AN INTERVIEW WITH XINHUA

When in Beijing recently, I met with an American journalist who interviewed me on how I came to write my book about the Friends Ambulance Unit, China Convoy. She did a remarkable job of distilling a huge amount of information and her article now appears on the website of Xinhua, China's official news agency.

I and Jack are very honoured, so please click on the following link.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-12/01/c_135874065.htm

A RARE FIRST EDITION

A substantial coffee table book makes a wonderful gift and, from a small print run, this one is pretty unique.

The story of a unique Anglo-American medical aid project to China in the dark years of the nineteen forties, it is both a rattlingly good yarn and also an important history. China today is anxious to ground its current place within the world community of nations upon special moments of shared friendship in the past, and there is no better example than this one.

The book is available in North America from Quaker Books at Pendle Hill (www.quakerbooks.org),in the UK from Friends House, Euston Road, London or direct from me (arhicks56@hotmail.com), in Hong Kong from the St John's Cathedral Bookstore and in Shanghai from the publisher, Earnshaw Books.

Nearly four hundred young idealists crossed the world risking their lives to try to make a difference and, in these troubled times, I want their example and commitment to be remembered.



Jack Jones and the transport unit at Chungking, 1947.

Celebrating Seventy Extraordinary Years

I've just returned from China having enjoyed a very stimulating three week tour with SACU, the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (www.sacu.org). We visited Beijing, Xian and Shanghai and made many visits to schools and universities where we were received and welcomed most warmly.

One side trip was to Fengxian, formerly Shuangshuipu, a nerve jangling trip across serpentine roads over mist-shrouded mountains by mini-bus. The purpose was to visit and see the restored cave dwelling of an Englishman called George Hogg and to pay tribute to his memory.



Hogg, a nephew of Muriel Lester, a prominent left-wing pacifist, visited China with her in the thirties and, moved by the struggle of the people there, committed his life to working in China. He was to be made head of the so-called Bailie School in Shuangshuipu whose aim was to give a vocational education to orphans and war refugees, thus staffing the burgeoning small cooperative factories that were supplementing China's war ravaged industrial sector. Tragically in 1945 Hogg contracted tetanus and died aged only thirty.

SACU is currently promoting fund raising for a George Hogg Fund which is to assist in the training of people to work in cooperatives in the region, hence the reason for our visit to Fengxian.

My own special interest is that the Friends Ambulance Unit, the subject of my book, A TRUE FRIEND TO CHINA, was closely associated with the Bailie Schools and the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. Thus it was that when the FAU closed down in 1951 all of its remaining assets and personnel, consisting of a convoy of sixteen heavily loaded trucks, were donated and transferred to them.

While there we were warmly received by officials and staff at the museum of the Fengxian County Tourism Office, consisting mainly of post-war monochrome photos of people and workers in the town. There were no pictures I could see of the place itself. They were therefore bowled over when I was able to produce for them several photos of camels in the dry river bed in what was then a tiny village, taken in 1947. In the pictures is a very distinctive hill that is perfectly conical and with a temple at its summit that is immediately recognisable. While in the forties the hill was stripped of vegetation, it was amazing to compare it today, now well covered with greenery. The change in the ensuing seventy years is remarkable and struck me very strongly as I photographed the hill from my lofty hotel bedroom.











I should now perhaps explain how these black and white photos came to be taken almost seven decades ago. At that time the FAU was distributing much needed medical supplies in China, much as Medecins Sans Frontieres does today. Being an apolitical pacifist organisation it was anxious to take medical aid to communist areas as well as to those controlled by the Nationalist government in which they chiefly had to operate. However, the Nationalists energetically resisted this aid to their communist enemies and only after considerable diplomatic pressure and much negotiation was a convoy of three trucks given papers to travel from the base in Chungking to the communist base in Yenan.

Appointed to lead the convoy was an experienced FAU member, Tony Reynolds and their long and arduous route took them through Shuangshuipu (now Fengxian). As told in Reynold's full article in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch (Vol 17, 1977),they left Chungking on 23 January 1946 and arrived in Shuangshipu on 30 January. By chance they met there another FAU convoy heading in the opposite direction, on its way back from the oil wells at Yumen in Kansu province, a round trip of thousands of miles to the petrol pumps. As Reynolds describes, the town 'was a transport centre with truck depots and inns catering to every need. We put up at the China Industrial Cooperatives Guest House where we had five rooms. [See photos below]. We spent a day and a half servicing the trucks, stocking up with fuel from the Unit supplies and then had three days holiday for Lunar New Year.'

All of which this explains when and why Tony Reynolds was there to take these photos which have now been returned to the town, just short of seventy years later.

That is my immediate story about my SACU tour to China, but may I now digress a little. People often ask me why I have immersed myself in the story of the FAU and devoted myself for years to writing a book about Jack Jones and his FAU friends. Perhaps the following may suggest how I became inexorably drawn in and fascinated by these events in China that have no direct relevance to my own family story.

Back with the Reynolds convoy in Shuangshipu after their Chinese New Year celebrations, the three trucks then drove on over the mountain roads towards Xian that are still, as we found, quite challenging today.



They safely arrived in Yenan on 13 February 1946 to offload the gift of medical supplies and there they met Chairman Mao himself. This date has special significance for me too... precisely one year later I was born on the other side of the world. I don't exactly remember being taken home from the hospital, but I was to live in a Warwickshire village called Tanworth-in-Arden.

Tony Reynolds and his convoy drove back to Chungking and not long after he left China and with his wife settled in this very same village of Tanworth-in-Arden, living within a mile of my home. His son Peter, and I have recently compared notes and in so small a community are sure we must have gone to the same childrens' parties. And he has of course generously shared his father's photos with me.

But my story of coincidences doesn't stop there. In 1976 I took up a lectureship in Law at the University of Hong Kong where I was allocated a comfortable flat in university accommodation. Living in one of these very same flats was Tony Reynolds, then head of the Department of Industrial Engineering. Twice in our lives therefore we lived close by one another.

At this time I was doing voluntary fund raising in Hong Kong for Oxfam and two of their overseas directors, Michael Harris and Bernard Llewellyn, who used to stay with me in my flat on their visits to Hong Kong were former FAU members. They freely reminisced about their time in China, of which I knew nothing, though I became intrigued.

Perhaps thirty years later when living in Thailand I became fascinated to learn the identity of one 'Jack Reynolds', the writer of a world-wide bestseller called A WOMAN OF BANGOK but had then totally disappeared from view. It turned out that Jack Jones (his real name) had also been a member of the FAU China Convoy and had been one of Bernard Llewellyn's closest friends.

Settled back in UK I discovered that Bernard's son, Michael, lived nearby and he produced for me a treasure trove of stuff about Jack... Jack had sent everything he wrote to Bernard and Bernard had faithfully filed it all away. One day at Michael's house we were trawling through some of these papers when we came across an A4 photocopy of an article from Hong Kong's South China Morning Post about Tony Reynolds. The story was of Tony's life-long dedication to China and how he had at last achieved his aim of again helping the Chinese people by coming to share his expertise in industrial engineering as a lecturer at the university.

At the top of this yellowing sheet of paper there was some hand writing giving the source of the cutting and the date. It was an electrifying moment when I realised that the hand writing was mine. Decades previously I had clipped the article from the newspaper and copied it for Bernard when he visited. He had kept it all that time and now it was in my hand.

Thus by so many compelling coincidences and stimulated by the wealth of material on Jack Jones produced by Michael I was slowly drawn in and dedicated myself to telling Jack's story in my book. In consequence I have been able to take Tony's photos back to China where they are now so appreciated and valued. And soon in February I will enter my eighth decade. More importantly we should remember the seventieth first anniversary of the arrival of the FAU's crucial convoy of medical supplies for the people of Yenan who had been blockaded and besieged for so long.

It is on the friendship and dedication of the men and women of the FAU such as Tony Reynolds that our current strong relations with China should be founded.

NOTE: One of the members of the FAU convoy heading back south through Shuangshipu from the Kansu oilfields was New Zealander, Owen Jackson, with whose niece I recently visited Yunnan on a trip to discover the Burma Road (see the story on this blog below). In the photos below he is seen behind the camera tripod, possibly taking the photos of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives guest house in Shuangshuipu that then follow. He also appears in the group photo taken outside the building at the end of the avenue of trees. Again I'm sure these photos of the guest house are totally unique.

THEY NEVER CAME HOME

It took courage to be a conscientious objector, to swim against the tide of patriotic fervour and to refuse to do military service. Of those who registered as conshies and who joined the Friends Ambulance Unit for alternative service in war-torn China, a significant number never came back. The distribution of medical supplies and the many medical projects they undertook were not a cushy option by any means.

Surrounded by his family, prosperous builders in Yorkshire, John Briggs, seen sitting at the front, refused to fight and instead joined the FAU in China. Very recognisable by his sad and soulful eyes, he is seen below leaning over the rail of the ship in 1944 on the way to Calcutta from where he flew in to Yunnan province. Not long after, supervising construction of the new FAU transport depot buildings in Kutsing he caught typhus and died. Two weeks later Douglas Hardy, another colleague, also died of typhus.

John was buried in Kunming, his death being so bitterly mourned by his parents that in the early fifties they managed the near impossible journey into communist China to visit his grave.

Other FAU members died of illness and also in accidents. Brian Sorensen, below, died in NE China in a plane crash, ironically when on his final adventure before returning home to the UK.

John's father was Revd Reginald Sorensen, the Labour MP for Leyton in north London, who was later elevated to the House of Lords as Lord Sorensen. Brian was flying back to Chungking after delivering a truck to the British Consulate in Urumchi out along the Silk Road in NW China. As is recorded in my book, when his cousin saw a news paper poster in London reporting the death of an MP's son in China he knew it just had to be Brian.

Peter Mason who lives in Arundel tells me how he and 'Pip' Rivett both contracted polio when serving with the FAU in China. Peter is still living but Pip who was out on the road with Hugh Russell, the son of the Duke of Bedford, never recovered and died in Chungking. Hugh's letter home to his father tells of the horrific time when, weeks away from help, Pip fell ill and of the desperate struggle to get him back to base and to hospital.

I was able to find no picture of Pip but I had a strange hunch that this picture below taken in China could be him.

I knew that Pip had attended Charterhouse school so I contacted their librarian who sent me a house photo including Pip. Pip is below and I'm sure from the sharp profile that the man in the white polo neck jumper is also Pip. He was buried in the hills above the Quaker high school near Chungking.

Finally, I must mention the death in 1949 of Canadian, member, Bob Waldie. I have no photo of him, though the story of his death is fully told as Chapter 8. of my book, A TRUE FRIEND TO CHINA. Jack Jones wrote at length of how Bob, his young recruit, was taken ill with appendicitis, was rushed to hospital and operated on but died following complications. Jack's account of the funeral in which he was laid to rest alongside Pip under the pine trees in the hills is full and moving. This picture was taken shortly afterwards.

Sadly though the exact site of the graves is now lost, though with Jack's description of the burial, it ought to be possible to find it. How good it would be to trace the families of Pip and Bob and to visit together the hills on the south bank of the Yangtse at Chonqing and, with the help of the staff at the school, to look for the graves and to pay tribute to these men whose service and sacrifice is now forgotten. It should be possible... an old plan of the school even shows a Quaker burial site in the hills.

So how do we now trace surviving relatives of these two men? As my book records, Bob's parents were William and Nina Waldie of Kimberley, British Columbia. A Google search for Robert Alexander Waldie produces a family tree which tells of Bob's life and death but has given me no leads to surviving relatives.

Louis Rowan Rivett was born on 10 February 1917 and lived at 55 Harley House, Marylebone Road, London NW1. He graduated from Oxford in Modern languages. His father was a distinguished surgeon, Louis Carnac Rivett, FRCS, FRCOG who became ill and died not so long after Louis, his only son. I can find no mention of any sister, though census records might reveal more.

Somehow it should be possible to discover family connections who would want to remember and celebrate the fine principles and service of these men. It would be so rewarding to find them.

A SECOND PRINTING?

I am holding the last few precious copies of my book on China. Contact me at arhicks56@hotmail.com and I can send you one before they become a rare out of print item.

The book has sold steadily so it would be sad if it dies and is not reprinted. I really must do some revisions, adding in the newly discovered images that are in the post below this one, and make sure that the story continues to be told.

Copies are also available in the US from Quaker Books at Pendle Hill, in Hong Kong and from Earnshaw Books in Shanghai.

The world was even more tumultuous then than it is now but somehow I cannot imagine today the principled stand and example that was set by the protagonists of my book. Have we since then become more self-obsessed and selfie-ish?

Jack Jones, the US Journalist

Further down this blog I reported the discovery in a drawer in Seattle of a series of fine artistic sketches by Jack Jones of a Chinese drama show that was held near to the Friends Ambulance Unit's transport depot south of the river, in Chungking.

These pictures were intended to illustrate the long story in A TRUE FRIEND TO CHINA, at chapter 5, which is an unashamed tribute to the many and various qualities of its star, 'Mrs CMS', the lovely wife of one of Jack's drivers with whom he was besotted.

This article was written for and first published at length in the FAU's newsletter in 1948 and circulated to a small audience of FAU workers throughout China. A shorter version was then in August 1949 published in HOLIDAY, the Philadelphia based magazine of AAA, the American motoring organisation. A further version was published in Jack's book, DAUGHTERS OF AN ANCIENT RACE in Hong Kong in 1974 and finally at length by me in my own book in 2015. Not a bad run at all and the story is well worth its repeated airing!

However, in putting the book together I was desperately short of illustrations for this piece and sadly Jack's sketches only surfaced in Seattle some months after publication. But now another Holy Grail has just emerged. After scouring all possible places in the US of A where there might be old magazines, I have finally captured and have here on my desk a copy of that precious issue of HOLIDAY with Jack's article in it.

At page 167 of my book Jack can be found grudgingly applauding HOLIDAY for its editing of his work and the production of own illustrations. I wondered how they managed to do these pictures but on seeing the pages now understand that Jack sent his own sketches to the publisher and its artist then produced the final definitive versions.

What now follows are pictures of Mrs CMS on a monocycle and of a man doing a trick with a normal bike, Jack's draft sketch being followed by the one that actually appeared in the magazine.

A struggling writer cannot of course tell the magazine's publisher how to illustrate his magazine, but I know whose drawings I prefer. Which ones do you like better... Jack's version that comes first or the ones based on them that were in fact published?

Having now got all these great images and having nearly sold out the book in both UK and the US, I desperately want to do a reprint with this chapter now lavishly illustrated. I'll be sad if the book goes out of print and becomes a rare collectors' item. I can probably organise a reprint in the UK but how am I to do it in the US? I need a collaborator there who will get printing quotes and organise storage and distribution. It ain't easy but I'd so like the book to find a new life and be more widely read.

Please, who can help?