Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo by Capt. Ted W. Lawson

Author:Capt. Ted W. Lawson [Lawson, Capt. Ted W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Non-Fiction, World War II, Aviation, World War, 1939-1945
ISBN: 9780743474337
Google: nQpgp238Gj8C
Amazon: 0743474333
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2004-08-01T05:00:00+00:00

I had a little soup and tried to go to sleep—wondering about Ellen. I was remotely glad she couldn't see me. But the thought of her made me think of our future together. I had tried to kid myself, but I was frantic about my leg. So I tested it in the only way I could. I rolled over on it. It took a long time to do it. Then I rolled on it again. The pain crushed the breath out of me, but I felt better because I had rolled on it.

My left ankle, near the scratch I had gotten on the junk, was the size of a football when I woke up in the early morning of the 22nd. Old Dr. C——— , a fine-looking elder with a long gray beard and long silk robes, came in to see us early. Young Dr. C———, none the worse for his earlier ordeal, washed out our wounds with an antiseptic that looked like weak purple ink.

While he was doing this another missionary, an Englishwoman named Mary Small, arrived and introduced herself. She represented a missionary society, was a trained nurse, rather pretty and in her late twenties. She told us she had come to L——— from Taichow, also in Chekiang Province, just ahead of the Japanese. She said it non-committally, but a wave of helpless despair passed over me.

All that day of the 22 nd I lay near a low window on the ground floor, looking at the ever-changing design of Chinese faces at the window. There was a queue beyond the range of my vision. A window-full would peer in at me and, after a while, give up their places to the next group. There were always a few children, and it seemed that almost invariably two streams of mucus would be sliding down their upper lips and then retreating back into their nostrils as they breathed and stared.

Mrs. Parker saw I was cracking up. Late in the day she came to my bed and told me she had arranged for Thatcher to move into our room and that Thatcher's roommate of the night before, a Chinese patient, would be placed somewhere else. I got a quiet, isolated room that looked out on the hospital garden through French doors.

The nurses put hot compresses on my ankle, but by the morning of the 24th the swelling had gone well up toward the knee. It was discoloring, too. I thought night and day of sedatives. The anesthesia of shock was all gone.

We had great news on the 24th. Mr. Parker came in, excited far out of his customary calm.

"We've just received word that another crew whose plane crashed is coming here," he said.

I asked him a lot of questions at once.

"I've told you just about all I know,'* he laughed. "Word travels fast in this country. I can never get accustomed to it. As far as I know, your friends are all right. They must be; they're walking here. One of them is a doctor.

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