The hospital orderlies told me I was in Antung, China. I believed this, especially after some events which lent credibility to the statement.

Looking through the window from my bed, I could see a patch of sky to the east. Sometimes, depending upon the weather, there were vapor trails made by aircraft, apparently flying back and forth along some boundary line. This spectacle always followed the wailing of an air raid siren. After some consideration, I realized I was seeing F-86 fighters pacing along the Yalu River which flowed between Communist China and North Korea. It seemed they were taunting the MiG-15 fighters stationed at the Antung airfield, daring them to come up and fight. On occasion, the dare was accepted, and I would see the unmistakable silouhettes of the MiGs flashing past the window. Very faintly, I could hear the popping of machine gun fire.

One day my guard left the room to watch the show. He returned to gloat that one of theirs had shot down one of ours. I wondered if he knew the difference.

The fighter shows were not the only aerial activity I experienced from my hospital room. One night, just after rolling over, face to the wall, to sleep, I heard the sirens begin the wind-up to their shrill pitch. The guard hastily closed the blackout curtains and switched off the light. Soon I heard a familiar sound — powerful engines driving large airplanes! B-29s!

The arrival of the planes was followed closely by the WHUMP! WHUMP! of exploding bombs. Before we were shot down, I had learned of the raids planned against targets deep in North Korea, near the Yalu, namely; Anju and Sinuiju. I think these had been on earlier “paper routes. ”Anti-aircraft batteries near the hospital began firing from China toward North Korea across the river. The guns thundered, peppering the room with flashes of light softened by the blackout curtains.

A B-29 was clobbered. I heard the whine, building in pitch, as the plane made its last trip to earth. I wondered where it would auger in.

Still at medium altitude, it screamed overhead. But, though I knew it crashed, I didn't hear it hit. I hoped the crew had been able to parachute safely.

If the plane had crashed into the hospital, and if I had been one of the casualties, the Chinese would have had reason to consider it some sort of justice.

While the guns banged away, I wondered if their hit had been a matter of luck. Certain conditions would have left this as the only possibility.

One of the 91st Squadron's missions had been to take strike photographs during a raid. On such a trip, even if there was some cloud cover, an RB-29 flew a slot in the bomber stream, hoping for a chancy break in the clouds below, just when it was needed. High overhead roamed our wild card, and ECM (electric counter measures) ship. This RB-50 squirted out confusing signals, jamming the radar equipment which directed the ack-ack guns. The result was inaccurate, random flak bursts all over the sky. This tactic was especially effective on cloudy nights, when searchlights were out of business. I wasn't certain about cloud conditions or ECM use that night.

The cacophony gradually died out and the planes disappeared. It was then that the uniqueness of this particular raid became known. The quiet had endured for fifteen or twenty minutes when I became aware that I was again hearing B-29 engines. How could this be? I had heard no sirens! The first bombs hit before sirens cranked up, and the whole show ran again. The warning system had been caught off guard — but good!.