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Mandarin Blue: RAF Chinese Linguists, 1951-1962, in the Cold War. By Reginald Hunt, Geoffrey Russell, Keith Scott. Oxford: Hurusco Books, 2008. Timeline. Notes. Bibliography. Appendixes. Illustrations. Pp. xv, 164. £15.00.
As the title suggests, this account explores the recruitment, selection, training, and deployment of 300 RAF inductees as Chinese linguists stationed at Hong Kong. The impetus for the book came from tight knit groups who trained and deployed together, and kept in touch through organized reunions. Their shared memories, artifacts, language exercises, and more, form the structure for this group memoir. In doing so the group tried to discover the significance of their service. They found few official records, although some had been made available to the public at the National Archives (Public Record Office) at Kew. Supported by some secondary sources, and online information (some of it from Wikipedia), the authors...