Suddenly, headlights pierced the darkness as a stream of cars drove on to the runway; the procession braked to a stop next to the stratoliner. Out of the first car stepped the leader of war ravaged China -- Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Right behind the Generalissimo was Brigadier General Clayton Bissell, commander of the United States Tenth Air Force. The two men were accompanied by numerous high-ranking American and Chinese officers. An ambulance drove past the high brass and maneuvered close to the Stratoliner. As the ambulance slowed to a stop, the side doors flew open and attendants ran to the rear door; reaching into the darkened interior, they gently lifted out the Apache's mysterious VIP passenger. On a stretcher, bundled with blankets, lay the wife of China's leader -- the beautiful, raven haired, forty-five-year old Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
The Madame suffered from nervous exhaustion and a recurring lower-back pain suffered in a car wreck while visiting the Chinese battle front five years before. Worse, the Generalissimo, known as the Gissimo, feared that his Missimo. had cancer. Top notch medical care at a major hospital of his American ally would soothe her pain and ease his mind. But there was another reason for this secret trip, a political reason that would end the secrecy and splash Madame Chiang Kai-shek's name across America's front pages.
She was born Mai-ling Soong in Shanghai, China in March, 1897. Her mother and father were both Christians and her father, Charles Soong, grew wealthy selling the Bible in both English and Chinese. While a student at Wesleyan College for Woman in Macon Georgia, Mai-ling learned to speak English with a slight Georgia accent. May-ling then went to one of America's most prestigious woman's schools, Wellesley College, where she majored in English Literature, minored in Philosophy and upon her graduation in 1917, was named a Durant Scholar, Wellesley's highest academic honor. Writer Carl Crow noted, "Madame's body was born in China but her mind was born in America."
Mai-ling returned to China in 1917, where she married Chiang Kai-shek, Nationalist China's president, on December 1, 1927. When the undeclared Sino-Japanese war began in
