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Two days after the departure of Montague and the rest of the Chungking group, the main naval party under Gandy began their long overland journey from Kukong to Burma. They rose at 3.30 a.m. on Friday 16 January and marched across town to the railway station, where friends from the YMCA and the mission had gathered in the predawn darkness to see them off. As an expression of gratitude for looking after them so well, the sailors presented the mission members with the White Ensign they had carried from Hong Kong, covered with their signatures.* Gandy’s party that morning numbered exactly 50, comprising 10 naval officers, 4 merchant navy officers and 36 ratings. In addition, a Dr Chiu and a Major Yu had been assigned to accompany them for the first part of the journey, and an advance team consisting of Ashby, Brewer and an interpreter had gone ahead three days earlier to pave the way. No foreigner could travel anywhere in China without various permits, and Ashby was carrying an elaborate laissez-passer document signed by General Yu, authorizing him to travel as far as Guangxi Province armed with two loaded revolvers. To reach the start of the Burma Road—now the only land route available out of China—they had first to travel some 1,400 miles to Kunming, zigzagging across country by rail and then road. The first 600 miles, by rail, took five days. They began by going north on the main Canton-Hankow line as far as Hengyang. Here, railway officials had prepared the sort of welcome the party had grown used to in the days when the Admiral was with them but hadn’t expected to continue . The officers were led off to a twenty-course meal in a station waiting room decorated with Allied flags painted on cardboard and 28 Journey to the West 16 January . . . with their signatures: In her autobiography, Daughter of China, Jean Moore confessed that she later felt compelled to burn this valued gift when she and her husband left the mission compound in June 1944, for fear their Chinese staff would meet with reprisals from the Japanese. 224 Escape from Hong Kong an enormous placard reading: ‘Welcome to our admirable comrades from the Great Britain’. The others dined equally well in the train’s buffet car, where a more subtly worded banner said: ‘Honoured be the British warriors, firm in disaster and courageous in danger’. They then headed southwest in their own private train, each coach with its own ‘boy’ (in fact a grown man) who brought round pillows and blankets. Another boy brought meals from the dining car. Gandy was anxiously wondering how much to tip everyone, while also drafting speeches he might have to make at their next official reception . ‘And to you who have been fighting the Japanese since 1937,’ he wrote, ‘we are proud now to join in the same fight, which we are determined to continue to its rightful end.’ Next day, as they approached Guilin, there was an air raid alert, obliging them to get out and take cover among the sugarloaf hills and limestone rocks. A solitary plane passed overhead. In peacetime the town was a tourist resort, and a truck was made available to take all the officers and some of the men on a sightseeing trip to the famous Seven Star Cave, regularly used as an air raid shelter by up to 50,000 Guilin residents at a time. On the outskirts of Liuzhou, the train stopped, and they spent the next two days being shunted into different sidings. Brewer came to tell them Ashby was in bed with influenza at a local hotel. Dr Chiu was sent to attend to him, while Gandy and Major Yu took a horsedrawn carriage to the Fourth Army HQ to see the adjutant general, who had been asked to arrange onward transport. To pay for the hire of four lorries at the end of the railway line, he advanced them 80,000 Chinese dollars, which Gandy carefully tied up in another of his dirty towels. Still feverish with a temperature of 103°F, Ashby was declared fit to travel and joined them for the final 100-mile stretch of the train journey to the railhead town of Jinchengjiang. The line was being extended to Guiyang, 200 miles away across the mountains, and hundreds of workers were building up embankments and blasting cuttings through the rock. Thanks to China’s...

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