[
    {
        "id": 212177,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 119,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "96\n\nteased. The cook had promptly disappeared over the garden fence into a hole, dug by the servants in the hillside during the past few days, but the boy was made of stouter stuff and continued to wait on us at table. Morale, however, crumbled when a crashing inferno opened up all round and each scuttled into the nearest corner, soon to emerge under the embarrassing discovery that it was only the anti-aircraft guns. The boy issued from the linen cupboard and went to doff his white coat and put on a black mackintosh overcoat and waterproof cap, so that \"Japanese no can see\", as he explained.\n\nOn August 15th there was only one raid, but the very next day there were three raids and no less than six alerts. Each alert would last up to two hours, as it took time to check whether all enemy aircraft had left the zone, so that on that day and some of the succeeding days there was an almost continuous state of alarm. This was most inconvenient, because as soon as the alert went the Chinese police strictly stopped all road traffic and you had to stay where you were. That day we were unable to get home to lunch. We thereafter kept a reserve of food at the office against contingencies. Fortunately later on the Japanese developed the habit for a time of raiding in the morning and again in the afternoon, leaving a good long interval for lunch, for which mercy we were duly grateful.\n\nThe Japanese airforce by no means had it all their own way. In the initial raids they sent their bombers over without escort, and the Chinese fighter pilots, trained by the American Mission headed by Colonel Chennault and equipped with Curtis Hawk pursuit planes, had the legs off them and shot down many. The Chinese Ministry of Information organised tours for the foreign newspaper correspondents to review the remains of the destroyed enemy bombers, and it was not long before the Japanese took to raiding by night to avoid casualties. Later on, when they had occupied an airfield near Shanghai, they were able to send fighter escorts with their bombers. In November a few Russian planes and crews arrived and took up the battle, and in all I should say by mid-December, when Nanking fell, not less than 300 Japanese planes had been destroyed. For those days that was no mean achievement, but by then the Chinese airforce, unable to replace casualties to pilots and aircraft, had shot its bolt.\n\nOn land at Shanghai, though they failed in their objective of driving the Japanese into the river, the two German-trained Chinese divisions",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212200,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 142,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "119\n\nLiuchow where one of Colonel Chennault's schools for training Chinese pilots was at that time established. I arrived just in time to observe the results of a Japanese air-raid on the field, when they succeeded in shooting up two of the latest type of Curtis Hawk fighters, the only two at that time in China, concealed in some trees on the edge of the field. Training under such conditions was not easy and the school soon had to move west again into Yunnan province.\n\nThree hundred kilometres a day is good going on these lightly metalled roads. I reached Kweilin on the evening of the third day after leaving Wuchow, and put up at the government hostel. From time immemorial the idea of travel has filled Chinese with apprehension, induced not only by fear of the ubiquitous bandit, but also by the abomination of the fetid roadside inn. With the advent of the motor car, the need for better hotel accommodation became evident, and the various provincial governments opened official hostelries at key points. While these left much to be desired by western standards, they were a prodigious improvement on the old-style inn.\n\nKwangsi is one of the more progressive provinces, for long controlled by Generals Li Tsung Jen and Pai Chung Hsi, who rank next to the Generalissimo himself. The hostel at Kweilin was better than average. There was a wireless in the lounge, and a small crowd of us sat and listened to the news as it came in. It was the period before Munich. A young German amongst us, flushed with arrogance, gloated over Hitler's successes. My first contact with the aboriginal Nazi spirit left me angry and dismayed.\n\nChinese buildings are flimsy. The rooms are small and dark, and not clean. When you have made allowance for this idiosyncrasy, Kweilin appears a delightful little town. The city wall circumambulates from shrine-crowned hill to hill; the river is full of junks that sail down to Wuchow; the roads are wide and straight, and shop arcades cover the pavements on either side. The little separate hills rise steeply from the plain, in those fantastic shapes seen in Chinese paintings. Their rocky tree-fringed summits staggered drunkenly beneath the sky. The hills are full of natural caves, most convenient for storing war supplies, or to act as shelters in the event of raids. But Kweilin was still far from the war. The Kweilin merchants believed that the Japanese planes would have difficulty in locating their little city snuggling amongst the hills. The excitement was all about the new railway,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    }
]