Apart from one or two members who had lived in China before the war, including Henry Rodwell who had been born in Chengdu and Will Jenkins and brothers Llew and Owen Evans who had served in China with the British Relief Unit from 1940, most had no prior experience of China. Some had never been abroad before.

In total around 350 individuals served with the China Convoy between 1941 and 1951. The exact figure is uncertain because in addition to those sent via London or Philadelphia a number of personnel were recruited locally. These included over 50 Chinese and a handful of displaced persons of other nationalities. Many of the Chinese recruits had been students at the Western China Union University in Chengdu. A considerable number of them had come originally from Hong Kong or the seaboard provinces of China and had been displaced by the Japanese invasion.

In addition to its members the Convoy was supported by a number of local paid employees engaged as mechanics, cooks, secretaries, interpreters and watchmen. Many of these staff moved around as the Convoy shifted its garage bases, bringing with them their extended families. The exact number of Chinese employees is not known but is estimated to be in excess of three hundred.

The Convoy when first formed was overwhelmingly British, drawn from all quarters of the UK and with a similar ecumenical mix of denominations as the FAU overall of which Quakers were somewhat less than half. It also shared the wider FAU’s social diversity including accountants, architects, the sons of a Duke, an MP and a bishop, factory workers, a sign-writer and a butcher’s boy.

By early 1946 the British members were in a minority and this trend continued thereafter with the majority of new recruits coming from the United States, amongst whom Quakers and Baptists featured strongly.

A series of tables summarising its composition by nationality is available, left, also a full list of known Convoy members.