When Ward ‘Flash’ W had gone back to the States he went to the New York office and told of his one in a million chance of coming in contact with A.A in London.
The guy he met in the Savoy was ‘Canadian’ Bob who was tasked with the job to see if another American, Noble C, fancied coming to the meeting that was going to be held at the Dorchester in the suite belonging to Grace O.
Ward met Bob and below is the article that was printed in the Grapevine in June 1947.
Before you get to the actual article I have re-typed it out….you can read the original if you scroll down.
‘Strange and wonderful stories have been told of the things that happen to A.A’s throughout the world. Usually, they involve curious coincidences, off events, out of the ordinary experiences. From London comes another which may be classified as coincidence, luck or something more remarkable.
An A.A. who has had indifferent success with the progra for five years, arrived in Paris on a business trip, accompanied by his wife. The temptations of the city were great, his faith was small, soon hr was drunk.
The man disappeared for three days. The wife, accustomed to the drinking pattern of her husband assumed he could not take the boat train for London as planned. She decided not to take the train but to wait at her hotel in Paris.
However, on the day planned for the trip to London, the man awakened on the boatt train, rumpled, shaky and unshaven, he pulled himself out of the seat to see the fast moving ciuntryside in the window. A hurried examination disclosed that (1) he had no money and (2) no passprt. His watch was missing.
Alone in London.
On arrival in England, he convinced the authorities of his ability to obtain his passport by airmail and was admitted in to the country. Eventually, he arrived at a large hotel in London.
After rearranging his clothing as best he could, he too a seat in the lounge to ponder his desperate situation, he had no personal friends in London, he was broke. All of his valuables were missing, he was tired and nervous and, by God, he needed a drink.
Glancing at the large lock on the hotel, the man found he was so foggy he couldnt read it, and neither did he know the date. He saw a well dressed Englishman seated on a divan and asked him the time. A conversation developed. When he told the Englisheman his story, the latter said:
‘It must be more than coincidence. Do you realise that there are only five A.A’s in the city of London and that I am one of them? Somehow we have met here’
The rest of the storu is commonplace. The English A.A. took the man in tow, provided refreshment and friendship.. He insisted that the man come to stay with him at his home in London.
Later, when the man joined by his wife, all three attended the first A.A meeting ever held in England – a meeting that had been arranged by another American who was visiting England and who had brough the five A.A’s in London together for the first time,
Consider the odds against the meeting of this American A.A. and his British benefactor! There were only five A.A’s in the entire city; the hotel was only one of hundreds in the City of London.
A few weeks later, the man and his wife were walking along the banks of a river in England. He turned to her and said: ‘I have been thinking about my friend in London. I believe I know now what the spiritual part of the program means’.
Below is the article.
East London Archives of Alcoholics Anonymous. 