General Maltby’s idea of a peaceful Sunday afternoon in the hot weather was “a stroll round the Island”. Taking up to half a dozen staff officers, most of whom would rather be playing golf or sleeping, he would clamber along the most inaccessible hillsides and the roughest paths, nullahs and catch-waters for three hours, studying the possible battlefields. General Maltby hated all forms of protocol and detested snobbery, pretentiousness, boasters and pomposity. He had instructed at the Indian Staff College at Quetta (but, contrary to some accounts, he had not been the Commandant there). His subsequent appointment was as a District Commander in India. He had been led to expect further promotion after his tour in Hong Kong.
Before the arrival of the Canadians in November 1941, Maltby had only four Regular Army battalions – 2nd Battalion Royal Scots, 1st Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, 5/7th Rajputs and 2/14th Punjabis.
His new plan, when the Canadians arrived, was that three battalions would fight on the Gin Drinkers’ Line on the Mainland, leaving the Middlesex Regiment, a machine-gun battalion, to man the pill-boxes round the Island, and the two Canadian battalions on the Island to oppose any landings from the sea. The Island Brigade would be under command of the Canadian Brigadier J K Lawson. When necessary, after holding the Japanese for as long as possible, certainly not less than a week, the Mainland battalions would withdraw to the Island, leaving only an Indian battalion to hold the Devil’s Peak in the southeast. See Map on page 37.
The Mainland Brigade was commanded by the newly promoted Brigadier Cedric Wallis. He became the most controversial soldier in the battle for Hong Kong. Wallis had enlisted in the Royal Horse Guards in the First World War, been commissioned into the Sherwood Foresters and served in the Lancashire Regiment before joining the Indian Army in 1917. He had fought in Iraq; at the end of the First World War he was appointed the Chief Political Officer in Mosul before a posting to southwest Persia. He next served in south India and Burma. At the beginning of the Second World War, he commanded an internal security force in Bombay before moving to Hong Kong in 1940. He was promoted to Brigadier from Lieutenant Colonel in command of 5/7 Rajputs, shortly before the Canadians arrived. (Some books state erroneously that he had the Military Cross.)
Wallis was a slim, tough, very determined and ambitious soldier who wore a black patch or a dark monocle over his left eye, which he had lost in the First World War. He felt there were too many cocktail parties in Hong Kong and too little time was spent in hard training. Like John Harris, he had listened to Brooke-Popham’s optimistic views. “I felt the Air Marshal must be very badly informed and making a great mistake in belittling the Japs,” he wrote afterwards. “This sort of nonsense fitted in very nicely with what many liked to hear and believe in, as they could not bear to think that their carefree, elegant life-styles could be interfered with.”2
Early in November 1941, Wallis committed his three battalions to occupy and work on the Gin Drinkers’ Line, instead of going to camps on the frontier. He felt that defence preparations should take priority over all else. “With many young and inexperienced officers and newly arrived recruits in Indian units, all units were badly in need of training also,” he wrote. “Camps were consequently postponed until after Christmas 1941, so that units could live and work in their battle positions, in itself one of the best forms of training.”
The 2nd Battalion the Royal Scots, the oldest and senior British Infantry Regiment of the Line, was responsible for the west, including the Shingmun Redoubt, and for covering the southern slopes of Tai Mo Shan mountain. The 2/14 Punjabis covered the centre of the Mainland and the 5/7 Rajputs were on the right (east). See Map on page 37.
The Royal Scots “worked hard wiring, digging and on camouflage and were in good form except that their strength was sadly reduced by sickness,” wrote Wallis. “Malarial cases were the heaviest and their defensive area was badly infested with mosquitoes. At one time 110 cases were being treated.3
“Both Indian battalions had been weakened by repeated ‘milkings’ for new units and had just received 150–180 partially trained recruits as reinforcements. The Rajputs received new 3 inch mortars only after deployment.”
All units registered possible artillery targets by bringing down live fire and then adjusting it for range. The targets included for example likely enemy approaches or forming up points before an attack. The artillery batteries were either mobile ones or in static gun emplacements.
With a frontage of ten miles along the Gin Drinkers’ Line, no reserve unit could be found to stop the enemy should they break through.
Previously the Royal Scots’ war role had been on the Island and so the officers and soldiers were unfamiliar with the ground in their new position. They were responsible for a frontage of over 5,000 yards although the textbook norm was 1,000 yards. The abandoned 1937 plan envisaged that at least two divisions would be required to hold the line properly. Wallis had less than one sixth of this strength. The Royal Scots Battalion was issued with only 90 anti-personnel mines – far too few. It had been ‘milked’ like the Indian Battalions, losing ten experienced officers and receiving territorial or emergency commissioned replacements, many of whom had only just taken up their new appointments before the war started; the Battalion was left with just four officers possessing regular commissions.
On 25th October, two days before the Canadians sailed from Vancouver, a brief reached Ottawa from the War Office which read: “The task of the Hong Kong garrison is to defend the Colony against internal attack and to deny the use of the harbour and dry dock to the enemy.
“The threat: the Japanese are established on the Mainland, are carrying out operations in the vicinity of the frontier, and are in possession of a number of air bases within easy reach of the Colony. They also hold command of the sea and are therefore in a position to occupy the surrounding islands at will… ”
This frank, rather pessimistic report ensured that the Canadians were aware of the true situation. Crerar, the Canadian CGS, had earlier announced that there was “no military risk” in sending two battalions to Hong Kong. Nevertheless he “had many high-level British contacts, who, at the strategic level, had a thorough understanding of the risks involved,” wrote Brereton Greenhous, who worked for 25 years in Ottawa’s Department of National Defence’s Directorate of History. “They could have told him at any time during the past two or three years that the garrison was no more than a hostage to fortune.”4
On 16th November 1941 the Canadians reached Hong Kong, ten days before Cordell Hull, the American Secretary of State, rejected the Japanese attempt to prolong diplomatic negotiations. Hull was still insisting that all Japanese troops be withdrawn from China and Indo-China before Washington would release any assets or permit the importation of oil.
Four days after the Canadians arrived, they occupied their battle positions during a night exercise. Starting in early December, one of the three platoons in each company spent a few days in turn manning these positions after a further reconnaissance. The British had no knowledge of the level of training of the Canadians on their arrival. The account which follows may seem harsh and critical of them.
It is often forgotten that there was a Canadian Army to fight in northwest Europe from the D-Day beaches onwards. Moreover 623 high grade young Canadian officers commanded British platoons in 140 battalions in Italy, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.5 Canadian officers had also served earlier in North Africa to gain experience. Well trained, well led and uncommitted Canadian battalions, impatient for action, were not chosen for Hong Kong because the imminence of hostilities there was not understood; the fact that the international situation had become so precarious was not recognised. Canada deserves infinite gratitude for sending reinforcements – all volunteers – to Hong Kong.
Many Canadian soldiers, if properly trained, were outstanding. Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, who had a critical eye and no respect for the second rate, wrote in his diary on 5th September 1941: “Motored down to Tilshead to visit the C
anadian Army Tank Brigade. They have not been in the country long and are consequently in the early stages, but promise very well …”6
On 3rd December Maltby and Lawson toured the frontier and, watching the Japanese through binoculars, thought them to be scruffy, lazy and uninterested. Nevertheless two independent reports from China stated that between 10,000 and 20,000 Japanese were expected to arrive at Sham Chun, five miles north of Fanling close to the border, on 4th December for an attack on the Colony.7 Maltby did not believe these reports, preferring, presumably, the reassuring views from Major Charles Boxer and “people of all kinds and nationalities from all over China, MI6, consular agents, Secret Intelligence Service, cloak-and-dagger types from Shanghai, Canton and elsewhere” whom Maltby’s ADC was admitting at night direct into the General’s study.8
Maltby was responsible for the defence of Hong Kong but was answerable to the Governor, who was also the King’s Representative and Commander in Chief. It was the previous Governor, Sir Geoffrey Northcote, who had proposed to the British War Cabinet that Hong Kong should be declared an open city and the Japanese forces allowed to march in. The closing months of his tour had been clouded by two scandals involving mishandled immigration and air raid shelters which failed to match up to specifications. Some expatriates believed that the entire Government apparatus was riddled with graft. In September 1941 Northcote left Hong Kong with “a nasty taste in my mouth”.
His successor was Sir Mark Young. After initial training in Ceylon, he had served in the West Indies and the Middle East for 13 years, ending up as Governor of Tanganyika before coming to Hong Kong. He was a very able, tough, courageous, unflappable, austere and awe-inspiring figure who did not suffer fools gladly. Sir Mark was of medium height, slim and always immaculately dressed, befitting perhaps his background of Eton and the Rifle Brigade.
During the months before the Japanese invasion, the Hong Kong Government, in keeping with the War Office’s policy, did not take rigorous action in the face of blatant Japanese hostile provocation. For example the Governor, then Northcote, reported that Formosans were entering the Colony as fifth columnists. He wanted to deport them, but the Foreign Office cautioned against such action, fearing reprisals. He also complained about low-level bomber flights over Hong Kong’s fortifications, but the Foreign Office again advised against taking decisive action. The Japanese proceeded to sink junks carrying food for the Colony, to occupy two islands immediately south of Hong Kong, to send a naval party to seize temporarily a British lighthouse and to insert a virtual naval encirclement around the Colony. Northcote told London that these unfriendly actions warranted a vigorous response, though he did not request permission to undertake retaliatory action for he had no modern aircraft and, should hostilities break out, the outcome would be a bloody one.
Could the British and Hong Kong Governments be accused of a degree of appeasement in not taking vigorous action against extreme Japanese provocation? Field Marshal Alanbrooke took over from Field Marshal Dill as CIGS on 1st December 1941 and noted in his diary that he had discussed the possibility of Japan entering the war with Dill. “He had told me frankly that he had done practically nothing to meet this threat,” wrote Alanbrooke. “He said we were already so weak on all fronts that it was impossible to denude them any further to meet a possible threat.” Alanbrooke thought Dill was right in his dispositions and that he could not have done more to meet the probable Japanese entry into the war.
Stalin, on the other hand, could have mobilised his vast forces before the German onslaught – Operation Barbarossa. He could have moved his aircraft from vulnerable airfields where they remained wing-tip to wing-tip; he could have committed his divisions to battle stations instead of leaving them to face giant German encirclements; he could have listened to Stafford Cripps, the British Ambassador in Moscow, who had earlier delivered a letter from Churchill warning of the invasion. But Stalin believed that Britain was trying to entrap Russia and concluded that “they’re playing us off against each other”.9
Sir Mark Young appreciated that vigorous protests in Hong Kong could not be backed up by force. Had definitive information been available weeks before Japan went to war, there was little he or Maltby could have done about it, unlike Stalin.
As mentioned in Chapter 1, on Saturday 6th December a cablegram from Singapore reached Alanbrooke and Maltby with news that two convoys of Japanese transports, escorted by cruisers and destroyers, were southwest of Saigon in Indo-China (now Vietnam). That evening a British officer on Hong Kong’s frontier received a police message that three Japanese divisions of 38,000 men had arrived at To Kat, only eight miles from the frontier. That same evening at 7.20 p.m. Singapore ordered the RAF in Hong Kong to assume “No. 1 degree of readiness”. That night all the Anti Aircraft guns in the Colony were manned.
The Church Parade at St John’s Cathedral in Victoria on Sunday 7th December started no differently from any other. General Maltby was there with many of his officers. Hurried twitterings of conversation among the ladies confirmed that the Chinese Charity Ball at the Peninsula Hotel the night before had been a great success. The latest rumours about the Japanese caused anxious, worried frowns. An officer suddenly entered the Cathedral and whispered to Maltby in the front pew. He got up and strode from the Church followed by others. The Service had not even reached the prayers for peace.
The Defence Council was hurriedly summoned to a lengthy meeting at Government House. Sir Mark Young and Major General Maltby agreed that war was imminent, and the entire garrison was ordered to war stations. Deployment began.
On that same morning, John Harris drove in his small Morris car to Fanling, close to the Chinese border, because he had heard rumours of a large Japanese fleet nearby. Accompanied by Jimmy Wakefield, Willie Clarkson and Dickie Arundell, he indeed saw the ships unloading in an adjacent bay. They felt certain that war was imminent. After a picnic they returned that evening, passing barbed wire concentration points, concrete pill-boxes and ammunition dumps nestling under camouflage nets among the hills.
Well to the south, the Royal Rifles of Canada and Winnipeg Grenadiers moved to their trenches along the mountainous range of the Island, to oppose any landing from the sea. On the Mainland, the Royal Scots, Punjabis and Rajputs similarly manned their battle stations, watching the rapidly changing shadows as the clouds raced across the moon. Victoria Peak was usually a sparkling Christmas tree of lights; that night it was in darkness, sullen and unfriendly. Covered by the massive guns of Stanley Fort, Motor Torpedo Boats patrolled far out into the South China Sea to give early warning of the enemy’s approach. In the misty, heavily camouflaged pill-boxes of Hong Kong Island, the machine-gun battalion of the Middlesex Regiment stood-to. The Hong Kong garrison was ready for war.
After darkness that night Major Charles Boxer, together with Geoffrey S Wilson who was Head of the New Territories Constabulary, went to the top of a hill overlooking the Japanese frontier positions a few thousand yards away. They could not see any movement, not even a lighted cigarette. Boxer remarked that it did not look as if anything was going to happen that night. He returned to Victoria to the Battlebox Headquarters for night duty.
Even at this eleventh hour, the possible concentration of at least a Japanese division close to the border was contemptuously dismissed by at least one senior staff officer that day: an astonishingly erroneous intelligence summary was sent to the War Office from Hong Kong stating that “the reports are certainly exaggerated and have the appearance of being deliberately fostered by the Japanese who, judging by their defensive preparations around Canton, appear distinctly nervous of being attacked.”10 There is no proof that Boxer drafted that cable, but it seems highly unlikely that, being the garrison’s senior Intelligence Officer in Hong Kong, he would not have approved its contents. This suggests that some officers were totally out of touch with reality.
Notes
1. Letter MacGregor to author, 1977.
2. Letter Wallis to author, 1977.
&n
bsp; 3. File 593 (D14) MO10, National Defence Headquarters (NDHQ), Ottawa.
4. Greenhous, Brereton, “C” Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe 1941–1945, Canadian War Museum Historical Publication, No. 30, 1997, p. 19.
5. Burd, Frederick, ‘CANLOAN’, The Guards Magazine, Winter 1996, p. 244.
6. Alanbrooke, F M, War Diaries 1939–1945, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001, p. 181.
7. File 106/2400 (PRO).
8. Letter MacGregor to author.
9. Sebag Montefiore, Simon, Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003, p. 309.
10. File 106/2400 op. cit. (PRO).
CHAPTER 8
Shingmun Redoubt: The Vital Ground
8th–10th December 1941
The story which follows reflects great courage, which Churchill recognised, and considerable controversy. Was it fair that only one of the British Regiments should be awarded the Battle Honour ‘Hong Kong’ to be emblazoned on their Colours for ever more, when the other Regiment was denied this coveted honour? Was it appropriate for the Canadian battalions to be so severely criticised that Montgomery had to intervene on their behalf to have the Official History altered? Is it possible to produce convincing new evidence, 64 years after the fall of Hong Kong, that some soldiers’ reputations were needlessly maligned? At the conclusion of Part 3 of this book, the reader can make his own mind up on these issues.
* * * * *
The Japanese attacked three nations almost concurrently. Masanobu Tsuji, Chief of Operations 25th Japanese Army, Malaya, stated that the first landings at Kota Bharu on the east coast of Siam and Malaya took place 80 minutes before the initial raid on Pearl Harbor (7.53 a.m. local time).
At 4.45 a.m. local time on Monday 8th December in Hong Kong, Major Charles Boxer heard on a Tokyo broadcast instructions in code to their nationals that war was imminent with Great Britain and America. Sir Mark Young was immediately informed and the garrison alerted.
The Battle for Hong Kong 1941-1945 Page 7