Eric Liddell’s former roommate in China internment camp celebrates his centenary and the time of his life
Olympic runner immortalised in Chariots of Fire would have been best man at my wedding if he’d lived, says Joe Cotterill, who met the two loves of his life in the Japanese wartime Weihsien internment camp in Shandong province
About 15km from the spires of the university city of Oxford, Southmoor is a pretty village, with listed buildings and a couple of pubs; just the kind of place you would expect to stumble across while exploring England’s leafy country lanes. A birthday celebration at the village hall is a common occurrence.
Not so commonplace was the birthday party held in the hall one Saturday in March for Joe Cotterill. The trimmings included a cake in the shape of “100”, a card from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth (whom Cotterill met a few years earlier), a champagne toast and origami peace cranes.
Becoming a centenarian is a reason to celebrate, and Cotterill’s big day certainly rose to the occasion, bringing together some 110 people who had played a part in his long and varied life; family, friends, neighbours and colleagues, some of them travelling from as far afield as America and Taiwan. Among the sea of smiling, often emotional faces were five pensioners – a man and four women, alive for 425 years between them – who had been in the same Japanese internment camp as Cotterill during the second world war.
The Weihsien camp, in Shandong province, was to be a major influence on Cotterill’s life.
He met and married his first wife, Jeanne Hills, within its walls and then, during post-war reunion events, got to know another former inmate, Joyce Stranks, who would become the then widower’s second wife on Valentine’s Day, 2002.
