Yangtze Showdown Read online

  When the Concord sailed into the entrance of the river on 28 July we were only too aware of the circumstances prevailing. We, of course, knew what had happened to the four ships back in April, we were very conscious of the Amethyst still being held captive, we had been present at Woosung when Shanghai fell to the Communists so we knew that the land we could see on our port side was now completely in Communist hands. To add to this drama we had, during this period, often been buzzed by Nationalist aircraft and their ships made themselves known to us. Presumably it was to remind us that they had a blockade of the river in progress.

  Our gun crews had been regularly drilling, cordite cartridges and shells were brought up from below and stowed ready for use. Damage control, medical and first aid parties were again briefed and stations allocated, the ensign and Union Flag staffs were taken down and battle ensigns were raised at the port and starboard yardarms.9

  In November 2010 Hodgson asked his MP, Caroline Dinenage, to take up the matter with Minister of Defence Andrew Robathan, who had special responsibility for veterans. Robathan said a review had been carried out and confirmed that the file on the award of the Yangtze clasp to the Naval General Service Medal did not mention Concord. But he wrote: ‘There are no plans to reconsider the qualifying criteria for this award.’ He added: ‘As previously advised the contention that the crew of HMS Concord were deliberately excluded from eligibility for this award is entirely speculative and is not sustainable in light of contemporary official records relating to the institution of this clasp.’

  The minister appeared to be contradicting himself because, as he had already mentioned, the one file on the award did not make any reference to Concord. Robathan ended his letter: ‘It was also considered that no further purpose would be served by continuing the correspondence between Mr Hodgson and the department …’ According to Hodgson, the minister never bothered to reply to his letters.10

  In December 2011 William Leitch, a navy veteran who was helping the Concord campaign, presented a petition to the House of Commons asking for a select committee to investigate the ‘grievous injustice’. Leitch had already sent a similar petition to the Scottish Parliament and representations were made to the Ministry of Defence without success. Five years earlier his MP, Jim Devine, had approached the ministry. Rejecting the medal claim, Minister for the Armed Forces Bob Ainsworth stated incorrectly: ‘By the time HMS Amethyst reached HMS Concord’s position at the mouth of the River Yangtze on the morning of 31 July 1949 she had succeeded in making her escape.’11

  Amethyst men were guests of honour at a Concord reunion in 2000. Donald Redman, chairman of the HMS Amethyst Association, told the gathering: ‘I can never understand why you, the Concord Forty Niners, did not receive the Yangtze medal. You were in a war zone, at action stations and were ready to risk your lives for shipmates who might stumble at the last hurdle. Your shipmates from the Amethyst will never forget that the crew of Concord were there ready to risk their lives if required.’

  The survivors who fought at Trafalgar had to wait 45 years for an official medal. Veterans of the Arctic convoys during the Second World War faced an even longer wait. In December 2012 it was announced that they would finally receive the Arctic Star following a review of campaign medals by Sir John Holmes, a former diplomat. Holmes received a number of representations, including the case made by the Concord veterans.

  Peter Lee-Hale, chairman of the HMS Concord Association, told Holmes: ‘There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind the 1949 crew were entitled to the medal and justice and honesty must now prevail and be seen to be done.’ He complained that officials had ‘consistently lied’.

  Surprisingly, the Ministry of Defence was still arguing that Concord was not deliberately excluded in the original decision-making process. The ministry was also concerned about the administration and cost of supplying medals if groups of veterans successfully argued their case for various campaigns. It was estimated that the cost of issuing Yangtze clasps to Concord veterans or family members would be £1,000.

  Holmes pointed out: ‘The United Kingdom takes a distinctive approach to the award of military campaign medals, reflecting a strong view that medals must be awarded sparingly to maintain a highly prized currency.’ But he said: ‘It is also legitimate to ask whether a little more past flexibility would not have avoided some genuine grievances without opening the gates to a flood of vexatious correspondents.’

  The review’s recommendations included broadening the membership of the Committee on the Grant of Honours, Decorations and Medals, and setting up a military subcommittee to examine old controversies.

  Holmes listed the main factors that should be considered when awarding a campaign medal. They included the risk and danger to life; the style and force of the enemy; and the physical and mental stress and rigours experienced by individuals. On the question of risk and rigour, Holmes commented: ‘The idea is that campaign medals should only be awarded where deployed personnel have been exposed to a significant degree of risk to life and limb, and to arduous conditions, in excess of what might be expected as part of normal service duties …’

  There is a rule that the issue of campaign medals should not be reopened after five years, but it was acknowledged that there could be exceptional circumstances. These included evidence that the issue was never properly considered at the time; significant new information; facts relied upon during the original decision-making process being shown to be unsound; and the original decision appearing to be manifestly inconsistent with those of similar campaigns. Tellingly, Holmes said a decision on whether to examine a particular case should not rest with the Ministry of Defence but with the honours committee.12

  In January 2013 the former diplomat told the Concord veterans that their case had been rejected. He wrote: ‘The first point to emphasise is that we fully accept that HMS Concord did indeed enter the Yangtze, and meet with HMS Amethyst there, and escorted her out of the estuary. There was obviously a degree of risk involved in this, given the shore batteries in particular, though fortunately the ships were not fired on in the event. The crew of HMS Concord can therefore be considered technically eligible for the clasp.’

  Technically eligible. But not eligible. It was a baffling rejection. Holmes went on to say that the attempt to conceal Concord’s role was ‘short-term’ and it became ‘public knowledge fairly quickly’ that the destroyer had been in the Yangtze. He insisted that ‘the authorities at the time took great trouble to identify precisely those people they wanted to reward for the Yangtze incident’. The dwindling band of veterans responded by declaring they would continue their campaign. ‘We are not medal chasers but we would like public acknowledgement of the part we played,’ said Derek Hodgson.13

  Concord did not come under fire during the night of 30/31 July 1949, but with some irony she was attacked in August the following year – and replied. As she approached Hong Kong with ‘peaceful intent’, Chinese batteries on the islands of Tai Ta Mi and Ling Ting opened fire. Concord increased speed and zig-zagged but when the firing continued she answered with fifty rounds from her 4.5in guns, probably inflicting serious casualties and damage. Soldiers were seen fleeing from one battery. The Chinese fired a total of about 100 rounds. One rating was wounded but the destroyer did not take any direct hits. British diplomats in Peking were asked to make an urgent protest. Admiral Brind noted that visibility was good enough for Concord’s ensign to be seen. She was clearly a British ship, hoisting another ensign and Union Flag before returning fire.

  However, John Hutchison, the newly installed charge d’affaires in Peking, warned that the Communists were likely to demand an apology and compensation, noting: ‘I imagine that they would assert that the islands are Chinese territory, that Concord entered territorial waters without obtaining or seeking permission and without being under necessity for doing so, that she failed to stop when summoned by a warning shot and that her action in first trying to escape and in finally opening fire constituted a breach of intern
ational law … tantamount to a warlike act.’14 A British warship, territorial waters, Communists opening fire first. It sounded familiar.

  It emerged that Concord was using a channel generally regarded as ‘an international highway’ for merchant vessels and warships, and permission would not have been needed. Although the Nationalists had retreated to Formosa, tensions with the Communists remained high. The Nationalist blockade of ports had been effective. British shipping was harassed, with sixteen incidents between September 1949 and January 1950, which was why the Royal Navy remained active off the coast of China.

  Britain had formally recognised the People’s Republic of China that January, and talks were continuing to improve relations with the Communist government in Peking. There were fears that the Concord incident would jeopardise negotiations – and the interests of British companies. The growing crisis over the Korean War, however, would quickly overshadow the controversy.

  22

  Lieutenant Weston’s Escape

  AMETHYST’S FIRST LIEUTENANT, GEOFFREY WESTON, had an eventful time after leaving the frigate on 22 April. When Kerans rejected his pleas to remain on board, the wounded officer was taken by landing craft to Chingkiang. After some delay he managed to get a Jeep to the Nationalist naval headquarters, where he telephoned the embassy. Lieutenant Colonel Dewar-Durie, the assistant military attaché, came and arranged for him to go to a hospital in Nanking. Weston, who had a serious shrapnel injury, was driven to the local railway station and put on a train after being given a morphine injection by Charlotte Dunlap from the local mission hospital. The train, however, never arrived in Nanking because the retreating Nationalists had blown up part of the station. It stopped some distance from the capital, and an embassy official eventually found Weston in the early hours of 23 April. He was driven to Nanking’s University Hospital.

  ‘I had become very ill on the train, probably in consequence of Jeep journeys over cobbled streets, and could hardly speak or move,’ Weston reported. ‘After X-ray later the same morning the doctors pronounced that the piece of shrapnel – about matchbox size – had passed through the lung and entered the liver, where they proposed to leave it and where it still is. I wanted it removed but the surgeon replied that this would entail a very serious operation unnecessarily and he would only remove it if my condition deteriorated.’

  The Communists occupied Nanking the next day. Captain Donaldson, the naval attaché, visited him and took away his uniform. Weston was having trouble sleeping: ‘Ever since I was hit I have been unable to lie flat and have had to sleep sitting up or with my head on a desk or something. I can now lie at about 45 degrees.’ By 12 May he had recovered enough to leave hospital. Stevenson invited him to stay at the embassy but the lieutenant was worried that he possessed only one suit, two shirts and a pair of pyjamas, ‘insufficient for staying with an ambassador’. Most of his clothes had been destroyed when his cabin was hit. Donaldson replenished his wardrobe and he went to the embassy, where Lady Stevenson was ‘a perfect hostess’. He did some work in the naval attaché’s office, and played chess and bridge to pass the time. Weston learned that he had been awarded a Bar to his DSC, noting that ‘many others deserve medals if I do’. In June he had this observation on the civil war: ‘The Nationalists are more or less finished, but the Communists are waiting for the harvest to be got in before advancing any further. They do not want to conquer a starving country.’ As the conflict continued, the behaviour of some of the foreign VIPs remaining in Nanking provided a source of amusement. The senior Canadian diplomat invited the Persian ambassador and others to lunch one day. The Persian envoy decided he had not been seated at the right place and refused to eat anything. His wife joined the protest. Western ‘civilisation’ baffled peasants fighting on the Communist side who had never seen a fan or an electric light before. Weston revealed: ‘The other day one brought in some rice to a European house and went to wash it in a lavatory. When he asked how to get rid of the water he was told to pull the plug and was very indignant when his rice disappeared as well. There are also women in the army who wear uniform but do not actually fight. They are known as the Comfort Corps.’

  Weston wanted to take a sampan down the river to rejoin Amethyst but Donaldson refused permission. The naval attaché thought the lieutenant should leave the country as soon as possible. Weston had been confined to Nanking, but in late June the Communists in the city lifted a ban on the movement of foreigners and he travelled to Shanghai, arriving on 30 June. He was still keen to reach Amethyst.1

  On the night of 5 July, Kerans received a signal about Weston from the assistant naval attaché in Shanghai, Commander John Pringle. Kerans was left with the impression that the police in Shanghai had ordered the lieutenant to leave the city at short notice, but this may not have been the case. It was another dilemma. Amethyst’s captain feared that Pringle’s plan to send Weston back to the ship might jeopardise the difficult negotiations with Colonel Kang, especially as the diplomat Edward Youde was about to be involved, a move of ‘paramount importance’. Kerans tried to delay Weston’s departure, and the matter was referred to Admiral Brind, who decided he should rejoin Amethyst.

  Kerans assumed that Weston had important messages for him from the commander-in-chief, and it was hoped he would reach Amethyst without being noticed after arriving in Chingkiang. At that time the Communists were busy celebrating their military advances. To placate the uncompromising Kang, Kerans sent a letter explaining Weston’s position, but due to the weather and ‘local stupidity’ it arrived too late. The interpreter Sam Leo was sent ashore to meet Weston, who was due to arrive by train in Chingkiang at dawn on 8 July.2

  Weston did indeed have instructions from Brind, and he had also memorised a code for Kerans to use. He set off from Shanghai with two suitcases full of cigarettes, sweets, soap and other goods. With him was Commander Pringle’s interpreter, Khoong. There were no problems on the journey but when they turned up at the station in Chingkiang sentries prevented them from leaving. ‘They took me to an office where I argued for a few hours with Communist officers,’ Weston reported.

  They said my pass was not in order and out of date, that Commander Kerans had not applied for permission for me to board and that it was an insult to Chinese national sovereignty that I should travel on Chinese national soil and so on. They said they would convene a meeting of the ‘Amethyst Committee’ to consider the matter and returned to say that it had been decided that I was to proceed straight back to Shanghai without leaving the station. All this was in Chinese through Mr Khoong. Although they could speak English they would not use it, except occasionally for abuse.3

  Kerans recalled:

  Everything went wrong and it appears that the station authorities quickly got in touch with Kang and words were exchanged. Kang stated he could not consider the matter as it had not been discussed at any meeting. I realised that Kang had to a certain extent been short-circuited and confronted with a fait accompli. Regrettably, Shanghai too had been hasty, and if only I had been given time to obtain clearance at the Chingkiang end all undoubtedly would have been well. I am at a loss to understand why it should have been assumed that clearance in Shanghai was the only essential especially as the naval attaché Nanking himself had been at pains to point out clearance at Chingkiang was so essential and specially so, being a defended area. It was I fear entirely due to this affair that Youde’s exit permit from Nanking to Chingkiang was held up by Kang directly after he had given verbal clearance for his entry through Mr Leo.

  Weston was detained for 12 hours. Then he was sent back to Shanghai with Khoong in a freight train. To Kerans’s dismay Kang also stopped the Admiralty oil fuel from Nanking reaching Amethyst. Fortunately, it was a temporary setback, and it did arrive on 9 July.4

  In Shanghai Weston tried without success to get police permission to return to Amethyst. He thought again about taking a sampan to the ship but realised that both banks of the river were too heavily guarded. He began work in the office
of Commander Pringle, who was preoccupied with the Amethyst crisis, especially in trying to get supplies sent.

  Weston learned of Amethyst’s escape in a BBC broadcast and was overjoyed. He noted: ‘The British newspaper, the China Daily News, did not dare publish the news, but there was unreserved jubilation amongst the foreigners in Shanghai, which was by no means confined to the British community.’ But Weston was now a wanted man, an Amethyst ‘criminal’. After burning secret and relevant papers on the instructions of a British diplomat he went to ground.5

  One of the people who helped to hide him was Wing Commander Peter Howard-Williams, the assistant air attaché. But Howard-Williams was urged by Ambassador Stevenson to leave Shanghai as soon as possible and go to Hong Kong. He went to a police station to obtain an exit visa but was told it could not be issued immediately. A few days later he was asked to return and this time an army officer, a Colonel Ch’eng, interviewed him. Howard-Williams was not allowed his interpreter and the questions were in Chinese until he made it clear he understood little, at which point the colonel, a defector from the Nationalists who had been trained in the United States, began speaking in ‘perfect English’. He was asked about his movements, what military information he had obtained during the course of his work, his flying career, his views on the civil war and his favourite city in China.

  ‘I was suddenly asked if I knew a Royal Navy officer in Shanghai called Weston,’ he reported.

  This question took me by surprise and I replied that I couldn’t at the moment think of anyone by that name. Colonel Ch’eng wanted to know if Weston was still in Shanghai. It was a touchy moment as Lieutenant Weston was at that moment living in my flat and we had done our best to keep his whereabouts quiet. Something had to be done quickly and as soon as I had left the police station I made arrangements to move Geoffrey to another flat where he would be less likely to be caught. The American naval attaché, Commander Morgan Slayton, very kindly took him in and only just in time. The next day there were several officials round my flat asking the servants questions but they had arrived too late and Geoffrey was safe.6