MEDICAL WORK IN CHINA

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24591, 13 June 1945, Page 5

MEDICAL WORK IN CHINA

* FRIENDS’ AMBULANCE UNIT SEVEN NEW ZEALAND RECRUITS (P.A.) WELLINGTON, June 12. Seven New Zealand recruits to the Friends’ Ambulance Unit have left for China, being the first civilians to leave New Zealand for relief work in a war zone. They are Dr. Graham A. Milne, and Messrs Lindsay Crozier (Dunedin), Neil and John Johnson (Christchurch), Courtney Archer (Rangiora), and Wilfred and Owen Jackson (Auckland). They have gone under the aegis of the Order of St. John and the New Zealand Red Cross Society, and will be away at least two years. The Friends’ Ambulance Unit is a voluntary organisation of members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) and other pacifists who, in various war zones, take medical aid to civilian and soldier alike. Members of the section in China live with the Chinese, and eat Chinese food, and work differently from an ordinary medical unit. The section has received high commendation from both American military leaders and Chinese leaders for its ability to ago into places where heavier medical units are not prepared to go.. It does not maintain ambulance cars,but Has trucks with which it transports medical supplies, and it staffs hospitals at places where medical treatment is needed. Four of the recruits are medical members, and three are transport members. Their ages range from 22 to 32. Dr. Milne, who is a graduate of the University of Otago, has been lent to the Friends’ Ambulance Unit by the Presbyterian Foreign Mission. Others include a recent science graduate, a surveyor from the Public Works Department, a haulage contractor, a shipbuilder, a professional photographer, and a man who was engaged with his father in timber milling. Mr W. Jenkins, a Welshman who has been with the section in China since 1939, has been in New Zealand helping to select the recruits. He said the ample number of applications received was evidence of the great interest by New Zealanders in the Chinese. Some applicants had been prepared tp maintain themselves while they were away at a cost of several hundred pounds, but they were not qualified to join the unit; Acceptance of further recruits from New Zealand was being considered, but funds limited the number that could be accepted. Members of the unit were kept to the extent that the soldier is kept, and are paid £1 a month.