Early one morning last week, the 1,470-ton British sloop Amethyst steamed slowly up the Yangtze toward Nanking. On her starboard hand, massed for the assault across the river, lay the Communist armies. The Amethyst, with a 17-ft. Union Jack painted on each side of her grey steel hull, plowed the yellow-silted waters with assurance, a frail symbol of waning Western power in China. The Amethyst was to stand by the Chinese capital to protect British citizens. She never made it.
Near Rose Island, 60 miles below Nanking, two artillery shells from the Red-held north...
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