The Red Army soldiers surmounted Jiajin Mountain in Sichuan Province during the Long March.	The Luding Bridge, where the Red Army breached a KMT siege.

Among Red Army troops trudging through the high mountains of eastern Guizhou Province 70 years ago was one fair-haired, gray-eyed foreigner. He was Rudolph Alfred Bosshardt, a missionary from Britain born of Swiss parents. The only other non-Chinese person to have taken part in the Long March was Otto Braun, known as Li De, a German tactician.

In the 1930s, China was torn by military conflict between the Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalist Party, and the Communist Party of China (CPC). In 1934 the CPC-led Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army broke through KMT armies and began a strategic transfer from areas south and north of the Yangtze River to Yanan in northwestern China. There they established revolutionary bases. More than 100,000 Red Army soldiers joined the Long March, which traversed 14 provinces and took two years. Bosshardt marched with the Sixth Army Corps for 560 days on its 2,500-mile journey through the five provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan and Yunnan. His book: The Restraining Hand, in which he described his experiences, was published in London in November 1936, one year earlier than Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China.

Encounter With the Red Army

Alfred Bosshardt went to Zunyi in Guizhou, southwestern China, as a missionary in 1923. After marrying Rose Piaget in 1931, he was transferred to the Zhenyuan Church in Guizhou.

On October 1, 1934, Bosshardt and his wife were returning from a conference with a group of other missionaries when they encountered the Sixth Army Corps -- vanguard of the Red Army on the Long March. These soldiers had never seen a foreigner before and, suspecting they were imperialist spies, sent Bosshardt and his wife to their headquarters.

Up to the point when Red Army soldiers returned to Bosshardt all the possessions they had taken from him and his wife, including some silver dollars, he had thought they were bandits. The soldiers told him that their troop was part of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. It was when Bosshardt and his wife were given a bed and chair to sleep on while the soldiers slept on the damp ground that he realized he could trust them.

The Sixth Army Corps allowed Bosshardt's wife Rose to leave, but not him. As Bosshardt was a physician as well as a missionary, they hoped he might be able to help them obtain badly needed medicine.

The march was an ordeal for all concerned, and Bosshardt tried, unsuccessfully, to escape. When the Sixth Army Corps captured Huangping, they found a French map of Guizhou Province in a church. Together with Xiao Ke, the commander of the Sixth Army Corps who after the founding of the People's Republic of China was awarded the rank of general, Bosshardt translated all of the main place names of mountains, villages and rivers, into Chinese. This painstaking work took the two men ten or more hours.

During the course of this grueling work a strong bond formed between the British missionary and the Chinese commander. Xiao Ke later recalled, "This foreign missionary helped to translate the map, and also provided topographical information that was vital for deciding which direction the army marched. Our troops particularly depended on the map when moving from eastern Guizhou to western Hunan." Bosshardt was also impressed with the bounding energy and irrepressible enthusiasm of Xiao Ke, at that time aged 25.

On April 12, 1936 Bosshardt was finally released by the Red Army and went to Kunming, provincial capital of Yunnan.

The Restraining Hand

On his arrival in Kunming, Bosshardt began compiling a book from the diary he had kept on the Long March. Upon completion, his 288-page-long, The Restraining Hand: Captivity for Christ in China was published by Hodder and Stoughton in London in November 1936. It was the first book on the Long March ever to be published in the West. In it, Bosshardt recorded the similarities he had discerned on this epic journey between Christianity and communism. The 12-chapter record also truthfully described his agonizing experience of being arrested and kept as a prisoner, he and his fellows' hunger and thirst, and the eventual fulfillment of the Red Army's promise to release him.

Along with his truthful description of his hardships on the Long March, Bosshardt also recorded the mutual understanding and friendship that developed between him and the Red Army troops. During his 560 days of marching Bosshardt witnessed firsthand the army's strict discipline, bravery in battle, and the help they gave to the poor. As Red Army leaders practiced the principles of Marxism-Leninism in which they and their men believed, the troop was actually a mobile Soviet.

The KMT authorities had imposed an intelligence as well as economic blockade, and Bosshardt's was the first book on the Long March to be published in English. Understandably, The Restraining Hand aroused a storm of attention and was reprinted three times. In the book Bosshardt recorded what he had personally witnessed and experienced during the Second Front Army's passage through Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan. It therefore provided a well of data for Sinologists and researchers.

The original manuscript of The Restraining Hand was lost during the war, and in 1973, at the suggestion of his publishers, Alfred Bosshardt rewrote his account and had it published under the title The Guiding Hand: Captivity and Answered Prayers in China.

Unforgettable Friendship

In October 1936, Bosshardt and his wife went back to Britain to be with their relatives in Britain and to recuperate. During this period Bosshardt attended various rallies at which he recounted his experiences in the Long March. The British media reported on his speeches with the comment: "Mr. Bosshardt spoke of the Red Army's incredible enthusiasm, yearning for a new world, and unquenchable faith."

In 1939, Bosshardt was sent to Panxian, Guizhou Province by an international religious organization to act as commissioner. Besides carrying out missionary work, he also practiced medicine and ran a school. In his spare time he studied Chinese herbal medicine with the help of an English book on homeopathy. In the early days of China's liberation, Bosshardt helped treat wounded PLA soldiers. From 1948 to 1949, he ran the Ming'en Primary School in Panxian, which had more than 50 students, most of them children of Christian believers and the poor.

In 1951 Bosshardt returned to Britain. He was the last Western missionary to leave Guizhou Province.

In 1984, General Xiao Ke mentioned Bosshardt during an interview with an American journalist, and was moved to find out where he had gone upon his return to England. In early 1985, Chinese diplomats finally located Bosshardt in the suburbs of Manchester, at which time he was 88 years old. In May 1986, General Xiao Ke requested Ji Chaozhu, Chinese ambassador to London, to visit Bosshardt and convey a letter to him. In the letter Xiao Ke wrote, "Although we have been separated for half a century, your helping me to translate that French map 50 years ago is firmly etched in my memory. Now that we are both of an advanced age I'm afraid it will be difficult for us to meet again. I wish you good health and a long life." Bosshardt was thrilled at receiving this letter and a copy of the PLA Photo Album. He told his friends, "At this stage of my life I am delighted to be called an old friend of the Chinese people."

In late 1987, a journalist from the People's Daily stationed in Britain interviewed Bosshardt in his sitting room, whose furnishings featured Chinese mementoes including a tablecloth, palace lantern, calendar, and pictures. At that time Bosshardt was in his early 90s, but his mind was still sharp and his memory good. He talked about his legendary experience on the Long March and unforgettable friendship with the Chinese people. Alfred Bosshardt passed away in 1993, his experiences on the Long March having become part of the world canon on the creation of New China.