GONGS SCARE BANDITS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 250, 19 September 1940, Page 13

GONGS SCARE BANDITS.

NURSES’ CALM ACTION.

How eight nurses beating large brass gongs frightened away a horde of Chinese bandits making their third attack on the New Zealand Presbyterian Hospital at Canton was told by the matron of the hospital, Miss B. M. Reid, who recently arrived in Sydney. Miss Reid, who is a New Zealander, has been at the hospital for ten years, and is on her way home to spend a year’s leave. She has experienced the intensive Japanese bombing, and then the occupation by Japan. The hospital is continuing with its work, which was greatly increased by the widespread poverty which followed the fighting in the district.

, “Before the Japanese invasion we never saw a starving man,” said Miss Reid. “Now the hospitals feed nearly 10.000 daily. At the Fong Bin hospital about 100 have been dying each day from exposure and starvation.” Since the occupation by Japan, there have been three raids on the hospital by Chinese bandits, during one of which the superintendent, Dr. O. Eatori, son of Rev. Clarence Eaton, of Palmerston North, was shot dead. It was the last of these raids, shortly before Miss Reid left, that the attackera were scared off by the eight enterprising nurses.