By donning an American army officer's uniform, Harrison was able to convince the Kuomintang officer to not check a barge which held the students hidden inside. On December 4, 1946, Harrison set out from Shanghai with approximately 50 tonnes of supplies. On this train journey, he was to be accompanied by a Russian UNRRA worker and Chinese welfare representatives. Due to repeated Kuomintang inspections, the train journey constantly suffered from delays. The first such delay occurred at Nanjing and lasted four days; the second such delay, at Xuzhou, was of equal duration. At one station, the medical supplies were unhooked from the train's engine car and left on a bleak plain. The two UNRRA workers did not have clean water to drink and were forced to boil ditch water which was polluted with human waste. To add to the dire situation, Harrison's blanket and shoes were stolen, and due to the cold, he began to suffer from frostbite. Two weeks after Harrison left Shanghai, his train was permitted to move again, but there were problems still ahead. At each one of the 20 stations en route to Kaifeng, the train was delayed for up to three hours. Upon arrival at Kaifeng, the journey had to be completed by truck and ox cart. After completing one delivery, he returned to Kaifeng to pick up a second load, but could not continue past the Zhangqiu branch of the receiving hospital. Harrison died of exposure on January 10, 1947, near Kaifeng in China, aged 66. By the end of his life, Tillson Harrison could speak no less than six different languages, had participated in seven wars and, although this was not discovered for several years after his death, was married to four women at the same time. While he is virtually unknown in Canada, Harrison is widely honored in China. A statue in his likeness stands tall in Shanghai, his burial site at an Anglican compound in Kaifeng is home to the Dr. Tillson Harrison Memorial School, and the Harrison International Peace Hospital in Hengshui treats approximately 800 outpatients every day. The town of Tillsonburg, Ontario (named for Harrison's great-grandfather) maintains a lasting relationship with the hospital, which was renamed as such from the previous name of Handan International Peace Hospital in 1947. In 1988, the Prime Minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney, sent a commemorative letter to the Chinese ambassador to mark the centenary of Harrison's birth.