Bethune and Kotnis Aid China

China's War of Resistance won the deep sympathy and warm support of people worldwide, and many foreign friends traveled great distances to help the Chinese people. Norman Bethune (1890–1939) was a Canadian Communist and a noted thoracic surgeon. In early 1938, sent by the Communist Parties of Canada and the United States, he led a medical team to China and, on reaching Yan'an, was received by Mao Zedong. He then went to the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei Border Region as medical adviser to the military region, treating wounded and sick Eighth Route Army soldiers at the front. In October 1939 he cut a finger while operating on a wounded soldier, the wound became infected and turned to septicemia, and he died on 12 November in Tang County, Hebei. Mao wrote the essay “In Memory of Norman Bethune”, praising his spirit of “utter devotion to others without any thought of self”. In 1938 the Indian National Congress sent a medical mission to China; one of its members, Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis (1910–1942), worked in Yan'an and the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei Border Region, once working for seventy-two hours straight in a battle to treat the wounded, later became the first director of the Bethune International Peace Hospital and joined the Communist Party of China. In December 1942 Kotnis died of overwork in Tang County, Hebei, aged only 32. Mao wrote the elegiac couplet: “The army has lost a helping hand, the nation has lost a friend.” Other foreign friends, including the American journalists Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley and the New Zealander Rewi Alley, also supported China's resistance in various ways. Bethune and Kotnis are buried at the North China Military Region Martyrs' Cemetery in Shijiazhuang, Hebei.