--ALL YE FAITHFUL--

A church service came in fading, surging waves over half the earth's surface to the ears of TIME's Correspondent Teddy White. He was aboard a U.S. bomber in China, returning from a Christmas Eve visit to the Japanese army on the Salween River front. Afterward he cabled the following dispatch:

We crossed the Mekong and the Salween en route to the Japanese lines with lights out, our formation tight, the interlocking ships black against the rising moon behind them. Tengyueh lay absolutely still within the rectangular walls of its valley, with not a glimmer of light anywhere. But the brilliance of the moon traced the outlines of the walls and the main streets in clear, sharp shadows.

No Surprise. For a moment we thought we had surprised the Japanese. Then suddenly heavy machine guns began to scratch the heavens with fire. We were hedgehopping, coming directly out of the moonlight. Every Japanese machine gunner seemed to get the bead on our bombing run as we skimmed low. The tracers' red, blazing prongs of light flashed by our windows. I was up in the nose with the squadron bombardier, Lieut. George Stout, and it seemed as if we were darting through a corridor of flaming sheaves.

As soon as we dropped our bombs Lieut. Colonel William E. Basye, the flight leader, dipped his ship off the line of fire, wheeling furiously to get away. Behind us the other ships were getting hell. One machine-gun battery was blazing all-out at us--and then there was a puff of smoke from a bomb, and no more machine gun. Basye circled the town once more, getting a view of our work. Bombs had dropped, in a first-class string, right down the main street. Japanese machine guns were still firing at us. Basye banked steeply so that every gun in our flight could be trained on the machine-gun batteries, and then we let them have it. A flat, scarlet sheet of flame poured down from every turret, every gun of our planes. I could feel our ship rattling, re-echoing the clatter of the guns. Down below one

Japanese battery suddenly blinked out --whether from prudence or from our fire we could not tell. Stout had shifted the nose gun to the side panel. Empty cartridge cases were flying about like corn in a popper. "This is the most fun I get out of a raid," Stout yelled.

We Headed for Home. In a few minutes we were almost directly over the Salween gorge. As we crossed, Stout opened for the last time on the west bank of the river, spraying the hillside with fire to let the Chinese troops on the east bank know that their allies up above were helping.

Basye ordered the radioman to tune in San Francisco. As the ship rocked and pitched in the tremendous currents from the gorge, the first strains of Christmas carols began to penetrate the static of our tight earphones. We could make out a beautiful chorus of clear, feminine sopranos. The static cleared away briefly and a ringing male tenor took up Come, All Ye Faithful. Then there was an organ, and after that the entire chorus joined him. After that there was some news and a commentator telling how we were winning the war. We didn't listen to that.

I thought of General Chennault's Christmas greeting to Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kaishek: "On this sixth wartime Christmas the China Air Task Force joins me in extending to Your Excellencies and our comrades in arms, the Chinese Army, our sincerest holiday greetings at this period of the year when all men gather to do honor to the Prince of Peace. The fighters and bombers of the American Air Forces in China pledge themselves in His name to keep faith and comradeship until they have brought peace to this land and to all free men everywhere."

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