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Death of Freddie John. For a day or so a crisis that might have brought on U. S. and British intervention threatened aboard the U. S. S. Augusta, flagship of Admiral Harry Yarnell of the Asiatic Fleet. While bombs and high explosive shells rained down on the native city, while Chinese and Japanese soldiers and civilians died like flies in the oily glare of burning buildings ashore, a group of 40 seamen off duty assembled on the well-deck of the Augusta to see a movie. From somewhere a single 36 mm. pompom shell weighing about a pound dropped in their midst and exploded. Eighteen men were wounded, one Freddie John Falgout, 20, of Raceland, La., was killed.
At Raceland, in Louisiana's trench speaking Acadian community, Freddie John's fiancée, Waitress Louise St. Germaine of Napoleonville was heartbroken. His father showed the boy's last letter:
"The flagship carries six captains and one rear admiral but the officers are a nice bunch. China is a pretty nice place. I ought to have a good many smackers saved by the time I get back. How is the crop?
Shouting hard to make themselves heard above the blasting of six and eight inch guns the bursting of 100-lb. bombs, the Augusta's officers held an investigation to decide whether the one pounder that killed Freddie John came from a Chinese or Japanese muzzle. Prudently they decided that proof was impossible.
Line Broken. A crisis for the Japanese occurred two days later when Chinese soldiers plunging in wave after wave against the street barricades of Japanese marines, broke through the line to the north river bank held for many hours about five full blocks of Whangpoo dockyards. Promptly the Japanese warships in midstream upped anchor and steamed slowly past the broken line Too close to depress the muzzles of their big guns sufficiently, they passed in review pouring a hot stream of fire from every machine gun and light cannon into the Chinese lines.
Ward Road Jail. What claims to be the largest prison in the world, the Ward Road jail, capacity 8,000, stands on the edge of the Japanese part of the International Settlement under crossfire from both sides for over a week. Shells crashed right into the building last week, killed eight prisoners in the cells, wounded 70, drove several others insane. Volunteers from the International Settlement last week finally arranged for the prisoners to be evacuated in busses to the outskirts of the Chinese city. A morning's load of 500, guarded by British and U.S. armored cars got safely through. The rest, 6,500 were held by Japanese troops. Though many of the prisoners were juvenile offendors 12 to 16 years old, many of the others were dope addicts, Japan insisted that almost all the prisoners were being pressed into the Chinese ranks.