At the Grave of Dr. Norman Bethune

Dr. Bethune with an Eighth Route Army sentinel.

An article about a journey to the grave of Norman Bethune from China Reconstructs, 1972.

Editor's note: Shihchiachuang is now more commonly translated as Shijiazhuang.

By Chen Han-Seng

The grave of Dr. Norman Bethune, the Canadian surgeon who gave his life to aid the Chinese army in the fight against Japanese aggression, has already been visited by more than two million people.

During the years 1937-1945 when Japanese militarism devastated China, the Chinese people fought their enemy tooth and nail. Hospitals and medical teams were badly needed. Dr. Norman Bethune, a well-trained surgeon from Canada, crossed the Pacific and on June 18, 1938, began his work with the Chinese Eighth Route Army led by the Chinese Communist Party. After a tour of a region where guerrilla fighting was going on, he drew up a plan for a standard hospital for the army, and helped with the work of setting it up. Three months later it was formally opened. For the wounded army men Dr. Bethune labored assiduously until his untimely death on November 12, 1939 from blood poisoning contracted through a cut on his finger during an operation.

The town of Shihchiachuang, where Dr. Bethune's grave is located, is situated at a strategic point some 280 kilometers southwest of Peking. Two to three kilometers west of the railway station in the heart of the town is a military cemetery covering 205,000 square meters. In its northern section, amid firs, pines and other greenery are the graves of 500 army officers. In the western section is the grave of Dr. Bethune, before which stands his statue. In the eastern section is the grave of Dr. D. S. Kotnis of Bombay, who came to China during the anti-Japanese war as a member of the Indian Medical Aid Unit.

From the cemetery it is a five minute drive to the army hospital named for Dr. Bethune, the Bethune International Peace Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Both the grave and the hospital were moved from their original location in Tanghsien, Hopei province, the former in the spring of 1952 and the latter four years earlier after the liberation of Shihchiachuang.

On the grounds of the hospital stands a memorial hall where the Canadian surgeon's manuscripts, reports, letters, medical apparatus and things he used in his daily life are on display. Photographs and paintings show how this eminent doctor devoted his services in the fight against the Franco dictatorship in Spain and later against the Japanese aggressors in China.

As early as December 21, 1939, Chairman Mao praised Dr. Bethune for his political devotion, technical competence and spirit of internationalism in his essay In Memory of Norman Bethune. He urged every Party member to learn from Dr. Bethune's spirit of internationalism and everyone to follow Dr. Bethune's example of unselfishly serving the people.

Since the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution began in 1966 hundreds of millions have read Chairman Mao's essay and have been inspired by the life of this Canadian Communist. I re-read this famous essay often, and, almost daily, when I hear "The Internationale" being broadcast, I think of Dr. Bethune.

On the day in mid-June of this year when I visited the Shihchiachuang Army Cemetery, some sixty young cadres from Hopei and Shansi provinces were also there gathered around the grave listening to a talk on the life of the eminent Canadian. The administrative office told me that an average of two thousand people a day visit the grave and hear the story of Dr. Bethune's life. Many of these come on special study tours arranged by the places where they work. Among the visitors in the recent year and a half have been about two hundred from foreign countries, including Albania, Australia, the Congo, Korea, Pakistan, Tanzania, Vietnam and the United States, and more than sixty Canadians.

Dr. Bethune's spirit of internationalism was indeed boundless. During the four months when he worked in Hopei, he saved more than a thousand lives on four different battlefields. He performed over three hundred operations. One of these was on a battalion leader with seven bullets in his abdomen and ten serious wounds: he saved the soldier's life.

When the battalion he was with was on the move, Dr. Bethune walked alongside the wounded on the stretchers. He took pains taking care of them at all times. On several occasions he even cooked for them. He once gave 300 cc. of his blood to save a wounded soldier; three weeks later the soldier was back fighting.

Without the slightest fear of gunfire, Dr. Bethune for a time performed his operations in a tiny temple on the edge of the battlefield. He moved with the fighters from place to place deep in the night, often through heavy snow storms. Frequently, unaccompanied even by his interpreter, he dashed to the battlefield on horseback if he learned that he was needed. Once he did not sleep for three days and nights, attending to the wounded. During that time he saved 71 lives.

His two favorite mottoes were: "Time is life to the wounded" and "Revolutionary friendship is international."