Gareth Jones
[bas relief by Oleh Lesiuk]
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TOPICAL
'Are you Listening NYT?' U.N. Speech - Nov 2009 |
Gareth Recognised at Cambridge - Nov 2009 |
Reporter and the Genocide - Rome, March 2009 |
Order of Freedom Award -Nov 2008 |
Premiere of 'The Living' Documentary Kyiv - Nov 2008 |
Gareth Jones 'Famine' Diaries - Chicago 2008 |
Aberystwyth Memorial Plaque 2006 |
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beautiful meadows and ripening corn around them.
“The district through which we passed yielded little food - a few hens and pigs
in the villages, a few vegetables and a little bad flour.” After the first excitement of the capture
they were well treated and they decided to make friends with the bandits. They made jokes with their captors on the
first night and showed them how to wind up the watches that they had
confiscated and how the camera, compass and photometer worked. His account continued to say that on the
second day they repaired the gang’s machine gun. Ironically, they probably owed their lives to the fact that the
machine gun had not worked properly when they were captured. On the evening
of the second day, a man arrived saying he had been sent by the Chinese
authorities to affect their release and on the next morning the bandits allowed
Dr Müller to go with the promise that he would return with the ransom: “I bid
Gareth a short but moving farewell and then I mounted my horse and a peasant followed
to shield me in case I was shot from behind. A few hours later I reached Pao Ch’ang and I renounced my suspicions
that my guides were bandits of another gang.” Saturday 10th
August - The Western Mail and South Wales News (quoting Dr Müller): When
we were captured, the bandits were surprising harsh with Jones as he
cried: “Do not touch me, I am
British!” The bandits thereupon bound
and gagged him. Later, however, Jones
charmed his captors by singing songs in German, English and Welsh in the evenings;
which he (Müller) claimed saved Jones’ life. The bandits were particularly impressed when he sang the ‘David of the
White Rock’ (Dafydd y Garreg Wen) in Welsh. Repeatedly they begged him to sing more and while their pickets watched
the surrounding country the valley resounded with the Welshman’s hymns. His personality so impressed the bandits that they abandoned their harshness. One evening when there was only one chicken for 30 men, the bandits cooked the bird and laid it |
The
Press Breaks the News of the Capture.
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