Sometime in 1944 I found myself alone in the city of Kweilin during an air raid. The sirens were sounding as I made my way through the pitch black night toward a safe haven.

The streets were crowded with people in this very busy city, called 'the Paris of China,' when suddenly I bumped headon into someone. "Why don't you watch where you're going," came a feminine voice from whom I soon realized was a very small woman.

What surprised me was the perfect English she used. "I'm very sorry," I replied, "my eyes were not yet accustomed to the blackout conditions." Realizing that I was an American, she apologized for her harsh tone, and asked if I would accompany her to a nearby store, which I did.

Inside the store, there was a dim light in a back room, where we sat and talked for about 15 minutes until the "all clear" sounded. We had a pleasant conversation, and I learned that she went to the United States as a teenager to study. She completed her education at an east coast University, and returned to China to be with her parents because of the war. The store we were in was her father's business, and she was helping to keep the business going through these difficult times.

The experience was a pleasure for us both, I believe; for her to speak to someone from America, and for me to speak with a woman using the only language I knew.

Early in 1945 during the evacuation of our base at Kweilin, we were warned vigorously not to go out after dark. As strange as it seems, at one point enemy troops were occupying barracks on one side of the airstrip, and we were being billeted on the other side.

We were airmen, not infantry, and enemy forces being very small, no ground war was going on. One officer, whom I did not know, decided to ignore the warning one night to take a stroll near the airstrip. His body was found the next morning, apparently shot by a sniper.

The above mentioned evacuation gave one of our group the opportunity to 'latch on' to a canned ham. Our daily chow was so lousy, we welcomed the chance to eat a real ham sandwich.

We came up with a couple of Bunsen burners from somewhere, and used our mess kits for frying pans. But we needed bread, and the only way to get it would be to bribe the baker. I remember using a package of cigarettes early one morning to talk the baker out of 2 loaves of bread, and when I picked them up I couldn't believe it. They must have weighed 4 or 5 pounds each.

Even with heavy bread, these sandwiches turned out to be one of the memorable meals I had while there. Amazing how a simple thing like a ham sandwich can stick in your memory for over 50 years.

What a ridiculous thought -- ice cream in China -- where we couldn't get a glass of milk. One of our little group, however, came up with the idea, and because he had access to a small, hand cranked freezer, thought we could pull it off.

First we had to come up with the ingredients, and someone remembered what they used to mix together at home for such a project. Sugar was no problem, and one of the guys found several other things we needed, including powdered milk to substitute for the cream we couldn't get. But what about ice, the real scarcity over there? We found a place where we could get a 50 pound block of ice for $80 American money. It would have been cheaper to use several Carbon Dioxide fire extinguishers and pay for the recharge of each.

We bought the ice, and chopped it into usable chunks, and using the salt we had, and lots of muscle cranking seemingly forever, we came up with about 3 quarts of ice cream. It tasted great, we thought, but it was probably terrible, even though everyone was oohing and aahing.

It is noteworthy that the very first thing I ordered, when I got back to the States, was a chocolate malted milk.

A bunch of us were returning to the air field late one night from the city of Kunming. We were traveling in a command car -- much like a convertible 4 door sedan -- with lights blacked out because we knew there was an air raid alert in effect.

As we neared the corner of the field, we could see and hear enemy bombers doing their thing on the runway, and we could see the tracers from machine gun fire from the hills paralleling the airstrip. These guns were manned by Chinese, and at first they were directing fire toward the bombers.

All of a sudden, they became aware of our presence at the corner of the airfield, and turned their guns on us. Their only reason, we figured later, they may have thought we were enemy troops invading the base, which in our minds was ridiculous. The driver, already driving at slow speed, swerved off the road into the ditch as the rest of us 'bailed out.' I saw a tracer pass within inches of the head of one of my buddies, but nobody got hit. This went on for less than a minute, as the gunners must have realized their error.

Sometimes in China, the people we were trying to help weren't doing their part in return, which leads me to the next vignette.

Each barracks, and I don't remember how many, had what we called a 'houseboy.' He would tidy up the place, keep coal by the stoves, etc. One of the houseboys was caught in the act of stealing a 45 caliber pistol from one of the airmen. It was explained to us that they could sell a pistol to the enemy for $500 American; a carbine rifle would go for $700; and a Thompson sub-machine gun would bring $900.

For quite awhile after this we didn't know whom to trust, and I would sleep with my 45 under my body, which was most uncomfortable as you might imagine. After some months we came to know and trust the Chinaman who served our barracks, and we could all rest easy.

Still hanging on the wall at our house is a picture of me taken in Kunming 57 years ago. When I finally reconnected with my buddies from our squadron after 53 years, my close friend David Donald called me from California. During the conversation, I asked David if my memory was correct about him being a cameraman for 20th Century Fox before the war. "You're right," he said, "don't you remember me setting the studio camera's shutter speed so your eyes wouldn't be a blur in the photo?"

I didn't remember, but he remembered my nystagmus after all those years. Back then there wasn't the fast film there is today, and with the involuntary back and forth movement of my eyes, the photograph would have been worthless without his expertise.

In the maintenance of my aircraft, we would use buckets of carbon tetrachloride to wash out electrical parts, such as magnetos. Some fire extinguishers were filled with the same chemical, so its use was quite common -- for us almost every few days.

Many years later, fire extinguishers using carbon tetrachloride were banned by the government, and the chemical slowly disappeared from use. The hazard, they claimed, was liver damage resulting from exposure.

I wouldn't want to guess the length of time in hours I was exposed to this chemical, not knowing the hazard, but it was extensive considering my 15 months in China. Yet in my 79 years I have never experienced a liver problem in any way. If heredity is a factor in this theory, none of my children have ever had liver problems either.

Another thing I didn't learn until after my time in the service is the idea that anyone flying at altitudes over 10,000 feet, without oxygen, would end up being sterile. I had over 500 hours of flying just with my own squadron, almost always between 12,000 and 14,000 feet, and we never used oxygen.

My wife and I have 4 children, and almost all the men who served with me have children as well. So how much faith should be placed in all these medical theories? I have become a skeptic.