Although most Britons were living within the UK when world war 2 broke out, not all were – a number of British people lived abroad most of the time bar occasional furloughs every few years, particularly those in the diplomatic service, army, and those doing mission work – and their children were often sent to boarding schools near where they lived in order to get a UK education which would be transferable. As a result, when the ‘far east’ was invaded, a number of such schools found all of their teachers and pupils being sent, as a group, to internment camps. This meant the pupils found themselves carrying on their schooling, and their Guiding, within the confines of a prison camp, often with little or no news of their parents, for many years. Their friends and their teachers thus became their family.
Chefoo School, China
Chefoo School had been founded by missionaries in the 1880s, and by the 1930s was a boarding school of some 350 pupils, most being the children of missionaries, diplomats or businessmen working in China. The school had started Guides in 1937, and soon had a flourishing Brownie Pack, Guide Company and Ranger unit. Initially the outbreak of war did not affect the school, and most parents opted to leave their children in school, believing it would be as little affected by this as it had been by previous wars and rebellions in the area. It was only in December 1941, when Japan declared war, that difficulties for the school began, as Japanese forces took control of all international assets in Japan including the school. Those parents who were able to collected their children from the school – but many of the parents were working hundreds of miles away and so had to continue trusting their children to the teachers’ care – around 1/3 of the pupils – as Japanese sentries patrolled the school grounds – but otherwise the school was able to continue. In May 1942 the Japanese Navy commandeered the school buildings – and the pupils and teachers thus had to immediately leave. Each person was allowed to take one mattress, plus what they could carry. They were then marched off to an internment camp.
Chefoo School in Weihsien Camp
In September 1943, the remaining members of Chefoo School were on the move again. They were among 250 people packed like sardines into the hold of a small steamer for a 3-hour journey to the city of Weihsien, and to the ‘Civilian Assembly Centre’. It held almost 1500 people, yet had no running water or sanitation, and just one working dry latrine per 100 people. Cooperation was the order of the day, with everyone in the camp having to work together, and various home-made occupations being managed, along with a hospital staffed by the internees. Food was always basic, and always short – a rough porridge for breakfast, a form of stew for the other meals, often heavily watered-down. Meat was often inedible, there was no fruit, and vegetables were rare, but some black-market food came into the camp.
By late 1944 even the little food they had been accustomed to was running short – for the guards as well as for the internees – as flour, oil and meat supplies were halved. Meantime, the school teachers tried to keep some structure going for their pupils – carrying out a school timetable of lessons and of tidying up. Exercise books were used and then rubbed out for re-use until the paper disintegrated. The pupils sat on their beds, using trunks as writing surfaces. Exams were studied for, and sat, using past papers the teachers had brought with them – this had to be sandwiched between roll call and domestic work. The Brownies met every Tuesday from 4.20 to 5.35 pm, and worked on their Brownie tests, adapted where required. The Brownie Guiders of both units worked to keep the girls occupied through issuing secret messages and challenges, working for interest badges, and country dancing lessons. The Guides, too, met regularly and worked on their badges – some of these had to be done in theory – like Cook Badge – but others could be done practically, such as embroidering their own interest badges. Hiker Badge meant hiking many laps of the camp perimeter to achieve the regulation distance.
In June 1944, two of the adult internees escaped, and following this conditions became more difficult. Roll calls became more frequent, and security was stepped up. Nevertheless, Brownie and Guide meetings continued, though there were usually some girls absent due to illness each week. The food rations were reduced again early in 1945 – now breakfast was bread in hot water, lunch was bread with thin vegetable soup, in the evening bread was served with the leftovers of the same soup, just further diluted – the children were getting less than half the calories they needed, and their health was affected as a result. January 1945 brought a delivery of red cross parcels, enough for one each – and the second received in three years – each person carefully rationed out the supplies in their parcel. At the end of June, the Brownies went on ‘camp’, in tents made from rope, poles and curtains, making gadgets, and cooking lunch on a fire.
On 17 August 1945, a plane flew overhead, and parachutes descended from it – it was liberation. As the American parachutists entered the camp, the Japanese guards gave up their positions and the commandant surrendered his sword. The next day, airdrops of supplies began, and over the following months the children were reunited with the families they had not seen for 5 or 6 years.
It wasn’t only Cheffoo School pupils in the Weihsien camp – there were Girl Guides from many countries there. In early 1944 the World Chief Guide received a letter, which had been posted in October the previous year, and the letter was published in the WAGGGS magazine, “The Council Fire”.
Motorship Gripsholm
East of Madagascar
October 30th, 1943
My dear Lady Baden-Powell,
Greetings! The Weihsien Girl Guides greet you. Mrs. Lawless of the Pekin Pagoda troop also greets you. She is now Guide Mistress of the Weihsien Guides.
Weihsien is the Civilian Assembly Center for all British, American, Dutch and Belgian people in North China. There were nearly 1,800 of us assembled there.
In a very short time some felt need of organising the youth of the camp into an International Guide and Scout organisation. A group met together composed of Americans, British, Dutch and Belgian – men and women who had been leaders in Scouting and Guiding. We were challenged to try an International group – combining the American and British and adding touches for Swiss, Belgian and Dutch.
Our slogan was “Be Prepared.” Our motto was “Un pour tous, tous pour un.” The name of our group was “Amicale des Jeunnes.”
We sang often the International song, “Yonder lies the world before us,” even though we could see little other than walls about us and could get little other than rumour of what was happening in the world about us. Our evening prayer was: “O Lord, let there be peace, and let it begin with me.”
Our promise and laws were: On my honour I promise to do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people at all times, and to obey the Guide (or Scout) laws.
A Guide’s honour is to be trusted.
A Guide is brave and loyal.
A Guide is helpful.
A Guide is friendly.
A Guide is kind to animals and plants.
A Guide is obedient.
A Guide is cheerful.
A Guide wastes nothing.
A Guide is clean in thought, word and deed.
We had the Tenderfoot, the Weihsien Star and the Award of Honour as the three grades of tests. We tried to add or change some tests so that they would have real meaning to camp life, activities and usefulness. In the Tenderfoot they were to know the history and story back of the French, Belgian, Dutch, British and American flags.
In the Weihsien star they were to know camp rules of safety, camp danger-spots, where doctors lived, which wells were condemned for drinking-water, when and where distilled water could be obtained.
For tasks, girls took turns in shower-room during children’s hour to help with bathing of the little ones. We were cleaning egg-shells for the making of calcium powder especially to meet a diet deficiency especially needed by growing children. We also did playground work during children’s hour. We emphasised fly-swatting as sanitation was one of our biggest problems and we had much dysentery.
We embroidered badges; when they passed their Tenderfoot we had an investiture and the Guides and Scouts were given their badges. A star was added to this badge when they finished the Weihsien Star or Second-Class. The badges for the Award of Honour was very special. It had the Chinese “Pa Kua” – the eight different combination of the Yang (light, male principle) and Yin (dark, female principle) – which is so fundamental in Chinese thinking. It also has the Chinese characters for our camp – Weihsien with motto “Be Prepared.”
Some day Mrs. Lawless will send you a more detailed account of the Weihsien International Guide and Scout Group. This is just to let you know there is such a group, and we hope you will welcome it and our adventuring spirit. Mrs. Lawless is heart and soul in this fine work with the girls, and is trying to make these days in the Weihsien Concentration Camp days the girls will never forget – not because of what it cost them so much as what it gave them in a glorious spirit of adventurous living and service.
We had a fine group of Brownies, and they were proud of their badge; and a fine group of Cubs, too. Yes, the Cubs had a badge, too. Before I left seven or more Brownies “flew up” to our Guides.
I am enclosing the Guides’ or Scouts’ first badge. Some day I hope we can send you one of each for their interest or place in Scout or Guide history.
Mrs. Lawless will write you as soon as she can send mail out of China.
November 2nd, 1943
We have just dropped anchor outside Port Elizabeth. We are looking forward to being free people tomorrow on land – first in several years.
I am sincerely hoping you can receive this letter and feel with me the link of friendship that binds our hears together – sister Guides.
We must try all the world to leaven:
“Hard be the toil that waits us.
Tho’ the sky above be stormy
We can put our trust in heaven.”
Sincerely yours,
Marguerite Twinem
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Guides in European Camps
Guides were also involved in European internment camps – both outside and in. From outside the camps, Polish Guides arranged undercover supply of medication, food and clothing to the inmates within, at risk of their lives. They also collected information about the prisoners while pretending to undertake treks in the nearby woodland, and then shared it with prisoners’ families. But there were also Guides and Guiders imprisoned behind the barbed wire – among these were four Guiders and two Guides from Zawiercie, who had been arrested for compiling, printing and distributing an underground newspaper based on reports they transcribed from banned radio stations – three of them died in the camp, the other three survived. Other Guides, Rangers, and Leaders were among the prisoners too – some of them were among those tortured – yet in various camps the Guide inmates still worked individually or together, both to do what they could to support fellow inmates by collecting extra food and organising activities, but also by collecting and recording information on the prisoners and on how they were treated – tortures, and medical experiments. In Ravensbrueck camp a Guide unit was set up, each Patrol known only to the Guider and each working independently and in secret – in total there were some sixty members at one stage.
Nevertheless, in the prison camps a number of Guides were executed, some following torture, and some of them were publicly executed – and a far higher number died of starvation, or of diseases like typhus, which became rife in many camps including in Auschwitz. Even after liberation took place, a number of those in the camps died in the following days after – so starved and ill were they that they were beyond treatment. Of the 532 Polish Girl Guides known to have died during WW2, over 200 died in the Warsaw Uprising, and a similar number died in prison or concentration camps – not to mention the many hundreds of other nationalities who also experienced imprisonment, starvation, torture, or death.
As well as Guides being interned in the Prison Camps – Guiding members in various European countries were involved with resistance work, including delivering messages and food supplies into some camps, and also taking messages back to prisoners’ families. There is more information on this on the ‘International’ page.
Leslie's Guide War History 