The Link Late Summer 2019 The Link Aug-Sep 2019 v2 | Page 39

Caterham, China and the
First World War
article by Roy Peachey
W
hilst idly browsing in a
university library ten
years ago, I stumbled across a
book on China and the Great
War. Despite having a degree in
Modern History from Oxford,
I had no idea that China had
been involved in the First
World War so I started reading
and was soon gripped by the
story of conflict and betrayal I
found. Now, ten years later, I
have just had a novel published
on the same topic. So what did
I learn from that book and
what is the Caterham link?
At the start of the 20th century
China was a semi-colonised
country; several
European countries, including
Great Britain, controlled Chinese
territory. When war broke out in
1914 Japan attacked the Chinese
city of Qingdao which was then
controlled by Germany. Rather
than hand it back to the Chinese,
however, they held onto it for
themselves, causing outrage in
China.
In an attempt to win back their
own land, the Chinese offered the
Allies troops but their offer was
turned down. They then offered
labourers for the western and
eastern fronts. Eventually about
150,000 labourers arrived in
France where they dug trenches,
worked in ammunition
factories and cleared the
battlefields at the end of the
war. Their story is almost
wholly forgotten today.
My research for the novel
took me not only to
northern France and the
British Library but also
to the East Surrey
Museum in Caterham
where I found a box of
possessions belonging
to the gloriously
named Captain Royal
Douglas Wood who
travelled with the
Chinese Labour
Corps from
Weihaiwai in China
The Link

to France via Britain. At the
bottom of this box was a
regimental diary in which Wood
recorded intriguing and disturbing
snippets of information about the
journey.
By now I knew that my novel
would centre around a one-eyed
interpreter with the Chinese
Labour Corps who travelled from
Shanghai to Noyelles-sur-Mer and
this diary was another useful piece
of the research jigsaw. My novel
had to be grounded in fact but I
also needed some imaginative
breathing space so that my
characters could come alive.
Wood’s diary gave me enough,
but not too much, information to
set me on my way.
You may be wondering what
happened to the Chinese
labourers during and after the
war. I’m sorry to say that to tell you
that would be to spoil the plot of
my novel, but do investigate: it’s a
fascinating story that demands to
be heard.
Roy Peachey’s Between Darkness
and Light was published on 24th
June 2019 and launched at the
Caterham Festival. It is available
from Amazon, Waterstones and
all good booksellers.
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