Rip : Nathalia Buchan

[ACARLG]

One of life's interesting women, and not bad lookin'.

 

Amazing life: Fleeing Bolsheviks, fortunes won and lost, Tommy guns in Thailand and Shanghai romance

 

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/Amazing+life+...l#ixzz1AJZ8LQJo

 

 

...she was in rough shape, weighing just 78 pounds, when liberated by American troops at the end of the war.

 

With Shanghai in chaos and China locked in a communist-nationalist struggle, the Buchans alit in Bangkok. Bill sold newsprint from B.C. before building up a tobacco business.

 

One day in 1946 they got a knock on the door. There, the story goes, stood two Vietnamese leaders -- Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap -- looking to buy arms with which to fight French occupation. "The Russians said you could help us," they told Bill.

 

Bill left for Czechoslovakia to broker the deal, but not before stopping at the British embassy to pick up a pistol for Nathalia; he

 

didn't want to leave her defenceless in lawless Bangkok. The man at the embassy -- described as looking like Peter Lorre -- gave him a Thompson submachine-gun instead. Every evening, Nathalia, still half-blind and emaciated from wartime malnutrition, would hobble onto the veranda on her crutches, place a pillow between the Tommy gun and her shoulder, and rip off a couple of bursts to keep the bandits at bay.

 

 

[darrylta]

I take it that with her proactive warning bursts, she was not accosted by the bad guys?

Neat story and a strong woman.

Thanks,

Darryl

[TheGunny]

Wow!...............Amazing woman!