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Bare walls, bare floors, dim electric lights, no running water, primitive latrines, open cesspools, a crude bakery, two houses with showers, three huge public kitchens, a desecrated church and a dismantled hospital, a few sheds for shops, rows of cell-like rooms, and three high dormitories for persons who are single.

It was to this scene of destruction and despair that we now came in September of 1943.

Weihsien had seen happier days.

In the early years of the twentieth century the American Presbyterian Mission had established a school, seminary, and hospital there, with a number of large, American-style homes for missionary doctors and teachers.

In fact, two Americans, later to become famous, were born in Weihsien — Pearl Buck, the popular writer, and Henry Luce, the cofounder of TIME magazine. When the “Courtyard of the Happy Way” was under the Presbyterians’ control, it was a very pleasant and well-planned campus. **

** It was quickly claimed soon after our arrival that the US novelist Pearl Buck (The Good Earth, interalia) and US publisher Henry Luce (Time, Life, Fortune) were born in the WeiHsien training centre. Buck (nee Sydenstricker) was born 1892 in West Virginia USA and Luce was born 1892 in Tengchow, Shantung province. Both sets of parents were American missionaries who served in China. Buck’s f irst husband, John Buck, who she divorced in 1934, was also a missionary in China. Consequently it is possible the parents of Buck, Luce, or Buck’s first husband may have used the WeiHsien facility. The assertions that Buck (1892-1973) and Luce (1892-1967) were born there are not correct. http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/books/ForgivenForgotten/Book/ForgivenNotForgotten(WEB).pdf#page=19

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Though the way back to Block 24 was fairly straightforward, the spirit of adventure was too much for me, and I decided to wander off alone to the other side of the camp to explore what was now our new home.

Soon I was hopelessly lost, and I couldn’t remember the number of the building where we were billeted or even what it looked like. It was already dark and I tried to think which building my sister was posted to. At last, on the verge of tears, I plucked up courage to ask one of the camp residents if he knew where our school group was.

He kindly took me to the hospital but no one there could help. Eventually, after we roamed round many of the buildings, I was safely delivered to the teachers, who were already becoming anxious.

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We treasured our homemade candles, made with one, two, three or even four wicks. We used them not only for telling stories by candlelight after the teachers were in bed, but for sizzling the ubiquitous bedbugs that crawled out of the walls and into our beds on the floor. Our four-wick candles were best for frying up old bread crusts “scrounged” from one of the kitchens. We also put them to work when we found mushrooms which made a rare delicacy fried in peanut oil.

Our favorite trick was to take our candles with us to our hide-out at the bottom of the water tower near the hospital.

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The camp population included a variety of professional and vocational groups. We had a number of doctors, nurses and pharmacists who staffed the hospital, although equipment and medicines were at a premium.

The educators among us established another smaller school, set up apart from the Chefoo, Peking, and Tientsin ones. Desperately short of paper, much of our school work was done in pencil and erased so that the paper could be used again. We used slates balanced on our knees for much of our school work.

As the camp had some of the finest intellects in North China, we had adult education, special lectures, classes in several languages, art, history and other subjects.

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Our teachers carried a heavy work load with the laundry since there was very little soap, and what there was, was very inferior. The brushes soon lost their bristles, and many a knuckle was bruised on the ribs of the washboards. White shirts became but a memory as no clothes were spared from the graying common to Weihsien garments.

“Give us the soap, and we will finish the job” was an often heard slogan around the laundry tubs in a part of the hospital basement. The laundry was one of our chores. Three days a week a dawdling line of the younger children could be seen weaving its way back from the hospital to our rooms in Block 23, with basins of wet washing on our heads or in our arms.

One time I tripped and had to detour by the pump to give everything another rinse and wringout before delivering the goods to the teachers for hanging out on the line.

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The Japanese soldiers’ leniency was evident by the way they didn’t barricade an air-raid shelter tunnel that ran under the tennis court by the hospital. One of the corner searchlight towers was within 100 feet, but the guards knew that we liked to use the tunnel as a hiding place and didn’t want to spoil our fun. A huge boulder in the middle almost blocked the path, and I remember times when some of us had a powwow around it, imagining what it would be like to start digging towards the wall.

None of us, however, was quite enterprising enough to do much more than make a start.

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Father de Jaegher was Belgian and had worked more than ten years in China. Both fluent in Chinese, Tipton and de Jaegher became good friends in camp. One thing that drew them together was their common desire to hear news of the war’s progress. To get such news into camp, they looked for ways of making contact with cooperative Chinese.

What Father Scanlan had been able to achieve in the food-smuggling line, de Jaegher accomplished in the process of incoming and outgoing mail. Unwittingly, the Japanese proved to be very helpful in this process. The earliest method that de Jaegher employed for sending letters was to use Chinese-style envelopes addressed in Chinese characters. But a return address was needed, and this is where the Japanese proved an unknowing help to us.

When they commandeered the compound they had not destroyed the hospital files. De Jaegher chose at random the Chinese names and addresses of former hospital patients, whose record cards had been overlooked by the Japanese. These now provided authentic Chinese return addresses. [excerpt] — (after liberation)

Meanwhile, on the outside, congratulations were in order for Hummel and Tipton on their arrival at the Chinese base, and they were duly introduced to Commander Wang.

They set to and prepared a report which was to be taken as soon as possible to the British and American embassies in Chungking. Typing it up was quite a delicate process. The typing was done on a thin white silk handkerchief stuck onto paper by flour paste.

The report gave news of the camp, particularly stressing the urgent need for medical supplies and comfort money as well as a plea to quash any requests connected with the Chinese rescue proposal. They also stressed very strongly their concern for the safety of all in camp, should the Japanese in defeat order a transfer of all prisoners to Japan as hostages or even attempt a wholesale massacre.

Sewn into the soles of a pair of Chinese cloth shoes, the message, after many weeks and miles of hazardous travel westward, reached its destination in Chungking, still legible though very damp.

Through the yeoman help of Billy Christian, a former Weihsien prisoner, the greatly needed medical and other supplies were assembled. They were then flown by a B-24 and dropped by parachute in a location about fifty miles from Weihsien camp, where Hummel and Tipton were in hiding with the Nationalist soldiers. As parts of a radio transmitter and receiver were damaged beyond repair in the drop, Hummel and Tipton had to wait several more months before replacement parts could be obtained from Chungking.

At last the units were put into working order and the two escapees could begin in earnest to send back news to the camp, as had been their intention all along.

But if the radio suffered for its journey, the four boxes of medicines sent by the American Air Force from Chungking arrived intact. But getting them into the camp was another matter. Hummel and Tipton arranged for the four crates to be taken to our old friend Mr. Egger at the Swiss Consulate in Tsingtao, in the hope that he could get them into the camp.

Though Mr. Egger was due to visit the camp to take in comfort funds that had reached him recently and also a small quantity of medicines that he was able to buy locally, he was absolutely nonplussed as he examined the four big boxes that were delivered to him. The shipment included the new sulfa drugs, the like of which were unknown in North China at that time. He identified medicine after medicine as ones that the Japanese authorities would never let through. He himself could never have got hold of them, and the Japanese certainly couldn’t have obtained them from anywhere either.

Suddenly he had a brain wave.

Calling his secretary, he had her type up on four pages of the Embassy letterhead the typical medical items that he could buy in Tsingtao—things like aspirin, antiseptic, etc. He instructed her then to leave a fourline space after each item. When this was complete, he signed the list and took it to the Japanese Consular Police for clearance. At the police office there was momentary puzzlement at the unusual layout and waste of paper, but no real objection was raised, and the necessary seals for approval were stamped on each page.

This hurdle past, Mr. Egger knew that the major one of getting the boxes by the camp guards still lay ahead of him. Back at his office, Mr. Egger had his secretary use the same typewriter and, with a gleeful grin all the while, watched as she inserted the names of all the new medicines on the lines in between.

When he reached Weihsien camp the next day with his four big boxes and lists and presented them to the guards, they were completely bewildered. Everything looked in good order with the right seals stamped in the right places, but they were mystified how approval could possibly have been given for such medicines for the camp.

Egger was chuckling quietly inside as he saw them in such a quandary, feeling certain they would not refuse him with his papers so perfectly executed. They were baffled, but not wanting to lose face, they let him in and he handed over the life-giving supplies to the grateful doctors and nurses at the hospital.

And so our tenuous overthe-wall lifeline survived one more strain.

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Some of the cesspool coolies who helped us in our communications effort took very great risks which would have cost them their lives had they been caught.

There were many close calls, such as the time a guard, during the routine search at the gate, forced the new coolie at bayonet point to open his mouth. With a gentle gulp he swallowed the pellet, and with it our latest news bulletin!

De Jaegher and Tchou realized they had to work fast when they saw what happened. One of them dashed to the hospital saying there was an emergency that he could not explain but that co-operation was imperative. He was given a little supply of castor oil with no further questions asked.

After some conniving to evade the guards, they administered the medicine and up came the news right on time for the evening report. Whether the news pellet was in the coolie’s mouth or up one nostril (and blown out in the old Chinese nose-blowing style), our news dispatches got through. Through this circuitous route we heard reports from the war zones including the news of Germany’s surrender.

For everyone it was hard not to let on to the Japanese that we knew that the war in Europe had ended. But for two young men in camp the news was too good to keep.

On the night of May 7th, 1945, disobeying curfew, they climbed into the bell tower of our building, Block 23, and right on the stroke of midnight rang the camp bell. Panic broke out.

The Japanese sounded the alarm immediately, and within minutes angry guards were running by our window with their swords clanging as they headed for the main gate.

Simultaneously a siren pierced the night air, signaling an escape attempt to the Japanese garrison a few miles away. Some among the internees, thinking the camp had been attacked, became hysterical.

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One wintry day in February, I was with our little group over by the hospital when we saw Eric walking under the trees beside the open space where he had taught us children to play basketball and rounders.

As usual he was smiling.

As he talked to us, we knew nothing of the pain he was hiding, and he knew nothing of the brain tumor that was to take his life that evening, February 21, 1945, when he, one of the world’s greatest athletes, would reach the tape in his final race on earth.

He was 43 years old.