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CHASE FOR A GUNMAN
The headquarters of all that appertained to sport centred on the Temple of Excited Insects (note the stress on fertility even amongst the most lowly). During these few days I went out on riding parties, rode in a paper bunt over bleak terrain and had several gallops with the redoubtable D'Arcy Wetherby's Peking Draghounds. Before dawn one morning I was taken out by two ladies representing the British and U.S.A. legations to watch dawn at the Temple of Heaven where the former Emperors performed the China New Year Day's rites, a moveable feast at the end of January or the first week in February. It was freezing hard at the time, but unlike Shanghai the air was quite dry. The ladies were thrilled as a Chinese guide described the ritual step by step as the sun rose. But I brought them back to earth by saying I would prefer to see a fox break cover and cross the Marble Avenue below the famous Temple Terrace. For me that was the first and last of the rounds of gazing at monumental landmarks fast falling into disrepair and with an air of general grubbiness. I tried the Siberian route once only. The land portion of the long journey across Siberia I found very tedious and lacking in variation after leaving the Ural Mountains. All other journeys to and from England were by Suez sea route, usually with a new draft of bounds for Shanghai when outward bound. On one occasion on arriving at Hongkong I was hurried out to the Fanling Club, handed a hunting horn and requested to hunt the Fanling hounds. The star turn of their very small pack was an experimental cross between a Bloodhound sire and Alsatian dam which I had made a few years previously and which I had drafted as bein8 mute though possessed of an excellent nose. All went well until I came to grief when my mount took me into a Chinese paupers graveyard where the cheap coffins were barely a foot or so underground. I have appeared more concerned with my spare-time occupations than with details of my career and the Shanghai scene during the years I lived there. I trust my friends who have urged me to write these recollections will forgive me. Politics, international or otherwise, were never my concern and writing about one's career is similar to those who take their work home with them. Such people can be bores. It is true, however. that my police career in China spanned turbulent years in the East no less than other parts of the world. In Shanghai we had more than our fair share of criminals, gangsters and riots. It was necessary to act with decision and ingenuity from time to time and when the occasion arose I always tried to do this to the best of my ability. One weekend it was my turn to be on duty on the Sunday. About tiffin rime I received 'phoned instructions to meet the Commissioner of Police and Commandant of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps at Police H.Q. There I learnt that a riot was planned for next day, Whit Monday. We would need help, hut recalling the large number of foreign police and volunteers on leave, before nightfall, was problem, since they could not be reached by telephone. Then I suddenly remembered our one and only commercial radio, run by a Mrs. Roberts, who broadcast advertisements interspersed with music. The morning session would, by now, have finished and no one would try to tune in until 5 p.m. Even were there radios on any of the houseboats, it was questionable whether this local radio station would be powerful enough to reach them. I appealed to Mrs. Roberts to give me time at intervals from 5.30 to 7.30 p.m. It so happened that a friend of mine was tinkering with the waveband of a pretty good radio when I put my message over,.. "Springfield. Assistant Commissioner of Police speaking. Commandant of Volunteers and Commissioner of Police instructs all ranks to return to Shanghai without delay. Serious situation has arisen. On hearing this, my friend bopped into his small motor sampan and called on every houseboat anchored along the creek. On one of the houseboats, great good fortune, was the foreign manager of the Shanghai Nanking Railway. He immediately sent orders by. runner to the Chinese stationmaster at Quinsan, more than three miles up the line, to stop the night Nanking-Shanghai express and instruct the engine driver to stop at Henli Halt and to telephone to Soochow City to put on more carriages. By great good luck, he had some fog signals in his bag for just such an emergency. These he himself placed on the rails. The length-cued Eight express duly pulled up and conveyed its load to Shanghai, arriving only 45 minutes behind schedule. On the morning tide, up came a British cruiser, Newcastle, I believe She had picked up the message the previous evening arid had arrived at Woosung overnight. This my life that r have ever gone "On the air". Shanghai could be tough and if we could not mix business with pleasure there were compensations after a spot of trouble. In 1926 a horde of Chinese armed coolies (alleged soldiers) marched northwards from the Canton Delta, commanded and encouraged by their leader, now the darling of a western state, with promises of unlimited opportunity to wallow in all that licentious soldiery have dreamed of, and at times participated in, throughout the ages. Just for once, our government heeded the warning in time and got the Jhansi Brigade into Shanghai 48 hours or so before the advance guard of this mob arrived from the south. The mob caught a Tartar and fled under cover of darkness towards Nanking, leaving a trail of weeping outraged Chinese women on the line of their retreat. As soon as the State of Emergency had been cancelled we went back to our normal life with alacrity. For the Army Officers, the first to arrive, it was a pleasant surprise to find a pack of hounds in existence, even though this did not compare with the standard of some in India, We were soon hunting normally a drag and on foot. Troops straight from England continued to arrive to bring the defence force up to strength, including a battalion Of one of the Guards Regiments with their horses. Another welcome arrival a little later was General Wardrop. the famous pig sticker, who, I think, was the winner of a Kadir Cup. Also came the K.O.Y.L.I.'s under the command of Lt. Col. Hudson Kinehan, the only infantry regiment, I believe. to win honours in the polo world in India against the flower of the Cavalry. They followed my example and bought discards from the racecourse, maximum price about £7, tried them out for seven days, and shot those that were hopeless back into the next auction. by the time the polo season came round they had enough made ponies for their immediate needs, but continued to buy ill older to have a reserve. Needless to say they trounced all the civilian tennis in our local tournaments, My sporting activities sometimes helped, too, in the course of my work when, for example, I hunted humans (instead of animals) with the aid of bloodhounds. In my childhood, from a somewhat limited collection of poems, I had to recite one each Sunday before lunch, One had to do with bloodhounds. A few lines I can still remember.
Autumn leaves are falling fast, I purchased a bloodhound in England. entered to hunt the clean boot. Re was a nice kindly hound but took very little interest in chasing Chinese. Perhaps it was because they were to all intents and purposes vegetarians, whilst his quarry in England had been omnivorous with a strong basis of the carnivorous. This hound did not last tong in the Shanghai climate. Then I tried American bloodhounds reputed to be directly descended from those that hunted negro slaves, as depicted in books like Uncle Tom's Cabin. These were a success and I used them mainly to hunt armed robbers, and such like gentry, between midnight and dawn, when all the law-abiding should have been between the blankets. A typical night's work began with a 'phone call from a police station reporting an armed robbery, and that a sergeant would meet me at a junction of some two roads. I would hurriedly dress in old civvies and the bloodhound would be waiting at the garden gate. Hopping into my car after adjusting his harness - a short run, and we would pull up on location: The family raided were always in such a funk that they could not tell the number of persons raiding or direction taken. Nearly always these raiders headed for the Settlement Border by a maze of narrow country paths. Making a round the hat cast, the hound would hit off a line, and away we would go, I being towed by the hound on the end of a long' linen line. We proceeded with plenty of music from the hound and also from the swarms of 'Wonk' dogs, who were terrified at his deep voice. One result of this deep baying was that the robbers often proceeded to drop much, if not all of their loot, in their flight into Chinese territory. Even if we did not actually come up with them, the direction taken was most helpful to the C.I.D., and they knew into which village or group of villages the robbers had gone and where to send to ferret them out with the help of the Chinese authorities. I thoroughly enjoyed this type of hunting. By way of variation from robber hunting, I was once asked to try to find the corpse of a murdered Sikh, although 48 hours had already elapsed since the killing. Taken to the scene I introduced the bloodhound to a pool of blood. After working the line for about 3/4 mile we came to a deep lagoon with a creek feeding into it at one end, and with a V-shaped exit with a miniature Chinese fish trap set in it. Then followed what resembled an otter hunt on one of the Norfolk reed-fringed lakes. The hound picked up the scent at the V-exit, swam up to a particular spot in the lagoon, circled round it, then landing ran back to the V-exit. This he did time and time again until worn out. We sent to the Fire Brigade for grappling irons, but failed to get hold of the corpse. But three weeks or so after, it floated up to the surface. By this time the Indians who were suspect had fled out of our jurisdiction and were said to have taken ship for Brazil. One of my bloodhounds thoroughly enjoyed hunting with the Shanghai Hounds when we hunted four footed quarry on foot in the vicinity of Shanghai. Strangely, this hound never lost his keenness for hunting human beings. There was no bloodhound with me the day I was engaged in a gun battle with Chinese robbers. I had been playing tennis and was driving home, having dropped a guest at her home, when I heard a series of shots. Then as I backed out of a drive, a Sikh havildar (policeman), thoroughly exhausted, flung himself over the radiator of my car and pushed a .45 revolver into my hand. "Sahib, sahib, there they go", he gasped, pointing to gunmen who were dashing off in the opposite direction. I could not fire at first, for standing transfixed in the line of fire like Lot's wife, was a dear old lady, dressed in a Shantung off white summer dress. But I made up for that later. After meeting Chinese police on the Great Western Road, we crossed into the French Concession. During the chase I shot one of the robbers and he died later. Another ran out of ammunition and so did I but we captured him with the aid of a gallant rickshaw coolie and an old Chinese woman. The coolie lolling on the floor of his rickshaw grabbed
A robber
the robber by you can guess what. He yelled with pain - which increased when the old woman poured boiling water over him. Just then Annamite police arrived and we went to a French police station where I was officially given the custody of my prisoner. The other would-be robbers had scattered, but they were rounded up later; one had been shot and was later found wounded in a garden. It appears that the robbers were on their way to rob the residence of a rich Chinese when they were stopped by a search party. Then the shooting started. My own role in this affray was recognised by Shanghai Municipal Council who sent the following letter to the Acting Commissioner of Police.
I have accordingly, to request that you will be so good as to transmit to this officer the Council's special gratification at the able and intrepid manner in which he personally conducted the pursuit of the armed rob- bers upon the occasion in question.
I treasure, too, the shield given to me by the Chinese dignitaries of the International Mixed Court in 1920, the silver vase presented to me on behalf of His Highness Prince Takamatsu after he and his Princess had visited Shanghai en route to England, and most of all perhaps the copy of the following Shanghai Municipal Police Orders dated Sept. 18, 1933. "The Secretary of the Council has forwarded to the Commissioner of Police a copy of a letter which he has addressed to Mr. M. 0. Springfield on the occasion of his retirement from the Council's service. The letter reads: "Upon your retirement after nearly twenty-eight years in the Council's service I wash to place on record the Council's appreciation of the valuable services which you have rendered and the wholehearted way in which you have worked in the interests of the Settlement. "Whilst leaving unmentioned the community's appreciation of your activities outside the sphere of your duties, the Council desires particularly to refer to the efficiency, tact and loyalty with which you assisted in the introduction of the divisional scheme of police administration and for your co-operation in effecting improvements which have assured the success of the administrative reorganisation of the Police Force. "washing you every happiness for the future ..." In publishing the contents of this letter in Police Orders for the information of all members of the Force, the Commissioner of Police took the opportunity to place on record his "appreciation of the excellent services rendered by Mr. Springfield in the interests of the Force and the public". This added: "Mr. Springfield commenced his service with the Council in 1905 as a cadet and in the course of his twenty-eight years' service has risen through the grades of Assistant Commissioner to the high rank of Deputy Commissioner. "His service throughout has been marked by a high standard of efficiency. In the year 1929 he was posted to take charge of Divisions and the work he has performed since as Deputy Com- missioner in charge of Divisions has been of a high order and will remain in effect an important factor in ensuring the future efficiency of the Force. by his energy, perseverence, tact and determination he has set a fine example to the Force. The Force may well be proud to have numbered among its past members so gallant an officer and so true a gentleman. "On behalf of the present members of the Force the Corn- missioner expresses the wash that Mr. Springfield will enjoy the greatest of happiness and the best of fortune in his retirement". The hopes expressed by the Commissioner on behalf of him- self and my former colleagues in the last paragraph of these orders have been fulfilled. My years of retirement, no less than my years in Shanghai, hive been happy ones. Good fortune has smiled on me. Now at my home, Four Pheasants, Easton, in the company of my second wife, surrounded by mementoes of those years I spent far from the hunting country of my Irish birth p lace and the East Anglian countryside, able still to attend the hunt and the racecourse, I bless the day that my nurse plunged me, soon after I had given breath, into the Hole in the Red Hawthorn Tree.
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