36
南京鼓楼醫院
UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
NANKING, CHINA
南京鼓
December 14.
This is Julia's birthday and I shall start by wishing her many happy returns of the day. I am now in the X-ray room of the hospital at 9 p.m. of a busy day pounding on the treasurer's office typewriter. I am not on night duty but it is much the best these days to have an American sleeping in the hospital.
The battle of Nanking is finished and gone. It is a pathetic thing to see a breakdown of morale. The Chinese morale broke all of a sudden snd we were treated to the full effects of it. My last note as I recall was written last Friday but I'm not at all sure. We have been very busy treating cases of wounded by the aerial bombing. On Saturday the big guns began to creep closer to the city. We could see a couple of observation baloons [→balloons] somewhere in the vicinity of Spirit Valley. We had all kinds of trouble with wounded soldiers. We could not receive them as we were in the so-called safety zone but we treated them by the score and tried to get them to the military hospitals which were very sketchy institutions.
On Sunday the Japanese were pounding the city wall in several places and they made a breach near Kwan Hwa Men but were repulsed. Then suddenly starting about dusk on Sunday night the morale broke and all night the Chinese soldiers streamed north towards Hsia Kwan by the thousands. There was no discipline and they threw away all their guns and equipment which lay scattered all over the roads. They say the situation at Hsia Kwan was appalling as there were no boats to take them across the river. Thousands were drowned as crudely put-together rafts were overturned and what small boats there were were overcrowded and sunk.
The looting on there [→their] way out was not marked as they didn't seem to have time. The Japanese big guns shelled the city throughout the night. Numerous fires were started and our windows rattled practically all night. Needless to say we didn't get much sleep. Working in a rather uncomfortable job. The Japanese seemed to respect the safety zone remarkably with their big gunfire and so none of us came near to Shan road right in front of the hospital and up to being actually hit. The Chinese had spent two days barricading Chun Shang road right in front of the hospital and up to Sunday night we were gravely concerned as the hospital formed one border of the barricade. The rout on Sunday night however left the nicely built sand-bag barrier just as they had built it without a single defender.
On Monday morning the 13th, exactly four months after the trouble started in Shanghai the Japanese entered the city by several gates at once. Some came in Ho Ping Men in the North and some in Han Si and Kwan Hwa Men in the west and south-east respectively. By night they had International Committee are doing a tremendous job with them and there is no doubt but that they have saved thousands of lives by their efforts. At the last moment thousands of Chinese Soldiers threw away their uniform and equipment and donned looted civilian clothes and crowded into the zone. Handling them is the grave problem in itself. Doubly grave has it become since the Japanese have not been fooled and are rounding them up by the hundreds and shooting them putting their body in the conveniently handy dugout built for air-raid protection.
37
南京鼓楼醫院
UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
NANKING, CHINA
Any civilian who shows no sign of fear and goes quietly about his business in the daytime seems relatively safe. Nobody is safe at night. Last night. Chi, architect for the University ＜Nanking＞ and left behind to look after the the building as best he could, was only saved from the intervention of Charlie Riggs who stoutly maintained that Chi was his coolie. Then they came over to our place with another Chinese University staff man, Mr. Ku and all three stayed all night on some cots we put up in the living room. Steele of the Chicago Daily news akso slept there and we totalled eleven people sleeping on the main floor and I completely lost track of the innumerable Chinese that slept in the basement. The servants are rightly scared to daeth. To finish this paragraph more or less as it began, any civil that shows sign of fear or tries to run away is promptly bayonetted. I sewed up one severed trachea this afternoon and we have had several dozen cases bayonetting.
This morning we were treated to a thorough though unofficial inspection by thirty or so Japanese troops with fixed bayonets. They poked into everything. MacCallum, Trimmer and I showed them around and they would jabber away in Japanese while we jabbered in both Chinese and English and neither had no idea what he other was saying. They lined up some of the nurses and took away their pens and flashlights and wrist wstches. They did a pretty good job of looting nurses' dormitory, taking all kinds of petty things. So far there has been no physical violence done to any of our staff.
Yesterday afternoon, before the Japanese had gotten complete control of the city but after most of the heavy guns had qwieted down[,] I thought it would be safe to operate on an eye. The man had had a severe eye injury from a bomb several days earlier and the eye had to be removed in order to have the other one. As the eye was about half removed a terrific explosion occured about fifty yards away as a shell exploded right on the corner of the Cristian Mission church in the next yard. I happened to be facing the window and raised my head to see the cloud rising from the explosion. Four pieces of metal came through the windows of the operating room and two of rhem have been added to my collection which is growing steadily. The operating room nurses were naturally pretty shaky and wanted to know if we should continue the operation. There was obviously nothing else to do but I don't think many eyes have come out that fast. The corner of the church is pretty badly smashed. Another shell from the same source entered the new dormitory of the University and exploded. Fortunately neither shell either killed or wounded a soul.
We have added another young Chinese doctor to the staff also from the Kiangyin hospital. We seem to have a little more medical knowledge than the other one and I have had him help me once or twice in the operating room. The three Kiangyin nurses I have there have been doing beautifully. I did eleven operations today including the inevitable amputation. We have considerably over one hundred patients now and I didn't managed to get around to see them all today. One ward I had to leave over. The electricity is naturally off as it is the water suply and now the telephon telephone is off so we have few of our modern convenience commonly regarded as necessities. What we are going to use for food shortly is something we can only guess at. I hope mail becomes established again shortly as I would like to get this off to you all and needless to say it is grand to hear from everyone again.
Robert Wilson
↑NMP0014 Sept. 24 - Dec. 14, 1937 "Dear Folks"
Letter from Robert O. Wilson to multiple people
