Chinese Literature

the anti-aircraft regulations forbade it—and had to strain his eyes as his only guide. As well as this, he had been told to go at top speed by the Commandant, and must go on despite the concussion of falling bombs and the appalling noise. I felt as though we were in a little boat on a stormtossed ocean. Little Feng sat beside the driver, doubling the parts of air-raid warden and signaller. In normal times he would have told the driver to stop, but now he couldn’t, with the Commandant’s strict orders. He just poked his head out, keeping a sharp look-out, and warning the driver “Enemy plane about! Strafing ahead!” or “Look out, there’s a steep bank ... rocks in the road... .”

We sat in the back. Now and again I felt Commandant Shen’s reassuring hand on my arm. I knew he was helping me to relax.

In a musing voice he said to me, “D’you know, old chap, ’m indulging ina day dream... or is it a night dream? Perhaps you think the word is too far-fetched. Let me call it a hope. Can you guess what my hope is?”

“That you'd like to see our planes turn up!” I answered with undue self-confidence.

“What else?”

“You hope for peace in Korea?”

“Yes, but what else?”

I had no more ideas, and could only wait for him to tell me himself. More like a scientist engrossed in work in a peaceful laboratory than a commandant at the front, he talked about the immediate problem. He said that physical removal could be one way of tackling the job, but that it was very dangerous, and anyway it was a backward and primitive method. The scientific and advanced method was to dismantle and render safe the bombs. Properly done, this was much less dangerous. Finally he said, as we jolted along, “I must confess to you that I hope we can start dismantling the bomb, instead of having to shift it. Do you see what I’m driving at? D’you think it’s feasible?”

My mind went back over his life, as far as I knew it. He had been apprenticed as a lad to an engineering workshop. Later, by dint of doing odd jobs, he raised the money to keep himself at a university and studied physical science. He joined the revolution and the Party in his early

youth, and he had held responsible posts before he came to Korea as a

Volunteer. He was well equipped, therefore, not only with scientific knowledge, but with revolutionary experience. In the few months that he had been working in the Service Corps he had been able to suggest many improvements, such as air-raid sentries stationed among the lines of communication, camouflage improvements, and so on, most of which had been adopted and found useful.

I had no difficulty in agreeing with him, as you may imagine, and answered as much.