SHANGHAI DEFENCE FORCE - CRISP, H.

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Photographs taken by a soldier serving with force in 1927, together with related ephemera. A visual collection documenting the service of Private H. Crisp, 2nd Battalion the Suffolk Regiment, in the Shanghai Defence Force at the time of the Northern Expedition and the Shanghai Massacre.The force was despatched in late 1926 amid rising tensions in China, which included attacks on British property in Hankow, and was tasked with protecting the British concession in Shanghai for the next 12 anxious months. Numbering 12 battalions of infantry and a detachment from the Royal Marines, some 13,000 men in total, it was under the command of Major-General Sir John Duncan (1872-1928), a student of warfare who was inspired by his time in China to introduce Liddell-Hart to Sun Tzu. The 2nd Battalion the Suffolk Regiment was ordered to the China Station from Gibraltar in late 1926.The album begins with a few photographs of Gibraltar but quickly switches focus to China. Several photographs show the erection of barbed-wire barricades and sandbag gun encampments at the entrances to the International Settlements, one with Duncan and two other senior officers looking stern. In the background of another looms a large advertisement for Lactogen, and others show Chinese forces - perhaps Kuomintang troops - camped on the railway line at Xujiahui station. Two show the brutal consequences of the Shanghai Massacre of communist elements. Air and sea support is provided by HMS Argus, shown moored by the

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