Lord Lindsay of Birker, now Professor Emeritus of Far Eastern Studies at the American University, Washington DC, spent the years 1938–45 in China. He went originally to teach at Yenching University. Then following the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, he joined the Communists fighting the Japanese, first with General Nieh Jungchen's forces in the Shansi-Ch’ahar-Hopei region and, from the spring of 1944, with the CCP HQ at Yenan. The present book is a mixture of personal reminiscences and the history of the CCP's fight against the Japanese, coupled with a photograph collection which reflects these two themes.

Lindsay got to know the Communists during vacation trips from Yenching. Soon after reaching China, he had decided that the Japanese must be opposed. Since the Communists seemed to be more active in their opposition than the Kuomintang, it was natural for Lindsay to begin aiding the communist forces. This he did by smuggling essential supplies, and the occasional person, from Peking to the Shansi-Ch’ahar Hopei region. This was not as dangerous as it sounds – Lindsay was protected as a foreigner by extraterritoriality and the Japanese “ occupation” forces were often in fact Chinese puppet forces who took their duties casually. With the coming of war between Japan and the west in 1941, Lindsay and his wife, Li Hsiao-li, one of his former students with her own history of anti-Japanese activities, fled to the communist areas. They later learnt that they had made their escape 10 minutes ahead of the Japanese who had come to arrest them. For the next four years, the Lindsay family lived and worked with the Communists. Lindsay's considerable amateur knowledge of radio and telecommunications were put to good use in training CCP radio technicians. With justified pride, he notes that when he revisited China in 1973, many of his former pupils occupied prominent positions in China's telecommunications industry.

It is certainly valuable to have both the text and the pictures of the present volume. The pictures in particular are good value. Lindsay purchased a Zeiss Ikon 3–5 camera soon after arriving in China and it served him well. In spite of the often difficult conditions in which the films were processed, the quality of those reproduced here is uniformly high.