plane would arrive and the cotton should be ready for immediate pick-up. Mr. Ernest Yin knew that he could be responsible for the thousands of dollars that had to be banded over to specified farmers. Charles made many such dangerous trips. After a year in Chungking, the war in the Pacific escalated, and the German Anny was making headway into Russia. He now decided that he must make a great effort to return to his family in the U.S. It had been six years of great stress and too much separation, and he was weary of the war and many responsibilities. After many weeks of waiting in Kunming. he arranged with the U.S. Air Force to obtain passage out of China via a flight over the Burman Road to India. He arrived in Calcutta with General Wedemeyer on board and 27 Japanese planes chasing them into the airport. The passengers were told that in Calcutta they had only 15 minutes after landing to run for cover. Fifteen minutes later the Japanese bombed the Calcutta airport, the one and only time they bombed India. It was Christmas Eve, and eventually most of the passengers crowded into a local hotel where guests had fled for cover and had a Christmas feast. Charles and some passengers somehow arranged to find this lovely British hotel in Calcutta with gorgeous Christmas food and decorations all laid out. No one was there waiting since the locals had all fled to their homes! At last. Charles had found safety, good food, and clean comfortable quarters. He traveled across India, while waiting for several months of paper work, to get passage on a ship out of Bombay. Hundreds of missionaries an civil authorities were also listed, and there was no departure date set. A few hours notice was all that would be given to certain people to board the ship, whose -destination was unknown except that it was headed west. After several months Charles' ship came in, and all passengers departed in the dark of the night much later to arrive in Durban, South Africa. In Durban for one week they took on five thousand German and Italian war prisoners headed for America. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 1943 was extremely dangerous, with an average of 1-3 ships being sunk before they reached New York. When the ship left South Africa it headed south. The days became colder. They observed that the sun was always on the starboard side of the ship. All the time, while the ship passed through the Straits of Magellan, phosphorus water was lighting up the darkened ship. 21
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