{"id":299,"date":"2021-03-15T22:27:10","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T22:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/?page_id=299"},"modified":"2022-01-09T09:36:02","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T09:36:02","slug":"an-exacting-mistress","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/march-2021-volume-503\/an-exacting-mistress\/","title":{"rendered":"An Exacting Mistress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Antony Barlow<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

The Friends Ambulance Unit in WWII<\/h2>\n

The wartime correspondence of Ralph and Joan Barlow
\nEdited by Antony Barlow<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>
An Exacting Mistress<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As we reach the 80th<\/sup> anniversary of the year my father joined The Friends Ambulance Unit, it is perhaps an appropriate moment to take another look at this remarkable voluntary organization, comprised of people from many different backgrounds \u2013 Quaker of course, but also Methodist, Anglican and non-denominational \u2013 all of whom joined to make a difference.<\/p>\n

This book attempts to tell the personal story of one of these, my father, not through a detailed day-to-day account of the Unit\u2019s many life-saving acts both at home and abroad, but through the many letters my parents wrote to each other, while my father was serving abroad in the Middle East, East Africa, India, and China, telling of their own struggles, either with depression or separation or bringing up two children in war-torn Britain. In one of his letters he called the FAU \u2018An Exacting Mistress\u2019, which I have taken as a title.<\/p>\n

Though, of course, it touches on the war, the book specifically does not tell the story of the fighting that took place throughout the Second World War, not only in the UK, but worldwide. To most that is well known and well documented.<\/p>\n

Instead this book tries to tell the story in between these spaces, where in the midst of battle there are people trying their best to save the lives of the wounded, whether they be civilians caught in the crossfire of enemy bombing or soldiers wounded in what Wilfred Owen calls the \u2018cess of war\u2019. This is the story of those who joined the Friends Ambulance Unit in 1939 and 1940, not to fight, but to bear witness to another way, standing against \u2018the truth untold, \/ The pity of war, the pity war distilled\u2019 (Wilfred Owen, enemy soldier in ‘Strange Meeting’).<\/p>\n

My father started a memoir which he began in his usual understated way as follows: ‘In the course of the war, I was fortunate enough to travel rather widely and I have ventured to think that extracts from my letters to Joan might be of interest.’ I have tried my best to complete his work as he envisaged it but in addition to add my mother\u2019s replies in as well, forming a fuller picture of the way the war unravelled for one family.<\/p>\n

\r\n
\r\n \u2018An Exacting Mistress\u2019 published by Quacks Books at the end March 2021 at \u00a320. Available to Friends at \u00a315.00 +p&p. Please contact Antony Barlow (artspublicity@hotmail.com)\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\n
\n

Back to March 2021 Newsletter Main Page<\/a><\/p>\n

Forty-Three<\/em> e-Newsletter \u2022 Number 503 \u2022 March 2021
\n<\/strong>Oxford Friends Meeting
\n43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW<\/p>\n

newsletter@oxfordquakers.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Antony Barlow The Friends Ambulance Unit in WWII The wartime correspondence of Ralph and Joan Barlow Edited by Antony Barlow As we reach the 80th anniversary of the year my father joined The Friends Ambulance Unit, it is perhaps an appropriate moment to take another look at this remarkable voluntary organization, comprised of people from … Continue reading An Exacting Mistress<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"parent":182,"menu_order":211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1256,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/299\/revisions\/1256"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}