany order of Belgian priests and Brother O’Hanlon, the American Trappist monk. They had honed their smuggling operation into a precision instrument. Their cover was unique. In the twilight hours at the end of each day, they’d say their office pacing along the wall beyond the hospital, gliding back and forth in their long white robes directly under the eyes of the tower guards.

This happened day in and day out, and before long, the guards lost interest in the whole charade.

That was the priests’ master stroke—and the guards’ one mistake.

The fathers were housed in dormitories on the top floor of the hospital, and from that great vantage point, they could see almost to the horizon in all directions. It was a perfect set-up for smuggling.

While they paced the wall saying their office, a lookout would be scanning the fields. When he saw farmers cautiously approaching with their wares, he’d signal to his pious colleagues below, and they’d slip out of their light robes, tucking them into the copious folds of the dark scapulas they wore under them, then melt into the deep shadows along the wall.

With the first timid rap from the outside, they’d start haggling with the farmers over eggs, bacon, nuts, honey and sometimes baigar, a potent Chinese whiskey—with money and goods moving back and forth through loose brick pass-throughs in the wall.

Brother O’Hanlon, with the glorious voice, was the one who had been caught earlier, before they’d concocted this sophisticated scheme, and King Kong couldn’t understand why we all roared with laughter when he sentenced “a Trappist” to three months in solitary!

Not long after the shooting of the two coolies, we learned the real reason behind the incident: King Kong wanted a slice of the lucrative black market. He had Gold Tooth and the young guards contact the Chinese, who were now too scared not to comply, and smuggling flourished once more, just as it had done in North China through the Great Wall at Shanhaikwan.

That time the Japanese military had used the subjugated Koreans. Bolder now, King Kong used his own men, with some of the internees doing the actual handing over of the goods, so that he would never be tainted.

[excerpt]

PHOTO: … the small square construction in the foreground was the: “Jail-House”.
In the background—right is the Hospital Building and on the extreme left is Block-23.

The 9 x 12 rooms can be seen approx. In the middle of the photo and the nice and comfortable looking villas were requisitioned by the Japs for their personal use.

[excerpt]

I had no trouble getting a job as breakfast cook in the hospital diet kitchen the week after I took my finals, as the committee was still looking for people to fill positions that had been vacated by the repatriated Americans.

Although some had been taken over by a contingent of missionaries from Chefoo, who came in after the Americans left, there were still a few gaping holes to be filled, and one was the unpopular early morning shift I applied for.

I’d had a yen for that job ever since Margo had told me she hated her early stint at the hospital because, when she sent orderlies down to get the patients’ breakfast trays, more often than not she’d find that no one had bothered to turn up to prepare breakfast! I couldn’t help thinking, what a glorious out!

I loathed roll-call.
It was so demeaning.

If I could get the breakfast shift for the duration, I would never have to stand roll-call again! I was wrong, of course, as I was told I would get one day off in four, and a captain from another shift would take my place on that day.

I got philosophical: One roll-call out of four wasn’t as demeaning as four out of four! And then, there was an extra plus. As I was the only one on the early morning stint, I figured I was considered a shift “captain”; of course, I never let it go to my head! I must have been on the job for about three weeks, and the new year was just around the corner, when I got up at my usual ungodly hour and reached for the basin of water we kept on top of the stove; I didn’t expect it to be warm, but I didn’t expect it to have half-an-inch of ice on it either!

Well, I’m not going to wash myself today, at least not at this hour, I thought, as I brushed my hair and teeth, the latter without toothpaste and chattering so badly the toothbrush couldn’t keep up with them. Cramming on the clothes I’d worn the day before, some of which I’d slept in, I reached for my old fur coat, which was beginning to look mangy and very worse for wear, and slipped out of the cell.

[excerpt]

Margo told me that the action hadn’t come any too soon, as there’d been several attempted suicides.

None had been fatal, and after the Italians had been cut down by fellow internees, the guards had been told they were ill, and they were rushed to the hospital. There, the overworked medical staff covered up the real reason for their hospitalization, so that the Japanese would never have the pleasure of knowing they had driven anyone to such lengths.

Right after their gates were opened, there had been another suicide attempt, only this time it had been from our side, and it made Margo seething mad.

That would-be suicide was Pete Fox’s brother, Mike.

I’ll never forget the first time I met him. He came into our compound, supposedly looking for Peter, and while Margo and I, both looking dirty and scruffy, were chatting on the cell step, he said, clear out of the blue,
“Next to Ursula, you two are a couple of also-rans.” I didn’t comment at the callous remark, but Margo did.
“Great!” she snapped, “if you can’t say anything nice, try an insult!”
“I believe in calling them the way I see them,” Mike said smugly.
Margo grinned, “Next to Pete, you were left at the gate!”
“Touché!” he said, surprised at her comeback.

Now, here was Margo, venting off steam again.

This time cussing out spineless suicidal idiots in general and Mike Fox in particular.

“Damn, Mike,” she hissed, “he not only took the last of the morphine and aspirin...he muffed it!”
“Margo!” I said in horror. “I mean it. We have people dying of cancer, in extreme agony, people who want to live so badly, they’re fighting on when all hope is lost, and this creep has to finish off our only pain killers and take the last moments of peace they may ever know!”
“How did he get hold of them?” I asked.
“Hell, he’s a hospital orderly!”
“You’re tired,” Ursula said, putting her arms around her.

[excerpt]

Towards the end of November, Margo came off duty with the unbelievable news that crates of desperately needed drugs for the hospital had just materialized out of nowhere.

Not even the Japs had a clue—and for once, they didn’t even try to play the benevolent benefactor. If anyone knew where they came from, they weren’t talking.

Needless to say, the hospital staff never questioned the miracle, but went their rounds once more with happy hearts, as surgery could again be performed, and acute pain assuaged.

[excerpt]

I guess that was the beginning of Arthur Hummel ‘s diplomatic career, as they were successful on both counts.

They didn’t have time to celebrate though, as they soon learned they were in a very unenviable position: the Nationalist guerilla army they had linked up with, under General Wang Yu-min, was completely surrounded by Japanese forces, Chinese puppet forces under Japanese control, and Chinese Communists.

For the medical supply drop to be successful, it was going to have to be made with almost pinpoint precision, and after the drop, the crates would have to be retrieved without alerting any of the opposing forces.

Somehow, the sortie was carried out without any casualties, but the drama had just begun.

Now came the challenge of getting Allied medical supplies into a Jap prison camp without incurring the suspicion of King Kong and Gold Tooth! The problem appeared insurmountable, and in desperation, Tip and Art sent a note by Chinese courier to Mr. Egger, the Swiss consul and International Red Cross representative in Tsingtao. The note said that four unmarked crates of medical supplies would be left with Egger in the early dawn hours of the following day, and that it was left to him to find a way to get them into the camp.

Egger was a timid little businessman who had been pressed into consular service by an act of war. Although he had made many visits to Weihsien to check on our welfare, the Japanese treated him with distrust, and we were unable to give him any messages that weren’t first approved by our captors. It soon became evident that, even if he had found anything amiss, he had little or no authority to change our circumstances. His was a token position, and as such, he never thought he would ever be called upon to show extreme cunning and courage under enemy fire.

But that was just what Hummel and Tipton were expecting of him. If anyone knew how badly we needed medical supplies, Egger did. He also knew that the only way he could get them into the camp was through the main gates with a signed manifest from the Japanese authorities in Tsingtao.

After mulling over the situation for while, inspiration hit him, and he had his Swiss secretary go into the city and purchase all the antacid, aspirin, cough syrup and bandages she could round up.

Taking them, item by item, he had her type up a manifest, leaving many lines between each entry, then, armed with this document, he went to the Japanese consulate requesting their approval.

After an interminable wait outside the consul’s office, where his mind conjured up all sorts of harrowing situations, the paperwork was finally returned to him with the coveted “chop” on it. Racing back to his office, he had his still bewildered secretary fill in all the blank lines with the names of the supplies in the unmarked crates.

It was a stroke of genius!

The following day, when he arrived in Weihsien with his precious cargo, he had to face King Kong and Gold Tooth. His queasy stomach tied in knots once more as they went meticulously through the entire contents of the crates. Although he couldn’t understand their comments, it was obvious they were completely baffled how Allied medical supplies could be sanctioned by Japanese consular authorities, and the tone of their remarks made his skin creep.

He kept waiting for someone to pick up the phone and call Tsingtao, but it never happened, and finally, cussing under his breath, King Kong pounded his “chop” on the paperwork and allowed the crates to be taken to the hospital. I’ll never forget Margo’s surprise when I repeated the story to her.

[further reading]
http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/books/MushroomYears/Masters(pages).pdf

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