1951 - Bill Wallace

February 10, 1951

Wuzhou, Guangxi

Bill Wallace.

Bill Wallace is remembered as one of the greatest martyrs of America’s largest Protestant denomination—the Southern Baptists. Few would have believed it when he was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1908. The son of a doctor, Bill paid more attention to fixing cars until the age of 17, when he dramatically heard God’s call to become a medical missionary while working on a car in his father’s garage. The teenager answered “Yes” to God, and recorded his commitment on the inside cover of his Bible.

After graduating from medical college in 1935, Wallace was appointed to join the Baptist-run Stout Memorial Hospital in the south China province of Guangxi. He arrived exactly ten years after receiving his calling to missionary work. His colleagues in Wuzhou, who for years had been praying God would send a surgeon to their midst, were immediately impressed by the young man’s fervency and godliness. Wallace rebuffed all marriage prospects. One girl who had hoped for his affection finally gave up, saying, “Marriage to Bill would be bigamy. He’s married to his work.”[1]

For more than 15 years Bill Wallace remained in Wuzhou, doing good to others and sharing the aroma of Christ wherever he went. No sacrifice was too great for him to make, as his fellow missionary-doctor Robert Beddoe wrote of one incident during World War II:

“At the time of the second severe bombing of the hospital, there was a desperately sick patient on the top floor. He could not possibly be moved without almost certain death. Wallace stayed by the bed, comforting and reassuring the patient. A bomb hit not more than 50 feet [15 metres] from the bed, tearing a gaping hole in the concrete roof. In the providence of God neither the patient nor Wallace was injured. One of the staff, who was four floors below at the time, told me he was lifted several inches by the concussion.”[2]

The Catholic missionaries working in Wuzhou became close friends of Wallace. They could not fail to be impressed by the godliness and selflessness of his life. One wrote,

“Dr. Wallace was famed for his surgery and medical work, but most of all for his kindness and devotion to the sick and poor. His whole life was medicine and charity…. [He] would be called a strange fellow by the hustlers, bustlers and seekers of wealth who people the world today. They would call him stupid and impractical, for when people asked him the charge for services he would usually answer, ‘Forget about it.’ His cancelling of charges drove the treasurer’s staff to despair, for he was all charity; a sort of mystic walking on clouds and looking for the stars.”[3]

Nothing could seemingly move Wallace from his calling in Christ. When bandits raided Wuzhou the other missionaries fled, but Bill Wallace remain behind and continued treating the sick. An American ship anchored in the river to rescue the missionary. Wallace refused to board. When an officer from the ship came on shore to warn Wallace that his safety could not be guaranteed unless he boarded the ship immediately, the intrepid doctor replied, “Tell your captain that he was not responsible for my coming here in the first place and he does not need to be responsible for my staying here.”[4]

When heavy Japanese bombing raids regularly threatened to destroy the city, Wallace transferred his staff, patients and equipment onto a barge. Whenever air raid sirens sounded, he would instruct the tugboat captain to pull the floating hospital under the shelter of one of the many large caves located along the riverbank.

As Christmas of 1950 approached Wallace’s mind wandered to the wonderful memories he had as a young man back in Tennessee, the excitement of opening presents and the enticing aromas of the Christmas feast lovingly prepared by his mother. Now he was in Wuzhou, faraway China, attending to the needs of the sick and dying. He was often so busy in the work that he didn’t have time to contemplate what others were whispering. At the time rumours abounded that the Communists would not tolerate the Christian hospital in the midst of their newly won territory.

The People’s Republic of China angrily declared war on the entire United Nations during the Korean War, and the United States was intensely hated. It seems everybody knew that Bill Wallace was in great peril except the man himself. Perhaps he believed he had won some favour with the Communists as a result of treating many of their wounded soldiers during the war against Japan.

On the night of December 18, 1950, Wallace was so exhausted after a full day’s work at the hospital that he slumped into bed after a snack of six slices of buttered bread and a glass of milk. At three o’clock the next morning a squad of a dozen young Communist soldiers arrived at the gates of the Stout Memorial Hospital, intent on arresting the American doctor, whom they called “President Truman’s chief spy in Wuzhou.” The soldiers forced Wallace into the main part of hospital, where the Chinese staff had gathered. The officer in charge shouted, “We know this is a den of spies. The People’s Republic is aware that some of you are counter-revolutionaries. This will not be tolerated…. You have been found out; you will no longer be able to carry on your clandestine activities.”[5]

The staff looked on aghast, and Wallace spoke in a measured tone, “We are what we seem to be. We are doctors and nurses and hospital staff engaged in healing the suffering and sick in the name of Jesus Christ. We are here for no other reason.”[6] Unimpressed, the soldiers started a search of Wallace’s room, emerging triumphantly a few minutes later with a brown package containing a small pistol, which they claimed to have found under the missionary’s bed. “That is not my gun. I do not own a gun, and I do not know where it came from,” Wallace protested.

For weeks Wallace was held in solitary confinement as the Communists gathered “evidence” that he was a spy. Neither the American Consulate nor the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board could do anything to help him, and permission to visit the prisoner was denied. The hospital staff, directionless without their leader, tried to secure his release. Wallace told them, “Go on and take care of the hospital. I am ready to give my life if necessary.”[7] One night a few weeks after his arrest a public meeting was called at the Wuzhou town hall where charges of espionage were levelled at the missionary. The Communist officials

“asked for those who had any accusation against Dr. Wallace to come forward with their charges. None came. When the planted Communist denouncers began to yell vindictive statements against the doctor, they were surprised that the crowd did not join them. No one was deceived. The doctor was being railroaded and everyone knew it.”[8]

A Catholic source gives an insight into the reason the Communists hated Bill Wallace so intensely:

“The Communists were smarting under the popularity Dr. Wallace enjoyed. Their propaganda got nowhere in ruining him. He was running the most modern and best equipped hospital in South China, and the city of Wuzhou was still his domain of loyal admirers. The Communists were jealous of both these assets and planned new measures to crush him. Yet these shameless fellows had been using the hospital and demanding the services of Dr. Wallace for most of a year. In their life of contradictions and savagery, they saw nothing indecent in using a man for all he was worth and at the same time hating him and trying to destroy him.”[9]

The Communists presented Wallace with a typed statement listing his name, age, length of service in China, and other facts. He signed it, only to discover later that a sentence was added into a blank space on the statement saying he was a secret serviceman sent to China by the U.S. government. Wallace was subjected to long and gruelling brainwashing sessions, with his hands tied painfully behind his back. Wallace was a sensitive and gentle man, and the non-stop filthy accusations and intense degradation wore his mind and emotions down. Two Catholic missionaries in the same prison said that Wallace was “shaken and strained” by the interrogations. One of them managed to ask Wallace how be was holding out. He grinned weakly, and said, “All right. Trusting in the Lord.”[10]

Only those who have been subjected to a Communist brainwashing can fully understand the ordeal that Bill Wallace went through. The accusations and methods of application come from a spiritual intensity born of Satan. Wallace’s biographer explained,

“The battle was not whether he could out-argue his accusers. He was not even equipped to begin. It was not a battle of physical endurance, though that soon became involved. It was a battle for sanity. From his cell in the night, Bill sometimes cried out in agony after the battle was over…. Delirium, crying, and blank periods came, but he fought on—clinging to his faith.”[11]

The aim of the psychological torture seems to have been to break Wallace so that he made a full “confession” of his “crimes.” On the night of February 10, 1951, the guards came to his cell and jabbed the Christian doctor with long poles until he fell unconscious. This final attack was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back.’ Quietly, “his soul slipped from his torn body and his exhausted mind and went to be with the One he had so faithfully and unstintingly served. Bill Wallace was dead to the world, but alive forever with God.”[12] He was 43-years-old.

The next morning the guards raced to the cell of the two Catholic missionaries, claiming Wallace had hanged himself during the night. The Catholics saw his lifeless corpse suspended by a strip of sheet that had been strung from a beam in the cell. The guards tried to get the priests to sign a statement that Wallace had committed suicide, but they refused to. It was clear to them that the façade was a staged show. The prison notified the hospital staff to come and take the doctor’s body. A nurse came and said, “The facial characteristics of hanging were missing—bulging eyes, discoloured face, swollen tongue. Instead, the upper torso was horribly bruised. The Communists had tried to cover up one botch with another.”[13]

The body was taken to the Believers’ Cemetery overlooking the West River. Communist soldiers watched as Wallace was laid to rest in an unmarked grave. The local Christians refused to allow the man of God to be dishonoured in such a way, and funds were raised to secretly erect a monument over the grave with the simple inscription:

Dr. William L. Wallace

“For Me to Live is Christ.”

After news of Wallace’s death reached America numerous tributes were offered to the martyred doctor. One of his colleagues said that he used to “advise anyone looking for Wallace to seek out the sickest patient; Wallace would be there.”[14] A Chinese doctor who had studied under the martyr said, “Dr. Wallace was a master in surgery, we shall never see his equal again.”[15] M. Theron Rankin, the head of the Southern Baptist mission at the time, wrote:

“The irrefutable quality of Dr. Wallace’s love made it imperative that the Communists get rid of him. His life refuted everything the Communists said. They have tried to get rid of the witness of Bill’s life. But that is precisely where they will fail. Bill Wallace’s witness of God’s love in Christ has been made immortal.”[16]

Everley Hayes, a missionary nurse who had worked with Wallace for years, said,

“Many think of martyrs as those long-faced people. But I knew a Dr. Wallace who was very much interested in everything around him. He was a martyr not because he died in service but because he so identified with the Chinese that they considered him one of them. And they loved him”[17]

Perhaps Jesse Fletcher summed up Bill Wallace’s life the best: “The Chinese had heard sermons before, but in Bill Wallace they began to see one, and that made the difference.”[18]

1. Hefley, By Their Blood, 70.
2. International Mission Board, Headline News (Vol.1, no.97, February 22, 2001).
3. Mark Tennien, No Secret is Safe: Behind the Bamboo Curtain (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952), 234.
4. Hefley, By Their Blood, 70.
5. Jesse C. Fletcher, Bill Wallace of China (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), 202.
6. Fletcher, Bill Wallace of China, 202.
7. Erich Bridges, “50 Years After: Bill Wallace and the Meaning of Heroism,” The Commission (May 2001), 50.
8. Fletcher, Bill Wallace of China, 204.
9. Tennien, No Secret is Safe, 236.
10. Fletcher, Bill Wallace of China, 206.
11. Fletcher, Bill Wallace of China, 206.
12. Fletcher, Bill Wallace of China, 206-207.
13. Fletcher, Bill Wallace of China, 208.
14. Bridges, “50 Years After,” 50.
15. Tennien, No Secret is Safe, 235.
16. Ione Gray, “Greater Love Hath No Man,” The Baptist Messenger (no.22, March 1951), 5.
17. International Mission Board, Headline News (Vol.1, no.97, February 22, 2001).
18. International Mission Board, Headline News (Vol.1, no.97, February 22, 2001).