It was close to midnight Saturday, Beijing time. There had been reports that troops were preparing to move on protesting students.
I was standing on a corner near Tiananmen Square when I heard a deep, rumbling sound that grew louder and louder. I stopped to listen, but crowds of shouting people began surging in my direction. Two Chinese Army armored personnel carriers appeared, one racing from the south and the other from the west on the streets surrounding the square.
One vehicle was so close to me I could see the face of the driver. He appeared frightened by the size of the crowd. He turned left sharply in front of the Forbidden City, catching hundreds of pedestrians and bicyclists by surprise. Dozens of parked bicycles were crushed in the vehicle's path.
The two armored personnel carriers disappeared in different directions, driving up and down streets in an apparent attempt to intimidate people.
Around 1 a.m., I walked to the Monument to the People's Heroes, toward the back of the square. The raised base of the platform had served as the center for the students occupying the square. A number of foreign reporters, photographers and TV camera crews were waiting there, many with wet towels tied around their necks in case the soldiers used tear gas.
I had no towel, but students offered me a surgical mask soaked in liquid. The troops were expected to enter within minutes, and everyone was nervous. I had to make a decision: Did I stay here at the monument, with no possible escape route, or did I head back to a car waiting for me in a nearby alley? I persuaded a friend of mine to leave with me so we could move about the area freely.
Just as we reached the street on the east side of the square, we ran into a group of people retreating from the south - just steps ahead of soldiers armed with long clubs. Blocked off from our escape point by the crowd, we ran into a side street, but it was a dead-end alley.
A woman standing next to me was very frightened. I tried to talk to her, but she cried even louder. I prayed that the soldiers would not sweep through the side streets. Peeking out, we saw them marching right past us. The crowd followed behind, braver now, throwing rocks and other objects at the soldiers.
It was now possible for us to make it to our car, but our driver had disappeared. As we waited in the darkness, we heard the crack of gunfire to the south and saw red tracers in the sky. A Chinese man told me that armed soldiers were being blocked as they tried to advance on the square and that they were firing their weapons into the air to scare people away.
Several minutes later, our driver returned and we left the area through the narrow alleys that stretch through this part of the city.
FIRES AND BURNING TANKS
At about 2 a.m. outside the Beijing Hotel, there were thousands of angry people. I saw a large fire in front of the Forbidden City. It was a burning tank set on fire by a Molotov cocktail thrown by someone in the crowd.
We tried to make our way west on foot back down Changhan Avenue in the direction of our hotel. After we got halfway there, rifle shots rang out, and we retreated with the crowd.
The Chinese on the street seemed not to realize that the shots being fired over their heads posed a danger to them. The crowd played cat-and-mouse with the soldiers, advancing and retreating each time shots were fired. From where we were standing, we could not see where the soldiers were because of the huge crowds in the street. Ambulances raced back and forth with sirens wailing, carrying the wounded away from the square.
There were so many injured people that some had to be carried out on the backs of bicycle carts. A constant stream of the wounded was carried past us to nearby hospitals. As I watched one man being carried away, I again heard the sound of rifle fire and moved back toward the safety of the hotel. A man running next to me fell and was quickly picked up by bystanders, who propped him up on a bicycle and wheeled him away.
The crowd did not seem at all frightened but continued to move forward again and again. My friend and I decided to go into the lobby of the Beijing Hotel, where many journalists have been staying.
Police in the lobby stopped us, however, and searched us, confiscating cassette tapes from my friend. One photographer's camera was seized; nearby, a U.S. television camera crew negotiated unsuccessfully for the return of their videocassettes.
Returning to the street, we heard again and again a plea that we have heard continuously over the past few days: ""Please tell the world the truth about what is happening here."
A succession of shots rang through the air, louder and closer than the ones fired before. The crowd panicked this time and began running wildly, while others shouted, ""Don't run, don't run."
BLOODY SCENE
I heard a woman scream five or six times and realized that another person had been hit - this time in the courtyard of the hotel, a place I had thought was safe. I looked over the locked fence leading through the entrance and saw two men carrying a woman and running toward the street. One man was trying to stop the blood with a cloth pressed to the woman's face. An ambulance sped up minutes later and took the woman away.
It was now 4:30 a.m. and we decided to make our way back to our hotel, several miles east of the square. Our driver, a native of Beijing, knew the city and weaved in and out of alleys, avoiding roadblocks.
In one narrow alley, we found it difficult to turn. A crowd of people came over and helped us lift the back of the car so we could continue. Everywhere, people could be seen gathering in small groups, passing on the word of what was happening.
As I reached my hotel, I passed some rolls of film I was carrying for a photographer and my own notes on the past week to our driver, who promised to return them to me in the morning. When we entered the hotel, security people asked us if we had any film or tapes. Looking satisfied, we told them we had none. Exhausted from being awake for most of the past 48 hours, I tried to get some sleep.
It was not until later in the day that I realized the true extent of the massacre.