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Show - 2 hospital. Many of them had compound fractures needing amputation or protracted care. It was two months later when the last three or four of them finally were discharged from the hospital. Only one or two had any money at all, and the care of so many was a considerable financial burden. In a few days the retreating northern soldiers arrived. More than sixty thousand passed through the city, the congestion^becoming greater every day. On the last day there were thirty thousand quartered in Lintsing, and that evening General Feng's men caught up with them and there was some fighting throughout the night, but in the morning the northerners were gone and we saw the "blue heaven, white sun" flag and Nationalist soldiers for the first time. There were a number of casualties brought to the hospital, many of them civilians who had been accidentally wounded in the skirmish. One woman had heard knocking on her front gate, and when she opened it she was shot through both legs for not having opened her door quickly enough. She was in the hospital for many weeks; in fact, when the time came for her to go, she could not be persuaded that she had recovered, for she hated to go home to her old family quarrels. The Red Swastika Society brought us half a dozen or so northern soldiers who had not been able to keep up with their units: a pitiful lot, one nearly blind with conjunctivitis, one with a tuberculous spine, and several with dysentery and typhoid fever. We kept them in the hospital as long as there was possibility of improvement and turned them back to the Society, who furnished them money to go home with. Our wards and isolation rooms were full, our staff dining room was full, and there were beds set up so thickly in our chapel that one could hardly walk through it. Almost all our sheets were on the beds, and only badly soiled ones could be changed. Operations were taking nearly all of every day, and every one worked far into the night. The students ~in the Laymen's Christian Training School volunteered as attendants in the wards, and proved very helpful. In a few days the number of emergencies dimished and we organized our excess number of in-patients more systematically. We used the living and dining rooms in our house for a ward, and managed to evacuate the chapel. In a couple of weeks more we were able to get the last patient out of the dining room, but still kept a daily census nearly twice the normal average. Towards the last of May the General Headquarters of General Chiang Kai Shih and of his second in command, General |
