The great escape

Dash for life

A file photo of US pilots and a P-40 fighter plane bearing the shark-face logo of the Flying Tigers. The aircraft was the same type that Donald Kerr flew to bomb a Japanese air base in Hong Kong in 1944. Photo Provided to China Daily

That's when the US pilot met his first savior, a small boy who looked up "from under a man-sized, store-fresh hat" and gestured for Kerr to follow him.

That desperate dash for life is powerfully evoked by one of the true-adventure cartoons Kerr drew, depicting how the boy "pattered along on his rubber-soled shoes with no apparent effort" under the hot sun, followed by Kerr who "stumbled and staggered", "puffing like a freight train".

That event forms a crucial part of Liu Shen's documentary, the first to tell the story, which took eight months to make and is set for release in early June.

Liu is familiar with every verifiable detail of Kerr's escape.

"After hiding the pilot in a foxhole left by the British, the boy, a member of the local guerrilla organization East River Column, went to a local's home, where he chanced upon a fellow guerrilla member, a lady called Li Zhaohua," Liu said. "Li went to Kerr's hiding place that same night."

Kerr's memoir describes Li as "a smart girl" who was "no country lass".

"I saw a Chinese girl dressed in a tattered lot of rags and carrying a pole over her shoulder, with faggots of twigs standing from each end," he wrote. "She whispered 'friend, friend' in English, put down her burden and moved my careful camouflage aside. She crawled in, replaced the branches and began to talk."

Li Zhaohua died in 1999, at age 75, nearly 10 years before the search for his father's rescuers led Dave Kerr to Li's son, Jiang Shan.

"Born in Malaysia as a second-generation Chinese immigrant, my mother returned to her ancestral home in Guangdong province in early 1939, just across a narrow strip of water from Hong Kong. She was determined to join her native country's fight against the invaders," Jiang, a retired policeman, said.

"She became a member of the East River Column, a guerrilla force, led by the Communist Party of China, and was sent to Hong Kong soon after the island's fall in 1941. Her main job was to gather intelligence and raise donations for the army.

The silent heroine

"My mother never talked about her meeting with Donald Kerr or the rescue until very late in her life," the 63-year-old said. "She took him to another hiding place and eventually asked two of her colleagues to go there and find him."

One of the men was Deng Bin, the father of Deng Liping. The younger Deng, a successful exporter, provided much-needed financial support for the documentary. "Neither of them understood English, so they took a hand-drawn map of the area, with a line of English words written at the bottom: 'Come here, sir, I bring you go home now!' " he said, quoting the scribbled message. "For the pilot, that must have been the real turning point. That's why we called our film Take Me Home."

However, before going home, Kerr was forced to hide in a variety of places, including a cave at the top of a mountain, where he spent nearly two weeks protected around the clock by five guerrillas, and was told that the Japanese had put his parachute on display in a shop window in central Hong Kong.

In his memoir, Kerr dutifully recorded the "variety of emotions" he felt when he saw some of his pursuers from the hideout. "... fear, hunger, and a crick in my back," he wrote. "As usual, my gun was ready - and just as usual, I was desperately hoping that I wouldn't have to use it."

Beginning of the end

The anxiety ended on a starless night in early March, more than 20 days after Kerr jumped from his burning plane.

"He was given a boat ride across a rather secluded bay, from Sai Kung in Hong Kong to Nan'ao on the Chinese mainland," Liu said. "There were two boats, one carrying the pilot, the other loaded with dynamite."

This unusual arrangement didn't go unnoticed, according to Dave Kerr: "My father asked, and was told that they were no match for the Japanese in terms of either speed or gun power. One guerrilla told my father, 'If the Japanese try to capture our boat, we'll wait until both are together, then explode the bomb. Everyone dies'. My father was very humbled that they would take such risks to help him escape."

Shortly after arriving in Nan'ao, Kerr was sent to Tuyang about 10 kilometers away, where the East River Column was headquartered. He stayed there for a few days, before embarking on a 10-day journey to Guilin, escorted by a member of the British Army Aid Group, a paramilitary organization for British and Allied Forces in southern China during WWII founded by an Australian, Lt. Col Lindsay Ride, after being rescued from a Hong Kong POW camp by Chinese guerrillas.

Kerr arrived at the base in Guilin on March 29, 1944, after extensive travel by train, ship, truck and even bicycle.

"My father only told me the full story once, when I was about 10," Dave Kerr said. "After his death, my mother typed his handwritten memoir and before I got married, at the age of 28, I made my wife promise that we would to go to China someday."

He first visited China in 2005 after his company was purchased by a Chinese business, but in 2008, he found himself standing in the East River Column Memorial Hall in Pingshan, Guangdong province, face to face with his father's cartoons and thank you letter. He recognized the drawings immediately because the family owns several others that depict the escape.