Courtney Archer was a CAFCA member since 1991 and a regular donor. We never met him, spoke to him, nor knew anything about him, beyond a vague idea that he had had something to do with China half a century ago. We didn’t find out about his death (he died on his 84^th birthday) until several months after the event. We are indebted to Liz Griffiths, Trish Murray, Lyn Jackson, Mia Tay and Bill Willmott for their research and contributions to this obituary. Ed.

Courtney Archer lived most of his 84 years in Rangiora but, from his mid-20s on, his heart and soul was in China.

By his late teens, Courtney had become a committed pacifist with a strong revulsion at the use of force and an equally strong feeling of duty to make a contribution to society. With the outbreak of WW2, Courtney’s decision to register as a conscientious objector placed him at odds with his father and led him to leave his home and his job in the family flour mill. For much of the war, he lived and worked in rural pacifist communities, including the well-known Riverside Community near Nelson, before moving to Greymouth to become a reporter for the Grey River Argus.

During those years, Courtney continued to look for an avenue to put his pacifist ideals into practice through humanitarian work. That opportunity finally came early 1945 when he became one of a small group of New Zealanders selected to work with the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in China. On the surface, Courtney was an unusual choice for the FAU. The multi-national Unit, in China since 1941, provided small mobile medical teams and transported medical supplies and fuel to the few isolated mission hospitals still operating in so-called "Free China".They desperately needed recruits with medical training or driving and mechanical experience. Courtney had neither – but what he did have were enormous reserves of adaptability and commitment, and in the end those were the qualities that counted in China.

Courtney worked first in a tiny rural hospital in the south-west. From the beginning, he immersed himself in China, absorbed by the art and architecture, by the history, and by the people. The link became even closer when he was made manager of the hospital and seized the opportunity to move to live in the hospital itself, rather than in the FAU hostel, so that he could share as closely as possible in the lives of his Chinese colleagues.

In Shandan, Courtney’s qualities of commitment and adaptability really came to the fore. He was totally committed to the school – to its basic philosophy, to the students, and to Rewi Alley*, whose "right hand man" he became. As that right hand man, his adaptability was essential as he took on more and more tasks, with the aim of relieving the enormous burden Rewi shouldered. Courtney taught English, book-keeping and technical drawing classes, he helped out at the medical clinic, he designed rug patterns and book covers in the textiles division, and he stood in as headmaster when Rewi was away. *Rewi Alley was the legendary New Zealander who lived in China from 1927 until his death in 1987. Ed.

His main role, though, was as the school’s accountant and administrator, responsible for liaising with the international groups (including Corso) whose funds were vital for the school’s survival. Some of the tasks Courtney took on in that role, such as the practicalities of transferring the supporters’ funds, were far from routine accountancy. In an effort to stave off the impact of rampant inflation, supporters would buy gold bars in Shanghai and arrange for sympathetic American pilots to fly them to Lanzhou, in the north-west, where they would be exchanged for silver dollars. From there, the silver dollars were transported to the school in boxes buried under a load of scrap iron on the back of one of the school’s battered trucks, in the hope that if the truck were stopped by bandits they would be unlikely either to be attracted by the cargo or tempted to unload it in hope of a better haul.

"Corso aid to the Bailie School continued until 1951 when increasing criticism of China’s new political directions brought it to an end. However, Courtney Archer was of the opinion that without Corso’s aid during the crucial years, the school could not have carried on. Rewi’s supporters and Corso came in for a lot of criticism at the time. The Chambers of Commerce pulled out of Corso in protest over its support for China, claiming the the organisation was ‘soft on Communism’ ("Overview" {Corso}, March 1983, "New Zealanders In ‘Unique’ Chinese Experiment", by Lyn Jackson. Report of NZ China Friendship Society delegation to China, in October 1982).

In 1982, Courtney made his first visit to the Bailie Training School in Lanzhou in 30 years, as part of an NZ China Friendship Society delegation. Ed.

"Many former pupils are now staff members, and there were emotional reunions between Courtney and his former students when we visited the school. Sadly though, some whom Courtney remembered were missing, having died during the Cultural Revolution when anyone who had been closely associated with foreigners or foreign establishments was very suspect…" ("Overview" {Corso}, March 1983, "New Zealanders In ‘Unique’ Chinese Experiment", by Lyn Jackson. Report of NZ China Friendship Society delegation to China, in October 1982).

"Courtney also went with a small delegation to Shandan in April 1988 to the ceremony where they scattered half of Rewi's ashes on his beloved farm fields (as his will required) and buried the other half in a tomb they had made for him beside the town park (NOT according to his will!). I was on that delegation, and there was a great reunion of old "Bailie Boys" with several of the teachers who had been there in the late 40s" (Bill Willmott, e-mail to CAFCA).