Captain Mateen Ansari, was executed by the Japanese for assisting the B.A.A.G. and was later awarded the George Cross. Throughout the war the B.A.A.G. sent agents to gather intelligence – military, political and economic – about conditions in both Hong Kong and southern China. One important role was the provision of weather reports to the China Air Task Force of the United States Army Air Forces, who reciprocated by dropping medical supplies into the camps during raids. The agents' main role was to facilitate the escape of prisoners from Hong Kong; British, Commonwealth and Indian servicemen were then debriefed by B.A.A.G. staff and many subsequently rejoined the war effort. Many escaped Hong Kong Chinese joined the Hong Kong Volunteer Company, a unit formed by Ride which went on to fight in the Burma Campaign. The B.A.A.G. also gave medical and humanitarian assistance to civilians and military personnel in Southern China; the group's hospital gave medical treatment to some 30,000 Chinese annually. and during a famine in 1943, fed up to 6,000 people daily. The B.A.A.G. continued its work after the Surrender of Japan and was finally disbanded on 31 December 1945. At the end of the war, Ride commissioned a formation patch for the group, depicting a scarlet pimpernel flower, after the hero of The Scarlet Pimpernel novels who helped prisoners escape from the French Revolution, but the badge was never officially recognised. The various roles played by the B.A.A.G. during the war and following the end of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in August 1945 were summed up in an editorial published in The South China Morning Post in early 1946: At the close of the year, Colonel L.T. Ride said good-bye to the men and women who have worked under him, in the British Army Aid Group, and this leave-taking marked the official end of an organisation that Hong Kong cannot allow to die. Tired memories still recall the desolation that overwhelmed us at the surrender. Then, recovering, for a time we toughened again, sure that the Allies would return very soon. Then hopelessness again, lapsing into despair. We came to regard ourselves a little bitterly as the forgotten folk—until we learned of the B.A.A.G. and the British Consul at Macao. There, miraculously, were friends, rallying round, beckoning us, assuring, us, impatient at times, no doubt, at the slowness of our response, venturing dangerously close, planning, providing,