GALLANT CHINESE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 61, 15 March 1943, Page 1

GALLANT CHINESE

MANNING OUR SHIPS (By Douglas Willis; broadcast in the 8.8.C.'s short wave overseas service.) I have never been to China and until a few months ago the only Chinese I had known were the laundrymen of Limehouse and Poplar and the softfooled waiters of the Chop Suey restaurants in the same districts. And those Chinamen were separated from me by the gulf that exists between those who wait and those who are waited on.

But in these last few months I have lived cheek by jowl with them. 1 have heat a the clatter of their woodensi led feet as they passed my door or crossed the deck above my head. I have watchea them play their eternal Mai.-Jong ana 4 have learnt to eat with cnop-sticks. I have heard, in the pidgin English that we both use, the stories that they have to tell and—to give just’ce to those who told them—lhey sh uid be retold, and I am going to t etell then. here. 't hey are net the stories of soldiers, for these men arc not soldiers but merchant seamen like myself—serving under the Red Ensign and sailing the seas with tne oil and the petrol that we need to win this war. They have no l , come from any one port ot China —many of tnem speak different dialects and cannot understand others—bat they nave all reached the same place—an old ar.d battered oil tanker sailing the seas now as I write. These men 1 have known are but a fraction of thousands of their compatriots who are manning ships in the British Merchant Navy. Tiong Ah Soi is now a quartermaster ana helps steer the ship, but three years ago he was a farmer, peacefully tending his ric<- in the paddy-fields that stretched behind his home just outside Ht-nkow. He lived happily witn his wife and his two children who, when the sun was hot and high in tlie sky. would come out into tne field and help him gather his rice, 't hen, one day. a dozen moving specks appeared in the sky above his home. They grew larger and as they loomed like vultures aoove his little home, the airmen of Nippon, bent on their civilising mission, dropped their bombs, and, as Tiong Ah Soi watched from his field, he saw his little house crumble and burst and disappear in a mass of flame. From out ot the ruins Ah Soi pulled all that was left of his wife and his two children—his wife's forearm.

He has not forgotten. Foochow is h fishing port some 400 miles from Hong Kong as the crow flies, but for Tan Gee Wee—who is now the cook aboard our ship—it was a journey fraught with danger. He made it aboard his own little sampan, smaller than the smallest tugboat, and powered by the wind that filled the huge latticed sails that hung from its solitary mast. Tan Gee Wee had fled from the approaching Japanese with his wife and his three children and for seven long days they fought storm and rough seas until they sighted Hong Kong and safety. From Hong Kong, Tan Gee Wee sailed for Britain aboard a Greek freighter, serving as galley boy. That was a year ago. He hoped to stay at sea two years, make a little money, then return to his family—and to his sampan. But Hong Kong fell. Now Tan Gee must wait for the moment when he can return nome once more—to a Free China. The steward's boy who waited on us at table was quiet and deferential in his manner and there was little to learn irom his impassive face. But talk to him of home, which for him is Singapore, and you release his pentup emotions for there, and here he can only hope, are living his family and his wife of a few months. Lee Ten Yong was a farmer, like many ethers o. the Chinese who are now following the sea, and he hates with a hatrea that L beyond description, the Japanese who are keeping him away from his home. But meanwhile, in his own small way, he is helping U> keep our trade moving, is helping to shift tens o; thousands of tons ot oil to the war fronts of the world.

"By and by,” Lee Ten Yong would tell you, "war finish. Plenty Japanese die. All Chinamen come home, have no more war. Have plenty peace." The Chinaman has found, in war, a new place amongst tne worm s people. He has been recognised by the fighting men of the world, friena and loe, as a courageous and loyal soldier—and a magnificent seaman. He lives for only one thing—to die if necessary (deatn has no tears for him)—in fighting for a China to whose soil he is more passionately attached than any comparable native of any country in the world. He remembers the tremendous changes that were taking place before Japan first ravished Cnina in 1937. He wants to see those changes expanded and brought to fulfilment.

These men I have named would like to go home and cannot—not until the Jap is driven away. But there are thousands of other Chinese seamen wno could have gone home long before the Son of Heaven plunged recklessly into war against the Allies. After ail, then the Cninese were neutrals as far as our war was concerned. But they preferred to stay. They still went to sea in defiance of the U-boats and the dive-bomoers. They sailed with the petrol and the aviation spirit and lived and slept and worked above enough lethal aynamite to send them skyhigli at a moment’s notice. They have servea the common cause in British ships and many of them have perished. Many of them have performed feats ot tremendous courage and many of them have faced long days and nights in open boats or sea-swept rafts. And. at New Year, three ol them appeared in the Honours List—the recipients c; the British Empire Medal. Their names were Lee Foi, Ng Chin and Chow Ah Kai—all merchant seamen, faithful servants of China, of Chiang Kai Shek—and of us all.