1923 - Colonel Two-Gun Cohen, Canton, early 1923.jpg

Michael Alderton (essarem) notes: The above is an early 1923 image of Colonel “Two-Gun” Cohen, with twin revolver holsters clearly visible bulging under his jacket pockets, taken in the garden of Dr Sun Yat-sen’s headquarters and residence on Honam Island, Canton.

See also: 1923 - Visiting-card for Morris A. 'Two-Gun' Cohen, A.D.C. to Generalissimo Sun Yat-sen..jpg | Gwulo: Old Hong Kong

21 Feb 1923. Hong Kong. (Colonel Cohen in his own words): In the morning the cars came round to take us down to the river steamer for Canton. We had a good send-off from crowds carrying banners on the waterfront, and plenty of fire-crackers from the sampan folk in the harbour. We steamed out into the Pearl River estuary and turned north for the Chinese Bocca Tigris Forts. I’ve done the Hong Kong to Canton run more times than I can remember, but that first trip I’ll never forget. There was every kind of queer craft to be seen. On the bank you’d see a big black water-buffalo, and on its back a little nipper steering the great beast with a bit of string threaded through one nostril. When we came into the last reach leading up to the Canton Bund the excitement began with swarms of sampans to welcome us, and when we tied up the whole place went raving mad. There’s just one skyscraper in Canton, and at every window on every story of it there was a Chinese throwing down fire-crackers. It was like a continuous cascade of fire from on high. We got Dr Sun through the mob and into his motor boat and made our way over to Honam Island, where his headquarters had been fixed up in the house belonging to the manager of the Cement Works. Everything was very plain and utilitarian, but that was how he liked things to be. Canton was full of troops, a lot of them unreliable, so Dr Sun’s headquarters had to be guarded against a coup de main that might be delivered by a whole battalion. (Extracts from: Commander Charles H. Drage, Two-Gun Cohen, Jonathan Cape, London 1954)