The cloud was darkening by 7 o'clock in the evening of 18 September 1967. Things were moving at a frenetic pace. There was much activity as stray soldiers, running away from the heat of battle, wounded and shell-shocked soldiers, poured into the camp at Okpatu where Georgette was working, overwhelmed by the casualties. She tended the numerous wounded, some of whom had been evacuated from the scenes of the carnage barely in one piece. She was keeping an eye on the road nevertheless, waiting for when Christopher Okigbo would storm into the camp in his loud and boisterous manner.

The confusion at the war front had seeped gradually into the Red Cross camp as friends, relations, colleagues and lovers of the soldiers besieged the camp to assure themselves of the safety of their own. Sometimes she would hear a piercing wail joining the echo of the voices of mourners. Someone would have discovered a close relation among the dead. Christopher Okigbo's body was not among the dead recovered that day. The night wore on. Just about a few minutes past 8 o'clock that evening, it had grown eerily dark, and something unusual happened to Georgette.