Page 284 - Three Score Years & Ten
P. 284
“THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN” MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA
Amy Moore
responsibility of looking after 27 small children, all under twelve, to be flown out of China under war
time conditions.
They felt even worse as they heard there were no parachutes for anybody and they were flying at
night to Kunming which was having constant air raids and would certainly be blacked out if there was
one at the time they arrived. It was a two hour trip, but they got more anxious as the two hours
passed and there was still no sign of Kunming. One of the children collapsed because army planes in
those days did not have pressurized cabins. He needed oxygen, but there was no oxygen and they
could do nothing to help him. Then a voice suddenly announced that they were landing at Yunnani
airport and it was with a great sense of relief that they could get the sick child out of the plane and
breathing normal air again. The pilot told them that they had actually reached Kunming only to find an
air raid going on, so that they had to turn back to Yunnani. They had been lost for two hours with
clouds so heavy they could not tell where they were. Then a break in the clouds showed them the
airport below and they landed with only enough petrol for another ten minutes flying. The pilot said he
had never prayed so much in his life before. Needless to say he was not the only one who prayed that
night, though perhaps he was the only one who knew how near they were to disaster.
They still had to get to Kunming and it was not a very happy group who once again boarded the plane
Alan went to Jiading in Sichuan Province (left) where the CIM had started a school in “Free
China”, but when this area was threatened by the war, the children were flown over the
“Hump” to India where a school was set up at Kalimpong (right).
without parachutes and without oxygen. They arrived safely this time at 2am, tired and hungry, having
had nothing to eat since the turkey dinner on the previous day. From Kunming they flew over ‘The
Hump’ to Calcutta in India where a refugee centre helped them make arrangements to go on to
Kalimpong, a beautiful mountain resort in the high Himalayas some 1300 miles north of Calcutta and
with a wonderful view of Mount Kanchenjunga. Chefoo School with 35 children and the staff were
given part of the Anglo-Indian School buildings. It was all so different from Jiading in China, but the
children loved it and were able to run up and down the mountain slopes barefoot in the hotter weather.
They felt freer in every way than they were ever able to in Jiading. Alan often wrote with love of ‘our
mountain’. The beauty of their surroundings up there in the Himalayas seems to have captured their
imagination. Of course we only knew all this much later and it was a shock in early 1945 to find that
he was not even in the same country any more.
284
Amy Moore
responsibility of looking after 27 small children, all under twelve, to be flown out of China under war
time conditions.
They felt even worse as they heard there were no parachutes for anybody and they were flying at
night to Kunming which was having constant air raids and would certainly be blacked out if there was
one at the time they arrived. It was a two hour trip, but they got more anxious as the two hours
passed and there was still no sign of Kunming. One of the children collapsed because army planes in
those days did not have pressurized cabins. He needed oxygen, but there was no oxygen and they
could do nothing to help him. Then a voice suddenly announced that they were landing at Yunnani
airport and it was with a great sense of relief that they could get the sick child out of the plane and
breathing normal air again. The pilot told them that they had actually reached Kunming only to find an
air raid going on, so that they had to turn back to Yunnani. They had been lost for two hours with
clouds so heavy they could not tell where they were. Then a break in the clouds showed them the
airport below and they landed with only enough petrol for another ten minutes flying. The pilot said he
had never prayed so much in his life before. Needless to say he was not the only one who prayed that
night, though perhaps he was the only one who knew how near they were to disaster.
They still had to get to Kunming and it was not a very happy group who once again boarded the plane
Alan went to Jiading in Sichuan Province (left) where the CIM had started a school in “Free
China”, but when this area was threatened by the war, the children were flown over the
“Hump” to India where a school was set up at Kalimpong (right).
without parachutes and without oxygen. They arrived safely this time at 2am, tired and hungry, having
had nothing to eat since the turkey dinner on the previous day. From Kunming they flew over ‘The
Hump’ to Calcutta in India where a refugee centre helped them make arrangements to go on to
Kalimpong, a beautiful mountain resort in the high Himalayas some 1300 miles north of Calcutta and
with a wonderful view of Mount Kanchenjunga. Chefoo School with 35 children and the staff were
given part of the Anglo-Indian School buildings. It was all so different from Jiading in China, but the
children loved it and were able to run up and down the mountain slopes barefoot in the hotter weather.
They felt freer in every way than they were ever able to in Jiading. Alan often wrote with love of ‘our
mountain’. The beauty of their surroundings up there in the Himalayas seems to have captured their
imagination. Of course we only knew all this much later and it was a shock in early 1945 to find that
he was not even in the same country any more.
284
