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Foreword and AcknowledgementSo much has changed in India over the past seventy-three years that the period before and during World War II, its disturbances, dislocations, and precipitous end of British rule seem like scenes in a distant drama, ever receding over the horizon of living memory. The details are obscure, the colors have faded, the sounds are barely audible. As the generation of those who were there leaves the stage, the details go with it and are lost forever. Individuals who have helped me in this endeavor are many. The seed was planted by Margaret Weeks Holland, who let me read and be inspired by the typescript autobiography of her father, a Norwegian-American Methodist missionary in India. The project was given further impetus by my daughter, Cynthia, whose enthusiastic offer to digitize, design, edit and man-age the printing of the book in her spare time, left me without any excuse for not writing it. A graphic designer, she and her husband, Bill Grey, work together in their graphics studio, Grey Visual. My sister, Frances Brush Schillinger, sent me a box of family letters, mostly Mother’s written from India, which she acquired from Mother’s estate. These letters provided the on-going reportage, along with Mother's opinions, of the events recorded here. I've found in many rereadings of her valuable letters that my long-held opinions of Mother have and continue to change. The absence of letters from my father expressing his point of view has left Dad as My brother, John Brush, sent school yearbooks from the nine-teen thirties, maps from his collection, including one he drew him-self, many old photographs, and made helpful editorial suggestions. My wife, Beverly Amstutz Brush, has an accumulation of letters, albums, diaries, scrapbooks and high school publications, which, together, is a garden of nostalgic delights. She also cheerfully scrutinized the completed text. My daughter, Victoria Brush, and nephew, Mark Amstutz, Martha Smyrski gave some early chapters a critical readingand Roberta Ambrosino did the same for the entire work. There are many others who shared memories and ideas with me, on the telephone, in correspondence, in conversations at reun-ions, and who sent pictures and personal items so that they could be reproduced or have generously shared documents and other printed materials. The result is a much enriched text. They are Betty Stuntz Allen, Leslie Allison, Bob Alter, Bruce Amstutz, Kathi Bade, Helen Dunn Broyles, Arthur Eller, Rev. Charles Fitch, Bruce and Trudy Martin Foster, Richard Jonsson, Paul Keene, Betty Moffatt Locke, John Loehlin, Peggy Moffatt, Norman Roadarmel, Harold Rockey, Kenneth Rockey, Joan Scholvin, Oren Stilwell, Malcolm Swing, Bill and Dorothy Vaugh Whitcomb, Fred Whitfield, and Gerry Williams. In addition to The Whispering Pine yearbook; the alumni Quadrangle magazine; The Woodstock Tiger student monthly and the Woodstock Handbook 1942; I found very rewarding the history, Woodstock School: the First Hundred Years 1854-1954 by Edith M. Jones, Caroline Wilkie and Mary McGee with Introduction by R.L. Fleming (Woodstock Board of Directors 1954); and Fleming’s India Past and Present (Mysore City [1949?]); and Woodstock School Songs (Woodstock Alumni Association [nd]). Veterans of World War II and of the China-Burma-India Theater, such as Ted Green, Dwight King, Emil LaReau, Ed Lowery, Len Wasserman, and my distant cousin many times removed, Stanley Basil Brush, were sources of information and providers of prized CBI memorabilia. Warren “Pete” Peterson, my late brother-in-law, left a valuable collection of CBI photographs which I mined for illustrations. Information about and photographs of the ships I sailed on in 1943 were graciously provided by Richard de Kerbrech, E.H. Cole, and Graham Pepper, who in England lovingly preserve the memory of all of the beautiful passenger liners of this bygone era. My heartfelt thanks to everyone. Important published and manuscript sources of information This memoir is offered in the hope its readers will find something worth remembering. Some will be reminded of their own memories of these events. Is it too much to hope that those who haven’t yet come to their writing desks may be so inspired if for no other reason than to set the record straight? Stanley Elwood Brush |
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