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A steady drizzle fell as the first echelon to leave, Lieutenant Colonel Donald Curtis' 2d Battalion, formed ranks outside its Haiphong Street billet and prepared to board the double-decker buses of the China Omnibus Company. At 0900 the Marines loaded the vehicles for their last trip in Shanghai, down Bubbling Well Road, into Nanking Road, and on to the Bund, where they boarded the lighter Merry Moller for the short steam down the Whangpoo, past the mouth of Soochow Creek, to the SS President Madison, bound for � the Marines knew not where.