ABSTRACT
Alley had difficulty finding work at first. He wrote to his family that he was contemplating joining either a ‘Tommy’ regiment (the Shanghai Volunteer Corps) or the Shanghai Municipal Police.1 Had he done so, his life would have taken a very different turn from the one it eventually did. No ex-member of the Shanghai Police Force, responsible for rounding up thousands of Communist supporters, would have been welcome in post-1949 China. Fortunately he found an occupation that was politically much more respectable. With the help of an associate from a brother regiment to the New Zealand Legion of Frontiersmen, he started work as an officer at the Hongkou Fire Station in the International Settlement in Shanghai.
