Run to Glory: The Story of Eric Liddell

The agonizing headaches would not go away, no matter what Eric did. By the middle of January they had become so debilitating, he decided to take a drastic step: he went to the hospital. When he saw Annie, his description of his problems hardly sounded like it was coming from the competent practitioner who had once assumed responsibility for the entire hospital at Siaochang.

While the doctors’ diagnoses ranged from influenza to sinusitis to malnutrition, there appeared to be nothing wrong with him that was life-threatening, and Eric returned to his living quarters. Eric was malnourished, it was true, but so were most of the internees at Weihsien. At the end of the month, help had arrived in the form of basic foodstuff parcels sent by the International Red Cross. But food did not alleviate Eric’s suffering.

Ever the vigilant nurse, Annie remained worried about him. Eric had been in ill health for some time, longer than he had wanted to admit to anyone. Ignoring camp rules, she barged into his room in the men’s dormitory and then a short time later went directly to the head doctor at the hospital. Despite the lack of rooms, Annie found a way to have Eric admitted.

Eric was now showing the effects of a serious neurological condition. He spoke in a halting manner, one eye drooped, and he had great difficulty walking. In particular, his right leg was partially paralyzed. The doctors, though they certainly suspected a brain tumor, treated him for a stroke. There was nothing they could do for him in the facilities at Weihsien. Eric would remain at the hospital for three weeks, seeing few visitors and resting.

Annie now knew why he had given up hope a few months earlier and why the future had seemed blank to him. The tumor had affected his personality, and likely he was suffering from depression. While his faith remained intact, gone was his fun-loving nature.

Then, without explanation, Eric seemed to rally. For the first time in many weeks, he attended church services and even visited friends for tea.

On February 21, Eric went for a walk in the early afternoon on his way to the camp’s post office. He had just written another tightly worded message to Flo, and despite the cold and overcast day, something beckoned him outdoors. In his rather jagged hand, he wrote her of his health concerns, while minimizing greatly the severity of his condition:

Was carrying too much responsibility. Slight nervous breakdown. Am much better after month in hospital. Doctor suggests changing my work. Giving up teaching and taking up physical work like baking … a good change. Keep me in touch with the news. Enjoying comfort and parcels. Special love to you and the children.

Eric

On his way to the post office, he met the wife of a former colleague at Tientsin who inquired whether he’d heard from Flo. Yes, he answered haltingly. Looking at him closely, she advised him, “You ought to be resting more, Eric.”

Unwilling to discuss his condition in depth, Eric answered, “No, I must get my walking legs again.” There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be running again, refereeing hockey and rugby games … chasing after my girls … teaching them to use their arms to cross the finish line. Yes, Headmaster Hayward, once I did have apples in my cheeks, once long ago. Yes, Tom McKerchar, I still am a slow starter, but I know how to have a strong finish.

Later in the afternoon, he proceeded back to the hospital, not for himself, but to visit patients in the wards. There he ran into a former Sunday school pupil from his days at Union Church in Tientsin. Union Church … my father’s church, and the church of my beloved … there’s Flo at the organ … Flo laughing to meet me, when I couldn’t remember her name … Flo walking down the aisle, with Jenny’s veil trailing behind her, her hand clasping my trembling one.

As he tried to talk, he started coughing and choking at the same time. Alarmed, his former pupil rushed down the hospital corridor to summon help. Annie, who was just going off her nursing shift, heard the commotion and quickly made her way to the room where Eric was lying on a bed. Seeing her, he smiled and whispered her name. You will remember where we have been … Pei-tai-ho, Siaochang, and Weihsien … and you will tell others to come to China, with love in their hearts and the Word of God. Remember the miracles at Siaochang, how we were spared so many times, how the people were so hungry for the good news!

“Eric, talk to me,” said Annie urgently, her voice slicing through the fog of his mind. “What do you think is wrong?”

“They haven’t a clue,” he whispered back to her, a smile barely crinkling the corners of his mouth. And I am the Knight of the Bath … laugh with me, Annie, and do not look so serious … do everything in love.

She sat with him, holding his hand for several minutes until she felt a tap on her shoulder. It was the duty physician, who told her she could go back to her dormitory since she had just finished a long shift. “No, I’ll not leave him,” she answered tersely.

Annie noticed Eric’s breathing had become labored and he was fading in and out of consciousness, the symptoms of a cerebral hemorrhage. She had to find a doctor immediately. Running into the adjacent ward, she stopped two doctors who had treated Eric weeks earlier. “Do you realize Eric is dying?” she began, her voice rising in volume.

“Nonsense,” they responded almost in unison. Annie turned her back on them and returned to the room where Eric was. She was just in time.

A few minutes later, Eric went into a convulsion, and Annie took him in her arms. Then he spoke to her for the last time. “Annie,” he whispered, “it’s complete surrender.” Tears streaming down her face, she watched as he slipped into a coma, and then into the presence of God. The Olympic champion whose windmill style was a study in motion and whose love of God was known around the world was finally at rest.

Snow fell the next day, covering the camp like a clean white sheet and masking the despair evident in many faces. Shock had indeed greeted the news of Eric’s death; very few had known how ill he was. Two days later, on February 24, the funeral was held at the large meeting hall at the camp, a room soon filled to capacity. Even on this bleak day, more stood outside than were allowed in during the service.

The Reverend Arnold Bryson, a longtime missionary associated with the London Missionary Society, spoke first of a man, only forty-three years old, taken in the prime of his life. But God does not make mistakes, he added, and this time was not the exception. Rather, Reverend Bryson chose to dwell on Eric’s life and character and on the secret of his far-reaching influence.

“His was a God-controlled life, and he followed his Master and Lord with devotion that never flagged and with an intensity of purpose that made men see both the reality and power of true religion…. Our friend, whose happy, radiant face … will surely live on in the hearts and lives of all who knew him.”

Eight missionaries and friends carried Eric’s plain coffin to the cemetery adjacent to the building where the Japanese officers lived. Oblivious to the biting winds and spitting snow, they marched, followed by an honor guard of Eric’s students, the children from the Chefoo school. At the grave site, hundreds recited the Beatitudes, those verses that Eric had claimed for his own. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth…. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:3–5, 8).

Ten days later, the Weihsien mourners gathered again to be comforted at a memorial service for Eric, this time conducted by A. P. Cullen. A scrap of paper bearing Eric’s handwriting had come to his attention, words written on the afternoon of Eric’s final day. Apparently, at the hospital Eric had scribbled a message, and the words were especially telling. He had written the first line of a favorite hymn, “Be Still My Soul.”

Staying in their seats, those gathered sang softly the words that Eric had cherished, written to the music of “Finlandia.” A. P. Cullen would speak of his decades-long friendship, a former rugby teammate of Eric’s shared his memories, and Annie spoke of their days at Siaochang, her diminutive frame barely visible behind the wooden lectern.

More than two months after Eric’s death, Florence received visitors at her home in Toronto. Because of the war and the situation in the internment camps, the news of Eric’s death had not yet reached her. Eric had, of course, written her of his health concerns, but she had no idea his condition was terminal until her visitors broke the sad news. She would receive three or four more letters from Eric after she learned of his death.

As the rest of the world began to assimilate the news of Eric Liddell’s death, other memorial services were held. The first was in Toronto, at Florence’s church, to be followed by two services of note in Scotland. Morningside Congregational Church in Edinburgh, the church Eric had attended, accommodated more than a thousand mourners, including Rob, Jenny, and Ernest, as well as Eric’s former headmaster, George Robertson, and D. P. Thomson. Then at the Dundas Street Congregational Church in Glasgow, the church where James Liddell had been ordained, saddened Scots again gathered, joined by D. P. and Rob. Concerned about the future of Florence and her daughters, D. P. formed a national committee to raise money for them and to commemorate the life of Eric Liddell.

In the months that followed Eric’s death, a sense of lethargy descended over those at Weihsien. Gone was their smiling warrior, their tireless advocate, their spiritual conscience, their friend. Now they had only to wait out the war. Little did they know that the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August would set the stage for the last days of fighting. In the middle of August, Annie was working in the hospital when she was startled by the sound of planes flying very close overhead. Suddenly, crashing through the windows, came cans of fruit juice.

In short order, United States paratroopers marched into camp, informed the Japanese officers that they had assumed command, and watched calmly as the Japanese evacuated Weihsien. Annie, along with the other British missionaries and civilians, was taken to Tsingtao and then to Hong Kong, before boarding a ship back to England. She would be home in Scotland by Christmas.

Even though Eric was not there to encourage her, she remembered a favorite scripture verse of his, one that his father had loved and that had inspired Eric at Tientsin and Siaochang. To the church at Corinth, Paul wrote, “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain” (1 Corinthians 9:24).

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