In our previous blog, Remembering the 543 men of the SS Athos, we made the following assertion:

543 Chinese labourers recruited by the French lost their lives. At this point it was the practice of the French not to record names of their recruits. Following this disaster, at the demands of the Chinese government, names of future recruits were recorded.

This statement is in fact not true. The short piece was written in advance and uploaded and scheduled to be published on the appropriate day. At this point we were aware that we lacked the evidence to support what we were saying, we anticipated that we would have by the time the piece went out.

Sadly we failed to be robust enough in our scrutiny and did not manage to secure the information needed to be confident that our statement would stand up to any challenge. This one error of omission was followed by a second when we failed to amend the article. The net result was that we were responsible for misinformation. Whereas we can be frank in saying that our intentions were good it is an inescapable fact that our impact was not. For this we apologise, and although we cannot promise not to make any further errors, we can promise to be honest about them when they come to light.

We are grateful for the friendly and constructive challenge by Gregory James without whose input and support the Campaign would be so much the poorer. Gregory James will be known to many with an interest in the Chinese labourers of the Great War as the author of The Chinese Labour Corps (1916-1920), the most authoritative and detailed study of the Chinese Labour Corps bar none.