(CNN) -- Cynde Strand, CNN's Beijing camerawoman during the crisis, had spent night after night in Tiananmen Square, amidst a heap of trash, leaning on her ladder, her head over her camera, just waiting for something to happen. Cynde Strand: "I just knew this was the day it was going to end." If she was really exhausted, she'd lay plastic over the trash and cat-nap on that. "Every night I would stay there," she recalled. "Every night there'd be rumors that the troops were coming, or they weren't coming. And then there were all those kids we had gotten to know," she said about the demonstrators.
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Camerawoman Cynde Strand had spent night after night in Tiananmen Square
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As troops arrived, she "got everybody together and said, okay, this is it"
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"Bullets were whizzing overhead ... then they turned the lights off"
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She and soundman Kit Swartz stayed in the square for the entire historic night
See photos of the CNN team in @placeholder in 1989 »