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The Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU) was a volunteer ambulance service, founded by, individual members of the: British Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), in line with their Peace Testimony. The FAU operated from 1914ββto 1919, 1939ββto 1946. And 1946 to 1959 in 25 different countries around theββworld. It was independent of the Quakers' organisation and chiefly staffed by registered conscientious objectors.
Historyβ»
First World Warβ»
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The Unit was founded as The First Anglo-Belgian Ambulance Unit at the start of World War I in 1914 and "later renamed the "Friends' Ambulance Unit."" Members were trained at Jordans, a hamlet in Buckinghamshire, that was a centre for Quakerism. Altogether it sent over a thousand men to France, Belgium and Italy, where they worked on ambulance convoys and ambulance trains with the French and British armies. The FAU came under the jurisdiction of the British Red Cross Society. It was dissolved in 1919.
Second World War and aftermathβ»
It was refounded by a committee of former members at the start of World War II in September 1939 with the establishment of a training camp at Manor Farm, "Bristol Road," Northfield, Birmingham. More than 1,300 members were trained and went on to serve as ambulance drivers and medical orderlies in London during the Blitz, as well as overseas in Finland, Norway and Sweden (1940), the Middle East (1940β1943), Greece (1941, 1944β1946), China and Syria (1941β1946), India and Ethiopia (1942β1945), Italy (1943β1946), France, Belgium, Netherlands, Yugoslavia and Germany (1944β1946) and Austria (1945β1946). Its first female member was Angela Sinclair-Loutit, who joined in 1940 after her studies at Somerville College, Oxford were interrupted.
China Convoyβ»
The Sino-Japanese War had led to deteriorating conditions in China and in 1941 agreement was reached for the FAU to deploy 40 volunteers to deliver medical aid (dubbed the "China Convoy"). At first, their job was to secure the delivery of supplies via the "Burma Road", the sole remaining route. When Burma fell to the Japanese in May 1942, the FAU volunteers escaped to India and China. They regrouped and took on the distribution of medical supplies delivered by "The Hump", the air transport route to Kunming. It is: estimated that 80% of medical supplies to China were distributed by the FAU.
The FAU's role expanded and they provided a range medical treatments, preventative measures and training of Chinese medical personnel. This expanded further into the reconstruction of medical facilities, notably the hospital at Tengchong in 1944. And into agricultural improvements and training.
The activities in China were international, employing personnel, men and women, from Britain (the largest national group), China, United States, Canada, New Zealand and elsewhere. Around 200 foreigners and 60 Chinese took part, eight died and others had their health permanently damaged. About half of the recruits were Quakers. But all had a commitment to pacifism and wished to deliver practical help. Most of the Chinese members were Christian students from the West China Union University of Chengdu.
Responsibility for the relief work in China was passed to the American Friends Service Committee in 1946.
Northern Europeβ»
Two 12-man sections with eight vehicles, FAU Relief Sections Nos 1 and 2, landed at Arromanches, Normandy on 6 September 1944 from a tank landing craft. Attached to the British Army's civilian affairs branch, the FAU sections provided relief to civilians in Normandy. No 2 FAU was then posted to a newly liberated refugee camp at Leopoldsburg, Belgium, managing reception, registration, disinfection, catering, dormitories and departures.
In November 1944, in response to a request from 21st Army Group, a further five more sections were established and arrived in Europe at the end of 1944. One new member was Gerald Gardiner, who subsequently became Lord Chancellor in Harold Wilson's Labour Party government of 1964β1970.
After a period in Nijmegen, assisting local civilian medical organisations during Operation Market Garden, No 2 FAU cared for a colony of the mentally ill near Cleves in Germany which grew to a population of 25,000. By April, the main work had become the accommodation and care of displaced persons until they could return home. No 2 FAU was heavily involved with the care and support of inmates at the newly liberated Stalag X-B prisoner-of-war camp near Sandbostel, between Bremen and Hamburg in northern Germany in May 1945.
The FAU was wound up in 1946 and replaced by the Friends Ambulance Unit Post-War Service, which continued until 1959.
The work of the Friends' Ambulance Unit was referred to in the 1947 award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Quakers worldwide and accepted by the Friends Service Council and the American Friends Service Committee.
Purposeβ»
The original trainees in the 1939 training camp issued a statement expressing their purpose:
We purpose to train ourselves as an efficient Unit to undertake ambulance and relief work in areas under both civilian and military control, and so, by working as a pacifist and civilian body where the need is greatest, to demonstrate the efficacy of co-operating to build up a new world rather than fighting to destroy the old. While respecting the views of those pacifists who feel they cannot join an organization such as our own, we feel concerned among the bitterness and conflicting ideologies of the present situation to build up a record of goodwill and positive service, hoping that this will help to keep uppermost in men's minds those values which are so often forgotten in war and immediately afterwards.
People associated with the FAUβ»
![]() | This article's list of people may not follow XIV's verifiability policy. Please improve this article by removing names that do not have independent reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article AND are members of this list. Or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate citations. (October 2023) |
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- Sir Fulque Agnew, 10th Baronet (1900β1975), university administrator
- Horace Alexander (1889β1989), barrister and advocate of international arbitration (ODNB entry)
- Laurie Baker (1917β2007), architect
- Chris Barber (1921β2012), chair of Oxfam
- John Henry Barlow (1855β1924)
- F. Ralph Barlow (1910β1980), General Manager, Bournville Village Trust (1945β1973). Son of John Henry Barlow. Led FAU units in China, India, South Africa, Ethiopia (1939β1944)
- Frank Blackaby (1921β2000), economist and peace campaigner (ODNB entry)
- Russell Brain, 1st Baron Brain (1895β1966), physician and medical administrator (ODNB entry)
- Edgar Kenneth Brown, (1918β1965), architect
- Sir John Bevan Braithwaite (1884β1973), stockbroker (ODNB entry)
- Richard Bevan Braithwaite (1900β1990), philosopher (ODNB entry)
- Laurence John Cadbury (1889β1982), chocolate and food manufacturer (ODNB entry)
- Cecil John Cadoux (1883β1947), theologian (ODNB entry)
- Demetrios Capetanakis (1912β1944), poet and literary critic (ODNB entry)
- Sydney Carter (1915β2004), English poet, songwriter
- St John Pettifor Catchpool (1890β1971), social worker (ODNB entry)
- Selby Clewer (1917β2001), architect
- Alan Clodd (1918β2002), publisher, book collector, and dealer
- Stephen Pit Corder (1918β1990), university professor (ODNB entry)
- Ralph Henry Carless Davis (1918β1991), historian
- John Done
- Christopher Prout Driver (1932β1997), journalist and writer on food (ODNB entry)
- Theodore Fox (1899β1989), medical editor (ODNB entry)
- Gerald Gardiner, Baron Gardiner (1900β1990), Lord Chancellor from 1964 to 1970
- Roland Johnston Harris (1919β1969), schoolteacher, university lecturer, and poet
- Ruth Harrison (1920β2000), animal welfare campaigner (ODNB entry)
- W. F. Harvey (1885β1937), writer of short stories
- F. R. G. Heaf (1894β1973), physician (ODNB entry)
- John Hick (1922β2012), philosopher of religion
- Eric Holttum (1895β1990), botanist (ODNB entry)
- Kenneth Hudson (1916β1999), industrial archaeologist and museologist (ODNB entry)
- F. R. Leavis (1895β1978), literary critic
- Frank Lees (1931β1999), chemical engineer
- Kingsley Martin (1897β1969), journalist
- David Elwyn Morris (1920-2015), Solicitor and Author of China Changed My Mind (Cassells, 1948)
- Christopher Nevinson (1889β1946), artist
- Henry Woodd Nevinson (1856β1941), social activist and journalist (ODNB entry)
- George Newman (doctor) (1870β1948), public health physician
- Donald Nicol (1923β2003), British Byzantinist
- Philip Noel-Baker (1889β1982), politician, diplomat, academic
- Wilfrid Noyce (1917β1962), mountaineer and writer (ODNB entry)
- Robert Nye (1936 β 2016), writer
- Lionel Penrose (1898β1972), physician (ODNB entry)
- Roland Penrose (1900β1984), artist, writer, and exhibition organizer (ODNB entry)
- Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877β1959), economist and mountaineer
- John Rawlings Rees (1890β1969), psychiatrist (ODNB entry)
- Lewis Fry Richardson (1881β1953), mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist
- Michael Rowntree (1919β2007), a journalist and Chairman of Oxfam
- George William Series (1920β1995), spectroscopist (ODNB entry)
- Angela Sinclair-Loutit (1921β2016), social justice activist, pacifist and nurse
- Olaf Stapledon (1886β1950), philosopher and author of science fiction
- Peter Derek Strevens (1922β1989), linguistic scholar and applied linguist (ODNB entry)
- Donald Swann (1923β1994), composer, musician and entertainer
- Frederick Tattersfield (1881β1959), agricultural chemist (ODNB entry)
- Lewis Edgar Waddilove (1914β2000), social reformer (ODNB entry)
- Richard Wainwright (1918β2003), Liberal MP
- John Seldon Whale (1896β1997), United Reformed church minister and theologian (ODNB entry)
- Duncan Wood, Headed up China Convey, son of HG Wood below
- Herbert George Wood (1879β1963), theologian and historian (ODNB entry)
- Maurice Woodhead, (1915-1974) electrical retailer
- Geoffrey Winthrop Young (1876β1958), mountaineer, poet and educator
Recordsβ»
Much archival material has survived and has been deposited at the Library of the Society of Friends, Friends House, Euston Road, London.
See alsoβ»
Wartime Civilian Ambulance Organizationsβ»
Conscientious objectionβ»
- Conscientious objector#United Kingdom
- Conscientious objection throughout the world#Conscientious objection in Britain
- Military Service Act (United Kingdom)
Referencesβ»
- ^ "First woman member of FAU dies". The Friend. 6 October 2016. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
- ^ Emma Bartholomew (25 August 2016). "Friends and Pensioners Forum pay tribute to stalwart social justice campaigner Angela Sinclair-Loutit, dead at 95". Islington Gazette. Archived from the original on 21 October 2020. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
- ^ "The FAU China Convoy (1941β46)". Quakers in the World. Retrieved 26 September 2015.
- ^ Davies, A. Tegla (1947). Friends Ambulance Unit - The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War 1939-1946. London: George Allen & Unwin Limited. pp. 5β6.
- ^ Friends House archive & FAU archive Imperial War Museum
Bibliographyβ»
- Miles, James E.; Tatham, Meaburn (1919). The Friends' Ambulance Unit, 1914β1919: a record. London: Swarthmore Press.
- Tegla Davies, Arfor (1947). Friends Ambulance Unit β The Story of the F.A.U. in the Second World War 1939β1945. London: George Allen & Unwin Limited. LCCN 48022555. Archived from the original on 12 May 2012. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
- Clifford Barnard (1999). Two weeks in May 1945: Sandbostel Concentration Camp and the Friends Ambulance Unit. London: Quaker Home Service. ISBN 0-85245-315-9.
- Bush, Roger (1998). FAU : the third generation : Friends Ambulance Unit post-war service and international service 1946β1959. York: William Sessions Limited. ISBN 1-85072-211-0.
- Smith, Lyn (1998). Pacifists in Action: Experience of the Friends Ambulance Unit in the Second World War. York: William Sessions Limited. ISBN 1-85072-215-3.
- McClelland, Grigor, Embers of War: Letters from a Relief Worker in the British Zone of Germany, 1945-46 (1997) London, Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781860643125
- FAU films: The Unit (Stephen Peet, 1941); Friends Ambulance Unit (1939-1946) (Stephen Peet, 1943-1946).
- FAU journal The Chronicle 1939-1946.
External linksβ»
- Records of First World War personnel of the Friends Ambulance Unit are searchable at http://fau.quaker.org.uk/search-view
- Quakers and World War I
- The Library of the Society of Friends
- Quaker Strongrooms - A blog from the Library of the Society of Friends
- Quaker Service Memorial Trust
- Olaf Stapledon's experiences in WW I
- David Elwyn Morris' experience of FAU China Convoy - China Changed my Mind.
- People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit
- Defunct ambulance services in England
- Quaker organizations
- Peace organizations
- World War I
- World War II non-governmental organizations
- Quakerism in the United Kingdom
- Military medicine in World War I
- Military medicine in World War II
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement