An Australian "Scarlet Pimpernel"

Very few Australians fought the Japanese on the Chinese mainland during the Second World War. One of the few was Lindsay Tasman “Doc” Ride, a Victorian Rhodes Scholar. Ride had served with 38th Battalion, AIF, on the Western Front in 1918 and was twice wounded. In 1928 he became Professor of Physiology at Hong Kong University and commanded the Field Ambulance and the Medical Section of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps.

In the brief battle for Hong Kong in December 1941, he commanded the Combined Field Ambulance, which included Royal Army Medical Corps units from Britain and Canada as well as the local St John Ambulance. When Hong Kong fell to the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941, Ride became a prisoner, together with most of the volunteers and the British and Canadian garrison. They were herded into Shamshuipo Camp, a British army camp that became the main prison-of-war camp in Hong Kong. It took some days, however, before the Japanese erected a barbed wire fence around the camp and compiled a nominal roll of prisoners. Before they did, Ride and three others escaped into the hills nearby, and then made contact with a group of guerrillas who helped them to reach Free China.

Ride had seen enough of the prisoner-of war camp to realise the prisoners were in for a very hard time. He wanted to help them, and help others avoid becoming prisoners of war, so he established an "escape and evasion" organisation. The British Army Aid Group (BAAG) became part of the Military Intelligence Directorate headquartered in New Delhi; Ride was commissioned Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Army.

At first, agents were mostly recruited from Chinese members of the Hong Kong Defence Forces who got out of Hong Kong. Ride also made contact with people he had known in Hong Kong. No nominal roll of agents was kept in China, lest it fall into the hands of enemy counter-espionage agents.

Headquartered at Kweilin until the city was captured by the Japanese in 1944, and then at Kunming, BAAG established a network of agents throughout south-east Asia, especially along the Japanese-occupied China coast. lt assisted escapees to make their way to Kweilin, and then out to India. As US bombing intensified during the last year of the war, American airmen shot down in raids on Hong Kong were also spirited away.

One such group consisted of four US Navy airmen: Lieutenant Albert Basmajian, Ensign George Clark, AMA 3rd Class Donald Size and ARM 3rd Class Charles Myers, who were shot down near Macau in January 1945, and picked up by a fishing boar. The Japanese authorities had announced a large reward for fishermen who turned in American airmen, but after a heated discussion between themselves, the fishermen took them instead to Macau and the British consulate there.

The BAAG took over and spirited them away, moving them at night from village to village, hidden in the houses of people whose loyalty could be trusted. These were not "safe houses" like the network established by the French Resistance. Much depended on the sympathy of village elders, or heung cheung, whose authority could be trusted.

Despite such achievements, it is impossible to quantify the success of BAAG because it did not re-occupy territory, take prisoners, shoot down aircraft or sink ships. It did, however, gradually evolve into an intelligence unit of high calibre.

Good agents recruited other agents in Hong Kong, most of them Chinese. As well as assisting escapees, BAAG agents reported on Japanese shipping activity and aircraft movements, making sketches of ships and aircraft. An example was Au Fai, an employee in the Naval Dockyard. According to Ride, Au Fai had volunteered his services to BAAG in 1942.

Owing to his connections with the Naval Yard, he was instructed to set up an intelligence team to report on movements of

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 POWs by ship. His group ... soon developed into our most accurate and reliable source of enemy shipping and naval intelligence gained from official enemy records of sailing, cargoes and naval stores. Au Fai paid such strict attention to security that through the three years that his group operated inside enemy naval yards and offices, not one man was caught. He was not only responsible for the collection of the intelligence but also for its safe delivery to Waichow.

Ride devised a shoulder flash for members of BAAG, the scarlet pimpernel, derived from Baroness Emma Orczy's famous novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel, set in the French Revolution. The Scarlet Pimpernel is a reckless daredevil who leads a small group that rescues aristocrats from the guillotine. He takes his nickname from the small red flower with which he signs his messages. Ride's agents were no less intrepid than their fictional counterparts. Ninety-six of Ride's men fell into enemy hands and died at the hands of their Japanese captors. Most were tortured to death during interrogation. Ride wrote of them:

"It was a long, sustained fight of stoical courage and endurance, of intrigue and counter-intrigue, of matching their wits against a cunning foe and, last but not least, of gambling with high stakes for duty's reward alone." 

Much of their fortitude stems from Ride's fine leadership. Brigadier Gordon Grimsdale, the British Military Attache in Chongqing, wrote to Ride in 1944, using the name by which he was always affectionately known:
 

Dear Doc ... It is not too much to say that the BMG has done more during the past three difficult years to raise British prestige in China than any other body or organisation. Since it was on your initiative in the first place that the BAAG came into being, and since moreover it is primarily due to your energy, imagination and leadership that the BAAG has grown into the successful and world renowned organisation which it is today, I want first uf all to congratulate you on the fine job which you have done ... That they are a team and not just a collection of individuals is due to your own personality.

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Ride was present at the ceremony in Hong Kong on 16 September 1945 when Rear Admiral Cecil Harcourt RN accepted the Japanese surrender in China on behalf of Britain and China. BAAG itself held no victory parade, as most of its agents were not men in uniform and were scattered throughout southern China. In any case, they knew few other agents outside their immediate group. After a farewell dinner in Hong Kong for the officers on Boxing Day 1945, BAAG quietly disbanded on 31 December. On the same day, Ride wrote a heartfelt letter of appreciation to his agents:

"I shall never cease to marvel at your long sustained bravery and the calibre of your work, things which cannot be adequately described in mere words." 

Ride returned to Hong Kong University, which had been devastated by almost four years of war. As vice-chancellor from 1949 to 1964, he was instrumental in its reconstruction and massive expansion. Sir Lindsay Ride was knighted in 1962; he died in 1977. The agents whom he led with such distinction continued to hold him in high esteem. One of his key men, Major Ronnie Holmes, paid Ride this tribute on his death.

He inspired confidence; without effort he commanded loyalty; he directed one's efforts skilfully and effectively: these are things that all good leaders do. But over and above this, the Doc's leadership brought out not only a man's best but more than his best, so one's courage and fortitude, such as they were, were not merely sustained but fortified and heightened. Everyone who served under him would say the same. There was no one, in my opinion, who rose so surely and effectively to meet the challenge of the Japanese attack. He was a steady light in the darkness of those dark days.

In later years, Ride could not bring himself to write about BAAG. There were too many terrible memories. His son Edwin, an Australian diplomat, wrote the book instead, based on his father's extensive personal papers. These are now held by the Australian War Memorial.

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