Page 81 - The Poetic Books - Student Text

The excitement was too great for any of us. It surged up within us, a flood of joyful
feeling, sweeping aside all our restraints and making us its captives. Suddenly I realized
that for some seconds I had been running around in circles, waving my hands and
shouting at the top of my lungs. It was pandemonium… This was our plane. It was sent
here for us, to tell us the war was over.
Then suddenly, all this sound stopped dead. A sharp gasp went up as fifteen hundred
people stared in stark wonder. I could feel the drop of my own jaw. After flying very low
back and forth about a half mile from the camp, the plane’s underside suddenly opened.
Out of it, wonder of wonders, floated seven men in parachutes! This was the height of
the incredible! Not only were they coming here someday, they were here today, in our
midst! Rescue was here!
For an instant this realization sank in silently, as a bomb might sink into water. Then
the explosion occurred. Every last one of us started as with one mind toward the gate.
This avalanche hit the great front gate, burst it open, and streamed past the guards
standing at bewildered and indecisive attention. Oblivious to all the danger, yelling and
shouting, jostling and pushing, we rushed through the narrow streets of the neighboring
village and out into the fields.
My first sight of an American soldier in WWII was that of a handsome major of about
twenty-seven years…Looking further, I saw internees dancing wildly about what
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appeared to be six more godlike figures…

132 Langdon Gilkey, Shantung Compound (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 207-210.
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