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Appendix A to CLC In France
I was fortunate to receive a letter from Mrs. C M. Gibb, who now lives in Glasgow, with recollections of her short stay at Noyelles when her father was serving with the CLC.
Her father, John M. Morrison, was called up in 1916 and trained with the Scottish Rifles. He was commissioned and stationed in Glasgow where he was fortunate enough to live at home. For the final battles of the war he was found to be unfit for active service and was posted to the CLC. [see photograph] With Mrs Gibb's kind permission, I can do no better than quote her letter dated 28 February, 2001, in full.
My father, John M. Morrison, was a lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry and from the spring of 1918 until the late summer of 1919 was with No 8 CLC. My father's tartan trews and glengarry fascinated the Chinese. They pronounced his name as 'Modarn.' In the summer of 1919 the British officers were allowed to bring their families out to France and as a small girl of seven I spent nearly four weeks (from August 17th to September 10th) with my father, mainly so far as I remember at Noyelles. I remember being introduced to the Chinese who seemed to me to be enormous men with very large grins, and I also remember my mother and I watching them from the hotel marching away carrying the goods they had bought (one man was marching with a very large gilt bird cage). A senior British officer with red tabs was also watching with tears rolling down his cheeks, he had spent much of his life in China and called the Chinese his 'children.'
When my father used to talk in later life about his time with the Chinese he expressed nothing but admiration for them, and gave the impression that he and the other British officers regarded the Chinese as being superior both physically and mentally to any of the other labour units either European or non-European. The interpreter with No. 8 CLC was a Mr. Wong who came from Shanghai and spoke a number of languages. Much to the amusement of my father's Commanding Officer, Captain Greenhill, Mr. Wong was not only essential for communicating with the Chinese but also for communicating with the French. The Cook was a very experienced and gifted man who was stolen by a visiting...