George Elford - Devil's Guard

After coffee, Lin began talking about her life—and soon our cheerfulness was gone.. The air in the room seemed to grow heavier and heavier.

“We used to live near Hankow beside a wonderful lake,” Lin began. “My father built a cottage there. He was an architect. They were building a hospital at Hankow. My father’s name was Carver, John Carver. My mother was from China. She was the best mother, good and beautiful like an angel. I was their only child and they loved me more than anything on earth. My mother used to call me “my little blue sky.”

They bought me the best of everything and every summer we went to the sea near Shanghai. When the Communists approached Hankow my father refused to evacuate. He did not want to give up everything he had been working for. He wanted to finish the hospital and said that not even the Communists would prevent him from building a hospital for their own people.

“When the siege came he took me to a friend of his, a missionary doctor who lived in a small Christian colony with his wife, also a doctor. My parents thought I’d be safer at the missionary station. There were only teachers, priests, nurses, and doctors caring for old people and children. They did not think of themselves, only of me. My father decided to stay in the partly finished hospital. There were already hundreds of crates of expensive surgical equipment stored in the cellars, gifts from the American and British people. He was afraid that the ignorant soldiers might loot the containers or destroy the machines. My father was sure that once he spoke to the Communist commander, he would be permitted to continue with his work. How wrong my poor father was…”

She sighed deeply and her eyes clouded. “The fathers and sisters at the missionary station worked night and day. More and more people were brought in, most of them wounded. Many of them had to sleep in the open and the doctors operated on a table in the yard. I have seen so much suffering—and as the front came nearer and nearer…”

She broke off again, lifting her hand to her eyes nervously. Madame Houssong urged her not to continue if she felt tired. But Lin only shook her head. “Oh, no, if I won’t make you tired…”

Colonel Houssong then shook his head.

“One morning a couple of wounded soldiers came and told us that the Communist army had already occupied the hospital compound for three hours but had been driven out again. Of my parents they knew nothing. When they told me that, I just picked up my little doll and ran out of the station. I ran like a maniac all the way. I did not hear the explosions or the bullets, I did not see the burning houses. I just ran, jumping over debris, broken furniture, and deep craters—many of them full with corpses.”

Lin flushed and her breasts heaved; her breath came in little gasps but she went on bravely. “I found our housekeeper standing at the gate of the hospital. I noticed immediately that he was wearing my father’s leather jacket, but I did not pay much attention to it. I was glad to see him alive and grasped his hand. “Huang, I am so glad to see you. Where are my parents? How are they? Please…”

He pulled away from me and acted so strangely cool, so hostile. But my thoughts were with my parents. “Please,” I cried, “where are they?” He pointed toward the main building. “You will find them in there,” he said and smiled. But his smile frightened me. I could not imagine what was wrong with him. I rushed toward the main building and as I entered I saw… I saw my father… in a pool of blood… When I fell on him, he was icy cold… then my mother… she lay in a nearby room with bullet holes in her breasts… and, and…” She could not continue. Her words faded into a stream of tears. Her frail body shook as she buried her face in her hands. Madame Houssong rushed to her and caught her in her arms, herself crying. Yvette was weeping too and the colonel covered his face, shaking his head slowly. “Don’t talk, cherie,” I heard Madame Houssong speak to Lin gently. “We have heard enough for tonight.”

Lin, with her eyes closed, her tears rolling freely, grabbed Madame Houssong’s hand and pressed her face against it. “I must… I must tell. You are so good to me… I could never tell anyone how much I was hurt.”

Lin had to tell us the rest of her story. We could not stop her. She talked as if she wanted to cast away those tragic memories forever. “When I left the hospital, I saw Huang talking to some strange soldiers. They were the Communists. I still cannot imagine why he had turned so hostile. We were always good to him. When his son was ill, my father drove them all the way to Shanghai, to the hospital. We gave them food, clothes, toys for his children. But then I saw he was wearing a big red star—like the ones the Communists wore. I tried to run away but the soldiers caught me and… dragged me… into…”

She began to weep again. “I… I cannot tell you what they did to me… until I was pushed into a wagon with many other people… They took us to a camp, and we had to work in a brick factory three miles away. We walked there and back, every day. By the end of the year over a hundred of us had died. Our huts were cold and wet and the food was something we could chew and swallow but it was not food. They always told us that if we worked well we would be taken into better barracks in another camp with good food. We worked like animals to gain admittance to that other camp but they never moved us. We were taken out to bury people whom they had shot. There were thousands of people executed every week… Then one night a big storm came and the wind wrecked the watch towers and a part of the fence. I fled.”

She glanced at me. “I walked for two weeks eating only what I could find, then I crossed the border and walked… until the cars came.”

Daybreak was showing through the slightly opened shutters when at last Lin fell silent.

“You had better get some sleep now,” Madame Houssong said. “Come, cherie—and try to put those things forever out of your mind.”

Lin rose and looked at me deeply. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you…” Lin’s story had a truly happy ending. Colonel Houssong wrote a long report on her to the British Consul, who in turn forwarded the data to a competent authority in Hong Kong. Three weeks later Lin received her British passport and a letter stating that a search to find her father’s relatives in England was under way.

During the next two months we saw each other often; I took her out to a dinner or to dance and became rather attached to her. I think she too felt the same way. “What’s bothering you, Hans?” she asked one evening after a long and passionate kiss. “Something’s wrong?” I only embraced her again and held her close. There was plenty wrong, I thought. She was only eighteen. I was thirty-six and still a “death candidate.”

When Lin was born, I was already entering the army. We were far apart both in time and in space. It was painful but also a relief when her uncle came flying down a week before her birthday. He was a jovial, middle-aged English businessman who was completely overjoyed at having found his niece after three years of gloom. He had been informed of John Carver’s death in Communist China and Lin was listed as “missing,” probably dead too.

“If you ever need anything, or if you ever come to England, please do not fail to call me,” he said before their plane departed for Singapore and from there to London. He handed me a small envelope and we shook hands. I embraced Lin and she kissed me openly. Her eyes were filled as she whispered, “Please write me soon… Write always.”

“C’est la vie,” Colonel Houssong said quietly as the plane started to take off. “Had it not turned out so well, we would have adopted Lin .. . but it is better this way.”