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?

CHP-160-Jack Jones and the FAU China Convoy 1945-1951

Click on this link to hear a podcast by Laslo Montgomery of the 'China History Podcast' telling the story of A TRUE FRIEND TO CHINA and of the FAU China Convoy, as is explained in my following blog post.

CHP-160-Jack Jones and the FAU China Convoy 1945-1951

THE FAU - SEVENTY YEARS ON

Exactly seventy years ago today Jack Jones first landed in Kunming, to work with the Friends Ambulance Unit distributing medical aid throughout vast areas of China.

And today Laszlo Montgomery has uploaded a story about Jack and the FAU to his CHINA HISTORY PODCAST which google will swiftly find for you, thus telling the world this important story that time has all but forgotten.

Nearly 400 men and women from the UK, the USA, Canada and New Zealand volunteered several years of their lives to live and work in China at a difficult time, an example of humanitarian service that wasn't insignificant and is well worth remembering.

My new book can be bought in the USA from www.quakerbooks.org,in Hong Kong from St John's Cathedral, in China from Earnshaw Books and from me by mail on enquiry to arhicks56@hotmail.com.

It is a great adventure story with many sub-plots and twists and I hope you will enjoy it and learn something from it.

SAD NEWS OF FLEDA JONES

Fleda Jones, the young African American in this photo is not longer of this world. She has recently died in her mid-nineties.

The picture looks relatively recent but in fact it was taken in 1949 outside the North Point Relief Camp in Hong Kong and is of Friends Ambulance Unit workers waiting to fly into Chungking. The story is told in my book, A TRUE FRIEND TO CHINA, in which Fleda as the lab technician in Jack Jones' peoples' clinic played an important role.

What courage it must have taken for a young woman to travel alone to Hong Kong and to plunge into the vast unknown of China, facing civil war and the communist takeover, risking her life in harsh conditions in the hope of helping people and saving lives. She made an exceptional contribution but as the book will tell you her presence there led to dramatic and far-reaching consequences. This blog will not spoil the story which reads better than fiction and which strangely was later translated into fiction. Novelists always write from experience and Jack Jones as author drew on this tumultuous time in Chungking in writing his best-selling novel, A WOMAN OF BANGKOK.

About three years ago I tried tracing Fleda Jones in her home country, the USA. All I had was an address for her in the sixties. Miraculously she was still there and I managed to get her phone number. We had a long and warm chat on the phone and this personal contact meant a lot to me though I leaned little from her. She was 'busy busy' and still learning Chinese, ever optimistic in her tenth decade.

Subsequent attempts at contact failed so I sent in the sleuths. A good friend was in New York and he most generously went out of his way to visit her apartment block. but the news was not good. It seems that not so long after I had spoken to her she was taken ill and hospitalised. When she died a memorial service was held but there were no relatives which seems sad. After a life-time of medical service she had friends but they knew little about her except that she was strong and resilient, a 'tough broad'.

So finally a line is drawn under one more of Jack's co-workers in Chungking. Remarkably though, Dorothy Reuman (on left of picture) is still in close contact with me and living in West Hartford, Connecticut, while Howell Jones, standing at the back has just sent me a Facebook friends request from his home in Newfoundland.

What remarkable survivors these Friends Ambulance Unit China Convoy people were. They didn't need my book to make them somehow immortal.

"How He Brought the Good News from Hicks to Gwent"**

If I were to say that A TRUE FRIEND TO CHINA is a best-seller the lie detectors would ping loudly. In the US alone, quite a small country, sixty five copies have already sold off www.quakerbooks.org, which isn't bad. However, virtually all sales are to FAU families, specialist sinophiles and personal friends that I embarrass into buying one from me. Perhaps not surprisingly though, almost none go to casual readers I don't know.

But there is one striking exception, a sale to a guy I know as 'notstevejones'. This was the moniker by which he emailed me from Thailand, telling me that he had read the 'Jack Reynolds' novel of 1956, A WOMAN OF BANGKOK, and that he was smitten by it. He just couldn't wait to read my new book and to learn more about his namelysakely pseudonymous Jack Jones who had written a book so long ago that still fizzed with life and relevance.

He was shortly returning from Bangkok to his usual domicile in South Wales and, unable to await the delay in sending the book by mail, could he please drive up from there to meet me somewhere in Hampshire to get a copy more urgently. Thus at the earliest possible moment he leaped on his classic Triumph motorcycle and roared east for many hours. I leaped into my equally (almost as) fast MG and pounded at least six miles west where we breathlessly met at a rainy bikers cafe.

Definitely notstevejones and mysterious, he remained Stig-like in leathers and helmet. I thrust the book into his hands, (not one of the rare unsigned editions), and the cameras flashed. He expressed himself to be truly grateful and I felt genuinely humbled that someone should value my efforts so highly.

You may think this is all a spoof but it isn't. Five years researching a book like this is a lonely business. When published the earth doesn't move and there is a resounding silence. However, just occasionally, like last weekend, somebody really goes out of their way to tell me how much they value what I have done and I appreciate this more that I can possibly say.

Thanks notsteve! It was a real pleasure meeting you and may there be many more like you.

** 'How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix' is a poem by Robert Browning about a crazy journey that was shoved down my throat at school. It seemed vaguely appropriate for the title above.