T. lobsang rampa doctor from lhasa

CHAPTER SEVEN:
Mercy Flight

For a time I had a private practice in Shanghai, but to the Easterner “time” is of no account. We do not say such-and-such a year, for all times flow into one. I had a private practice, doing medical and psychological work. There were patients to see in my office, and in the hospitals. Of leisure there was none. Any time free from medical work was taken up by intensive studies of navigation; and the theory of flight. Long hours after nightfall I flew above the twinkling lights of the city, and out over the countryside with only the faintest glimmers from peasants' cottages to guide me.

The years rolled on unheeded, I was much too busy to bother about dates. The Shanghai Municipal Council knew me well and made full use of my professional services. I had a good friend in a White Russian. Bogomoloff was one who had escaped from Moscow during the revolution. He had lost all in that tragic time, and now he was employed by the Municipal Council. He was the first white man whom I had been able to know and I knew him thoroughly—a man indeed.

He could see quite clearly that Shanghai had no defenses against aggression. Like us, he could foresee the horrors that were to come.

On the 7th July, 1937, there was an incident at the Marco Polo Bridge. The incident has been written about far too much, and I am not going to keep on repeating it. The incident was notable only for being the actual starting-point of war between China and Japan. Now things were on a war-time basis. Hard times were upon us. The Japanese were aggressive, truculent. Many of the foreign traders, and the Chinese in particular, had foreseen the coming trouble and they had moved themselves, their families and their goods, to various parts of China to the inland parts such as Chungking. But peasants in the outlying districts of Shanghai had come pouring into the city, thinking, for some reason, they would be safe, apparently believing in safety in numbers.

Through the streets of the city, by day and by night, poured lorries of the International Brigade, loaded with mercenaries of many different countries, charged with keeping peace in the city itself. All too often they were just plain murderers who had been recruited for their brutality. If there had been any incident at all which they did not like, they would come out in force, and without any warning, without any provocation or cause, they would loosen off their machine guns, rifles, and their revolvers, killing harmless and innocent civilians, and more often than not doing nothing at all against guilty persons. We used to say in Shanghai that it was far better to deal with the Japanese than with the red-faced barbarians, as we called certain members of the International Police Force.

For some time I had been specializing with women, treating them as a physician and as a surgeon, and I had a very satisfactory practice indeed in Shanghai. The experience I gained in those pre-active war days was going to stand me in good stead later.

Incidents were becoming more and more frequent. Reports were coming in of the horrors of the Japanese invasion. Japanese troops and supplies were absolutely pouring into the country, into China. They were ill-treating the peasants, robbing, raping, as they always did. At the end of 1938 the enemy were on the outskirts of the city; the ill-armed Chinese forces fought truly valiantly. They fought to the death. Few indeed there were to be driven back by the Japanese hordes. The Chinese fought as only those who are defending their homeland could fight, but they were overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. Shanghai was declared an open city in the hope that the Japanese would respect the conventions and not bomb the historic place. The city was quite undefended, there were no guns, no weapons of any kind. The military forces were withdrawn. The city was crammed with refugees. The old population had mostly gone. The universities, centres of learning and culture, the big firms, the banks, and others, they had been moved to places like Chungking and to other remote districts. But in their place had come refugees, people of all nations and stations, fleeing from the Japanese, thinking that there was safety in numbers. Air raids were becoming more and more frequent, but people were becoming a little hardened to them, a little used to them. Then one night the Japanese really bombed the city. Every plane they could get in the air took off, even fighter planes had bombs attached to them, and the pilots also had grenades in the cockpits to toss over the sides. The night sky came thick with planes, flying in formation across a defenceless city, flying like a swarm of locusts, and like a swarm of locusts they cleared everything in their path. Bombs were dropping everywhere, indiscriminately. The city was a sea of flames, and there was no defense; we had nothing with which to defend ourselves.

Around midnight I was walking down a road at the height of the uproar. I had been attending a case, a dying woman. Now metal was raining down, and I wondered where to shelter. Suddenly there was a faint whistle, growing to a whine, and then to the blood-curdling screech of a falling bomb. There was a sensation as if all sound, as if all life, had stopped. There was an impression of nothingness, of utter blank. I was picked up as if by a giant hand, twirled about in the air, tossed up in the air, and flung violently. For some minutes I lay half stunned, with hardly any breath in me, wondering if I were already dead and waiting to continue my journey to the other world. Shakily I picked myself up, and stared about me in absolute stupefaction. I had been walking down a road between two rows of tall houses; now I was standing on a desolate plain with no houses at all on either side, just piles of shattered rubble, piles of thin dust bespattered by blood and parts of human bodies. The houses had been crowded and the heavy bomb had dropped. It had been so close to me that I had been in the partial vacuum, and for some extraordinary reason I had heard no sound, and had come to no harm. The carnage was simply appalling. In the morning we piled the bodies house high and burned them, burned them to prevent the spread of plague, because under the hot sun the bodies were already decomposing, turning green and swelling. For days we dug beneath the rubble, trying to save any that might be alive, digging out those who were dead, and burning them on the spot in an attempt to save the city from disease.

Late one afternoon I was in an old part of Shanghai. I had just crossed a slanting bridge astraddle a canal. To my right, under a street booth, were some Chinese astrologers and fortune-tellers, sitting at their counters, reading the future for avid customers who were anxious to know if they would survive the war, and if conditions would improve. I looked at them, mildly amused to think that they really believed what these moneymakers were telling them. The fortune-tellers were going by rote through the characters which surrounded the customer's name on a board, telling them of the outcome of the war, telling the women of the safety of their men. A little further on other astrologers—perhaps taking a rest from their professional duties!—were acting as public scribes; they were writing letters for people to send to other parts of China, giving the news, possibly, of family affairs. They made a precarious living writing for those who could not write, and they did it in the open; anyone who cared to stop could listen and know about the private business of the family. In China there is no privacy. The street scribe used to shout out in a very loud voice what he was writing, so that prospective customers should understand how beautifully he phrased his letters. I continued my walk to a hospital where I was going to do some operations. I went on past the booth of the sellers of incense, past the shops of the second-hand booksellers, who always seem to congregate on the waterside, and who, as in most cities, displayed their wares at the edge of a river. Further on were the vendors of incense and of temple objects, such as the statues of the Gods Ho Tai and of Kuan Yin; the first being the God of Good Living, and the second being the Goddess of Compassion. I went on to the hospital, and did my allotted tasks. Later I returned by the same road. The Japanese had been over with their bombers; bombs had dropped. No longer were there booths or bookshops. No longer were there sellers of objects, or of incense, for they and their goods had returned to dust. Fires were raging, buildings were crumbling, so again it was ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

But Po Ku and I had other things to do besides stay in Shanghai. We were going to investigate the possibility of starting an air ambulance service on the direct orders of General Chiang Kai-Shek. I well remember one in particular of these flights. The day was chilly, white fleecy clouds laced overhead. From somewhere over the skyline came the monotonous CRUMP-CRUMP-CRUMP of Japanese bombs. Occasionally there was the far-off drone of aero engines, like the sounds of bees on a hot summer's day. The rough rugged road beside which we sat had borne the weight of many feet that day, and for many days past. Peasants trudged by in an attempt to escape from the senseless cruelty of the power-mad Japanese. Old peasants almost at the end of their life-span, pushing along one-wheeled barrows with all their worldly possessions upon them. Peasants bowed down almost to the ground, carrying on their backs almost all they had. Ill-armed troops were going the other way, with scanty equipment loaded on to ox-carts. They were men going blindly to their death, trying to stop the ruthless advance, trying to protect their country, their homes. Going on blindly not knowing why they had to go on, not knowing what caused the war.

We crouched beneath the wing of an old tri-motored plane, an old plane that had already been worn out before it reached our eager and uncritical hands. Dope was peeling from the canvas-covered wings. The wide undercarriage had been repaired and strengthened with split bamboos, and the tail skid was re-shod with the broken end of a car spring. Old Abie, as we called her, had never failed us yet. Her engines sometimes stopped, it is true, but only one at a time. She was a high-winged monoplane of a rather famous American make. She had a wooden fabric-covered body, and streamlining was a term unknown when she was made. The modest speed of 120 miles an hour felt at least twice as fast. Fabric drummed, spars creaked and protested, and the wide open exhaust added to the clamour.

A long time ago she had been doped white with huge red crosses on her side and wings. Now she was sadly streaked and marred. Oil from the engines had added a rich ivory-yellow patina making her look like an old Chinese carving. Petrol overflowing and blowing back contributed other hues, while the various patches added from time to time gave quite a bizarre appearance to the old plane.

Now the racket of crumps had died down. Another Japanese raid was over, and our work was just starting. Once again we checked our meager equipment; saws, two, one large and one small and pointed; knives, assorted, four. One of them was an ex-butcher's carver, one was a photographic retouching knife. The other two were authentic scalpels.

Forceps, few in number. Two hypodermic syringes with woefully blunt needles. One aspirating syringe with rubber tubing, and medium trochar. Straps, yes, we must be very sure of them. With no anesthetics we often had to strap our patients down.

It was Po Ku's turn to fly today, and mine to sit in the back and watch for Japanese fighters. Not for us the luxury of an intercom. We had a length of string, one end tied to the pilot, the other jerked by the observer in a crude code.

Warily I swung the propellers, for Abie had a strong backfire. One by one the engines coughed, spat a gout of oily black smoke, and awoke to strident life. Soon they warmed and settled down to a fairly rhythmic roar. I climbed aboard, and made my way to the stern where we had made an observation window in the fabric. Two yanks of the cord and Po Ku was informed that I was safe in position, squatting on the floor, forced in between the struts, crammed. The engine roar increased, and the whole plane shuddered, and moved away down the field. There was a rumbling scrunch of the landing gear, and the creak of twisting woodwork. The tail bobbed, and dipped as we hit ridges. I was bounced from floor to roof. I settled myself even more tightly because I felt like a pea in a pod. With a final thud and clatter the old plane climbed into the air, and the noise became less as the engines were throttled back. A vicious yaw and dip as we hit raising air just clear of the trees, and my face was nearly forced through the observation window. Violent little jerks on the string from Po Ku meaning, "Well, we've made it once again. Are you still there?" My answering jerks as expressive as I could make them, indicating what I thought of his take-off.

Po Ku could see where we were going. I could see what we had just left. This time we were going to a village in the Wuhu district where there had been heavy raids, and many, many casualties, and no assistance on the spot. We always took turns flying the plane, and acting as observer. Abie had many blind spots, and the Japanese fighters were very fast. Often their speed saved us. We could slow down to a mere fifty when we were not heavily laden, and the average Japanese pilot had no skill at shooting. We used to say that we were safer right in front of them, because they always missed what was in front of their squat noses!

I kept a good lookout, on the alert for hated “bloodspots” which, aptly, were the Japanese planes. The Yellow River passed beneath our tail plane. The cord jerked three times. “We are landing,” signaled Po Ku. Up went the tail, the roar of the engines died and was replaced by a pleasant “wick-wick, wick-wick” as the propellers idly turned over. We glided down with motors throttled well back. Creaks from the rudder as we turned slightly to correct our course. Flaps and tremors from the fabric covering as it vibrated in the wide breeze. A sudden short burst from the engines, and the jarring clatter and rumble as we touched down, and rumbled once again from ridge to ridge. Then the moment most hated by the unfortunate observer cramped in the tail; the moment when the tail dropped and the metal shoe ploughed through the parched earth, raising clouds of choking dust, dust laden with particles of human excreta which the Chinese use to fertilize the fields.

I unfolded my bulky figure from the cramped space in the tail, and stood up with groans of pain as my circulation started to work again. I climbed up the sloping fuselage towards the door. Po Ku had already got it open, and we dropped to the ground. Running figures came racing up to us. “Come quickly, we have many casualties. General Tien had a metal bar blown through him, and it is sticking out back and front.”

In the wretched hovel that was being used as an emergency hospital the General sat bolt upright, his normally yellow skin now a drab grey-green from pain and fatigue. From just above the left inguinal canal a bright steel bar protruded. It looked like the rod used to operate car jacks. Whatever it really was, it had been blown through his body by the blast of a near-miss bomb. Certainly I had to remove it with the least possible delay. The end emerging from the back, just above the left sacro-iliac crest, was smooth and blunt, and I considered that it had just missed or pushed aside, the descending colon.

After careful examination of the patient I took Po Ku outside, out of hearing of those within, and sent him to the plane on a somewhat unusual mission. While he was away I carefully cleansed the General's wounds, and the metal bar. He was small and old, but in fair physical condition. We had no anesthetics, I told him, but I would be as gentle as possible. “I shall hurt you, no matter how careful I am,” I said. “But I will do my best.” He was not worried. “Go ahead,” he said. “If nothing is done I shall die anyhow, so I have nothing to lose, but all to gain.”

From the lid of a supply box I prised off a piece of wood, about eighteen inches square, and made a hole in the centre so that it was a tight fit on the metal rod. By this time Po Ku had returned with the plane's tool kit, such as it was. We carefully threaded the board onto the bar, and Po Ku held it tightly against the patient's body. I gripped the bar with our large Stilton wrench, and pulled gently. Nothing happened, except that the unfortunate patient turned white.

“Well,” I thought, “we can't leave the wretched thing as it is, so it is kill or cure.” I braced my knee against Po Ku, who was holding the board in position, took a fresh grip of the bar, and pulled hard, rotating gently. With a horrid sucking sound the rod came free, and I, off my balance, fell on the back of my head. Quickly I picked myself up, and we hastened to the General and staunched the flow of blood. Peering into the wound with the aid of a flashlight I came to the conclusion that no great damage had been done, so we stitched and cleaned where we could reach. By now, after taking stimulants, the General was looking a much better colour and—as he said—feeling a lot happier. He was now able to lie on his side, whereas before he had had to sit bolt upright, bearing the weight of that heavy metal bar. I left Po Ku to finish the dressing, and went to the next case, a woman who had her right leg blown off just above the knee. A tourniquet had been applied too tightly and for too long. There was only one thing that could be done; we had to amputate the stump.

We had men tear down a door, and on it we strapped the woman. Quickly I cut around the flesh in a "vee," with the point toward the body. With a fine saw I reached in and severed the bone as high as possible. Then carefully folding the two flaps together I stitched them to form a cushion with the end of the bone. Just over half-an-hour it took, half-an-hour of sheer agony, and all the time the woman was quiet, she made no sound, not the slightest whimper, nor did she flinch. She knew that she was in the hands of friends. She knew that what we did, we did for her good.

There were other cases. Minor injuries, and major ones too, and by the time they had been dealt with it was getting dark. Today it had been Po Ku's turn to fly, to be pilot, but he was quite unable to see in the fading light, and so I had to take over.

We hurried back to the plane, packing away our equipment with loving care. Once again it had served us well. Then Po Ku swung the propellers and started the motors. Stabbing blue-red flames came from our open exhaust, and we must have looked like a fire-eating dragon to one who had never before seen a plane. I clambered aboard, and dropped into the pilot's seat, so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open. Po Ku tottered in after me, shut the door, and fell asleep on the floor. I waved to the men outside to pull away the big stones chocking the wheels.

It was getting darker and the trees were very hard to see. I had memorized the lie of the land, and raced up the starboard engine to turn us round. There was no wind. Then facing what I hoped was the right direction I opened all three throttles as wide as they could be opened. The engine roared, and the plane trembled and clattered as we moved off, swaying with ever-increasing speed. The instruments were invisible. We had no lights, and I knew that the unseen end of the field was frighteningly close. I pulled back on the control column. The plane rose, faltered and dipped, and rose again. We were airborne. I banked and we turned in a lazy circle, climbing. Just below the cold night clouds, I leveled off, looking for our plain landmark, the Yellow River. There it was off to the left, showing a faint sheen against the darker earth. I watched, too, for any other aircraft in the sky, because I was defenseless. With Po Ku asleep on the floor behind me I had no one to keep a watch from the rear.

Settled on our course I leant back, thinking how astonishingly tiring these emergency trips could be, having to improvise, to make do, and patch up poor bleeding bodies with anything that came to hand. I thought of the fabulous tales I had heard of hospitals in England and America, and of the immense supplies of materials and instruments they were said to have. But we of China, we had to make do, we had to manage, and go on with our own resources.

Landing was a difficult matter in the almost total darkness. There was only the faint glimmer of the oil lamps in peasants' houses, and the rather darker darkness of trees. But the old plane had to get down somehow, and I put her down with the rumble of the undercarriage and the screech of the tail skid. It did not disturb Po Ku at all; he was sound asleep. I switched off the motors, got out, put the chocks behind and in front of the wheels, then returned to the plane, shut the door, and fell asleep on the floor.

Early in the morning we were both aroused by shouts outside. So we opened the door, and there was an orderly to tell us that instead of having a day off, as we thought, we had to take a General to another district where he was going to have an interview with General Chiang Kai-Shek about the war in the Nanking area. This General was a miserable fellow. He had been injured, and he was, theoretically, convalescing. We thought he was malingering. He was a very self-important man, and all the staff heartily disliked him. We had to straighten ourselves up a bit, so we made our way to our huts to get ourselves clean, to change our uniform because the General was a stickler for exactness in dress. While we were in the huts the rain came teeming down and our gloom increased as the day became more and more overcast. Rain! We hated it as much as any Chinaman. One of the sights of China was to see the Chinese soldiers, all brave and hardy men, perhaps among the bravest soldiers in the world, but they hated rain. In China the rain came down in a teeming roar, a continuous downpour. It beat down on everything, soaking everything, soaking everyone who happened to be out in it. As we went back to our plane beneath our umbrellas we saw a detachment of the Chinese army. They marched along the road by the side of the aerodrome, the road which was sodden and squelchy with water. The men looked thoroughly disheartened by the rain. They had enough hardship, enough suffering and the rain aggravated it greatly. They marched along dispiritedly, their rifles protected by canvas bags which they had slung on their shoulders. On their backs they had sacks, criss-crossed with rope to keep it intact. Here they kept all their belongings, all their implements of war, their food, everything. On their heads they wore straw hats, and in their right hands, above their heads they carried yellow oiled paper and bamboo umbrellas. Now it would seem amusing. But then it was perfectly ordinary to see five or six hundred soldiers marching down a road under five or six hundred umbrellas. We, too, used umbrellas to get to our plane.

We stared in amazement as we got to the side of the plane. There was a group of people there, and above their heads they were supporting a canopy of canvas, keeping the rain off the General. He beckoned us very imperiously and said, “Which of you has the longer flying experience?” Po Ku sighed wearily, “I have, General,” he said. “I have been flying for ten years, but my comrade is by far the better pilot and has greater experience.” “I am the judge of who is best,” said the General. “You will fly, and he will keep good watch over our safety.” So Po Ku went to the pilot's compartment. I made my way to the tail of the plane. We tried the engines. I could watch through the little window, and I saw the General and his aides get aboard. There was much ado at the door, much ceremonial, much waving, bowing, and then an orderly closed the door of the plane and two mechanics pulled aside the chocks at the wheels. A wave to Po Ku, and the engines were revved up. He gave me a signal on our cord and we moved off.

I did not feel at all happy about this flight. We were going to fly over the Japanese lines, and the Japanese were very alert as to who flew over their positions. Worse than that, we had three fighters—only three—which were supposed to be guarding us. We knew that they would serve as a great attraction to the Japanese, because the Japanese fighters would come up to see what was the matter, why should an old tri-motored plane like ours have fighter planes guarding it? However, as the General had stated so unmistakably, he was the senior, and he was the one who was giving the orders, and so we lumbered on. We lumbered down to the end of the field. With a swirl of dust, and a clatter of the undercarriage, the plane swung round, the three engines revved up to their limit and we rushed down the field. With a clank and a roar the old plane leapt into the air. We circled round for a time to gain height. That was not our custom, but on this occasion it was our orders. Gradually we got up to five thousand, ten thousand feet. Ten thousand was about our ceiling. We continued to circle around until the three fighters took off, and took formation above us and behind us. I felt absolutely naked, stuck up there with those three fighter planes hanging about. Every now and again I could see one slide into view from my window, and then gradually drop back out of my range of vision. It gave me no feeling of security to see them there. On the contrary, I feared every moment to see Japanese planes as well.

We droned on, and on. It seemed endless. We seemed to be suspended between heaven and earth. There were slight rocks and bumps, the plane swayed a little, and my mind wandered with the monotony of it. I thought of the war going on beneath us down on the ground. I thought of the atrocities, of the horrors, so many of which I had seen. I thought of my beloved Tibet, and how pleasant it would be if I could take even old Abie and fly off and land at the foot of the Potala in Lhasa. Suddenly there were loud bangs, the sky seemed to be filled with whirling planes, planes with the hated “bloodspot” on their wings. I could see them coming into view, and darting out again. I could see tracers and the black smoke of cannon fire. There was no point in my giving signals to Po Ku. It was self-evident that we were being heavily fired upon. Old Abie lurched and dived, and rose again. Her nose went up, and we seemed to claw at the sky. Po Ku was putting us into violent manoeuvres, I thought, and I had my work cut out to maintain my position in the tail. Suddenly bullets came whizzing through the fabric just in front of me. At my side a wire twanged, and snapped, and the end of it scraped my face just missing my left eye. I made myself as small as I could and tried to force myself further back in the tail. There was a ferocious battle in progress, a battle which was now in my full view, because bullets had torn a dotted line on the fabric, and the window had gone, and many feet of materiel as well. I seemed to be sitting up in the clouds on a wooden framework. The battle ebbed and flowed, then there was a tremendous “CRUMP.” The whole plane shook and the nose dropped. I took one frantic look from the window. Japanese planes seemed to fill the sky. As I watched I saw A Japanese and a Chinese plane collide. There was a “BOOM” and a gout of orange-red flame followed by black smoke, and the two planes went whirling down together locked in a death embrace. The pilots spewed out, and fell whirling, hands and legs outstretched, turning over and over like wheels. It reminded me of my early kite flying days in Tibet, when the lama fell out of a kite and went whirling down in much the same way, to crash upon the rock thousands of feet below.

Once again the whole plane shuddered violently, and went wing over wing, like a falling leaf. I thought that the end had come. The nose dropped, the tail rose with such suddenness that I slid straight down the fuselage into the cabin, and into a scene of sheerest horror. The General lay dead; strewn around the cabin were the bodies of the attendants. Cannon shells had ripped through them and just about blown them to bits. All his attendants or aides were either dead or dying. The cabin was a complete shambles. I wrenched open the door of the pilot’s compartment and recoiled, feeling sick. Inside was the headless body of Po Ku, hunched over the controls. His head, or what remained of it, was spattered over the instrument panel. The windscreen was a bloody mess, blood and brains. It was so obscured that I could not see out of it. Quickly I seized Po Ku around the shoulders, and threw him aside from the seat. With utter haste I sat dawn, and grabbed the controls. They were thrashing about, jumping violently. They were slimy with blood, and it was with extreme difficulty that I could hold them. I pulled back on the control column to try and bring up the nose. But I could not see. I crossed my legs over the column and shuddered using my bare hands to scrape the brains and the blood from the windscreen, to try and make a patch so that I could see. The ground was rushing up. I saw it through the red haze of Po Ku’s blood. Things were getting larger and larger. The plane was trembling the engines were screeching. The throttles had no effect whatever upon them. The port wing engine jumped straight out. After that the starboard engine exploded. With the weight of those two gone the nose rose slightly. I pulled back harder and harder. The nose rose slightly more but it was too late, much too late. The plane was too battered to answer its controls properly. I had managed to slow it somewhat, but not enough to make a satisfactory landing. The ground appeared to rise up; the wheels touched, the nose fell even more. There was a shocking scrunch, and the rending of woodwork. I felt as if the world was disintegrating around me as, together with the pilot’s seat, I shot right out through the bottom of the plane into an odorous mass. There was absolutely excruciating pain in my legs, and for a time I knew no more.

It could not have been very long before I regained consciousness, because I awoke to the sound of gunfire. I looked up. Japanese planes were flying down; there were flashes of red from the gun muzzles. They were shooting at the wreckage of Old Abie, shooting to make sure there was no one in it. A little flicker of fire started at the engine, the only engine left, in the nose. It ran around toward the cabin where the fabric had been saturated with petrol. There was a sudden flare of white flame topped by black smoke. Petrol was spilling on the ground, and it looked as if there was flame pouring down because the petrol was alight. Then there was just a boom, and wreckage came raining down, and Abie was no more. Satisfied at last the Japanese planes made off.

Now I had time to look about me, and to see where I was. To my horror I found that I was in a deep drainage ditch, in a sewer. In China many of the sewers are open and I was in one of them. The stench was simply appalling. I consoled myself with the thought that at least the position in which I had found myself had saved me from Japanese bullets or from fire. Quickly I freed myself from the wreckage of the pilot's seat. I found that I had snapped both ankles, but with considerable effort I managed to crawl along on hands and knees, scrabbling at the crumbling earth to reach the top of the ditch, and to escape from the clinging mess of sewage.

At the top of the bank, just across from the flames which still flickered on the petrol saturated earth, I fainted again with pain and exhaustion, but heavy kicks in my ribs soon brought me back to consciousness. Japanese soldiers had been attracted to the spot by the flames, and they had found me. “Here is one who is alive,” said a voice. I opened my eyes, and there was a Japanese soldier with a rifle with a fixed bayonet. The bayonet was drawn back, ready for a thrust at my heart. “I had to bring him back, so that he would know he was being killed,” he said to a comrade of his and he made to thrust at me. At that moment an officer came hurrying along. “Stop” he shouted. “Take him to the camp. We will make him tell us who were the occupants of this plane and why they were so guarded. Take him to the camp. We will question him.” So the soldier slung his rifle on his shoulder, and caught hold of me by the collar and started to drag me along. “Heavy one, this. Give me a hand,” he said. One of his companions came over and caught me by an arm. Together they dragged me along, scraping off the skin of my legs at the same time as I was pulled along the stony ground. At last the officer, who apparently was doing a routine inspection, returned. With a roar of rage he shouted, “Carry him.” He looked at my bleeding body, and at the trail of blood I was leaving behind and he smacked the two guards across the face with the flat of his hand. “If he loses any more blood there will not be enough man to question, and I shall hold you responsible,” he said. So for a time I was allowed to rest on the ground while one of the guards went off in search of some sort of conveyance, because I was a large man, quite bulky, and the Japanese guards were small and insignificant.

Eventually I was tossed like a sack of rubbish on to a one-wheeled barrow, and carried off to a building which the Japanese were using as a prison. Here I was just tipped off, and again dragged by the collar to a cell and left to myself. The door was slammed and locked, and the soldiers set to guard outside. After a few moments I managed to set my ankles, and put splints on. The splints were odd pieces of wood which happened to be in the cell which apparently had been used as some sort of store. To bind these splints I had to tear strips from my clothing.

For days I lay in the prison, in the solitary cell, with only rats and spiders for company. Fed once a day on a quart of water and on scraps left over from the tables of the Japanese guards, scraps which perhaps they had chewed, and found unsatisfying, and spat out. But it was the only food I had. It must have been more than a week that I was kept there, because my broken bones were getting well. Then, after midnight, the door was roughly flung open, and Japanese guards entered noisily. I was dragged to my feet. They had to support me because my ankles were still not strong enough to take my weight. Then an officer came in and smacked me across the face. “Your name?” he said. “I am an officer of the Chinese forces, and I am a prisoner-of-war. That is all I have to say,” I replied. “MEN do not allow themselves to be taken prisoners. Prisoners are scum without rights. You will answer me,” said the officer. But I made no reply. So they knocked me about the head with the flat of their swords, they punched me, kicked me, and spat at me. As I still did not answer they burned me about the face and body with lighted cigarettes, and put lighted matches between my fingers. My training had not been in vain. I said nothing, they could not make me talk. I just kept silent and put my mind to other thoughts, knowing that that was the best way of doing things. Eventually a guard brought a rifle butt down across my back, knocking the wind out of me, and almost stunning me with the violence of the blow. The officer walked across to me, spat in my face, gave me a hard kick and said, “We shall be back, you will speak then.” I had collapsed on the floor, so I stayed there, there was no other place to rest. I tried to recover my strength somewhat. That night there was no further disturbance, nor did I see anyone the next day, nor the day after that, nor the day after that. For three days and four nights I was kept with no food, no water and without seeing anyone at all. Kept in suspense wondering what would happen next.

On the fourth day an officer came again, a different one and said that they were going to look after me, that they were going to treat me well, but that I in return must tell them all that I knew about the Chinese, and about the Chinese forces and Chiang Kai-Shek. They said that they had found out who I was, that I was a high noble from Tibet, and they wanted Tibet to be friendly with them. I thought to myself “Well they are certainly showing a peculiar form of friendship,” The officer just made a bow, turned, and left.

For a week I was reasonably well treated, given two meals a day, and water, and that was all. Not enough water, and not enough food, but at least they left me alone. But then three of them came together, and said that they were going to question me, and I was going to answer their questions. They brought a Japanese doctor in with them who examined me, and said that I was in bad shape, but I was well enough to be questioned. He looked at my ankles and said that it was a marvel that I could possibly walk after. Then they bowed ceremoniously to me, and ceremoniously to each other, and trooped out like a gang of schoolboys. Once again the cell door clanged behind them and I knew that later on that day I was going to face interrogation once again. I composed my mind and determined that no matter what they did I would not betray the Chinese.