An Exacting Mistress: The Friends Ambulance Unit in WWII, edited by Antony Barlow

Edited by Antony Barlow. Review by John Lampen.

This is a substantial book, well produced, illustrated and indexed.  It contains the wartime letters of Ralph Barlow and his wife Joan, the editor’s parents. Ralph was officer in charge of the Middle East Section of the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU), and later its deputy director, travelling 30,000 miles in his duties. Joan was a full-time mother with two small children.

The book gives personal insights into the tasks and dilemmas which the FAU faced; its marginal importance in official eyes, the compromises needed to work with the military, its limited resources; and the internal tensions in balancing Quaker discernment processes with the need for clear leadership. Though Quakers led and administered the whole enterprise, many members were not Friends, and it is remarkable how strong its ethos became. But there were disagreements and poor discipline in some units, which Ralph Barlow had to sort out.

One limitation of letters not intended for the future is what they omit. Ralph gives little idea of what FAU workers were actually doing day by day. But we learn about the cost to both partners in a marriage. Each expresses loneliness and frustration, and then quickly pulls back for fear of upsetting the other. Joan might read that Ralph had been ill or was about to make a dangerous trip, and then wait for a month or more before hearing back. She feared her descriptions of her daily round would seem trivial, but he prized them as a reminder of ‘normal life’.

Wartime imposed long periods of tense waiting. Long postal delays meant that Joan had to negotiate decisions about the family home without Ralph’s advice. Both worried about how the stress of long separation was changing their personalities. Ralph saw himself as a shy man who hated confrontations, so it was hard for him to take on leadership roles; he approached new responsibilities with misgivings, and when he had grown comfortable with each role it was his fate to be moved on.  Judged only by his own account one might think he was ill-suited to the work. But this is contradicted by letters from those who knew and worked with him, which are quoted in the book: ‘Ralph has undertaken an immense responsibility on behalf of the unit, and I should like you to know how greatly we all trust his judgement and rely on his strength of character’, wrote one of them to Joan. 

An added interest to Friends is the pen-portraits of men and women who became weighty Friends: Roger Wilson, Harold and Mary Loukes, Horace Alexander, Duncan Wood, Peter Tennant and others. Ralph was an enthusiastic birder too; some of his best writing is of the trips he occasionally took away from human conflicts into the magic of nature. This book will be an invaluable resource for our future historians.

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