ADVENTUROUS SAILOR

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20379, 16 October 1940, Page 9

ADVENTUROUS SAILOR

FROM CHINA TO ENLIST EXPERIENCES IN AIR RAIDS SYDNEY. Oct. 1. A 26-year-old Australian, Mr. R. N. Lindeman, son of a grazier near Grafton, New South Wales, and who has been in several Japanese bombing raids in China in the last four years, has arrived in Sydney from Chungking to join the Royal Australian Air Force as a pilot-trainee. He travelled nearly 5000 miles by lorry, train and ship to enlist. With his second mate’s ticket, Mr. Lindeman went to China about six years ago. Since then he has been a ship’s officer on coastal and river boats, including one plying through the Yangtze gorges from Ichang to Chungking; leader of a strategic survey expedition in Hainan Island, now occupied by the Japanese, for the Chinese Government; a member of the Chinese Maritime Customs at Shanghai and Amoy; and an assistant cargo superintendent at Hong Kong and Chungking. “The Chinese are so used to Japanese air raids now that at Chungking the summer is known as the ‘bombing season,’ ” Mr. Lindeman said. “In winter Chungking is free of air raids because of mist, but for three months of the year there are three or four day raids a week. The morale of the Chinese in air raids is high, and there is no trace of defeatism among them. The unifying .influence of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, wife of the Generalissimo, is wonderful.” A Japanese bomb went through the poop of a river steamer oh which Mr. Lindeman was an officer, but did not explode until it was in the water. The ship suffered no casualties.