These losses were irreplaceable and further increased both the strain in Fortress HQ and the difficulties of others trying to deal with them. Brigadier Wallis felt, justifiably or not, that they didn’t trust his reports and that the HQ underestimated the problems, which led to piecemeal attacks and failure.
Fortress HQ was completely out of touch on one vital matter: what had happened to Brigadier Lawson? No new Brigade Commander had been appointed after he had closed down his HQ at the Gap. As a result, there were no proper orders given for coordinated counter-attacks, and they were indeed largely piecemeal. This was particularly unfortunate because many sailors and airmen, for example, were being sent to the front line although, like John Harris, they had received no training in infantry tactics. At last on the 20th Colonel H B Rose MC commanding the Volunteers was appointed to succeed Lawson.
One group which was holding out with great tenacity was D Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, still at the Gap close to where Lawson had been killed. Padre U Laite did his best to sustain the courage of the exhausted Canadians. Throughout each day and night this United Church Chaplain cared for the wounded in the kitchen shelter between the trenches. “The position was being fired upon from all sides. The main road running through the position was cluttered for hundreds of feet each way with abandoned trucks and cars,” recalls Captain H Bush. “The Japanese were using mortars and hand grenades quite heavily. Casualties were steadily mounting, but at the same time reinforcements were trickling in, so that at the end of the day, while the killed and wounded were 25, the effective fighting strength was about the same.”
Protecting the eastern approaches to Victoria was Z Company and Battalion HQ of the Middlesex on Leighton Hill. The other Middlesex machine-gun companies had barely yet been in action because they were continuing to man the coastal defences. It was appreciated that the main threat were the Japanese Regiments now on the Island and so the Middlesex were gradually withdrawn from their pill-boxes to be pitch-forked into the fighting.
Serious fires were now out of control in the Central District of Victoria. The Civil Fire Brigade asked Maltby for troops to tackle them; the General had to reply that none were available.
Early on 21st December the Winnipeg Grenadiers were ordered to try once more to recapture the Gap. They advanced under darkness, but were unsuccessful after meeting the enemy unexpectedly before deploying.
The Punjabis near Victoria were ordered to face southeast to prevent an enemy breakthrough from the Wanchai area. Those Indian soldiers in pill-boxes on the north shore were withdrawn to join the Battalion.
At about midnight a cable was received from the War Office emphasising the need to destroy all oil installations. This was largely carried out on the following day by artillery fire.
By 22nd December “morale had been seriously affected by the feeling that it was futile to continue resistance with insufficient equipment, with insufficient mobile artillery support and without both air support and air observation,” wrote Maltby. The number of wounded increased; fighting continued for much of the day. “Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre,” wrote Churchill in The World Crisis. “The greater the General, the more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter.”
Shortly after midnight on the 23rd Colonel Rose, commanding West Brigade, was told that Mount Cameron had been lost and the troops were coming back in disorder but efforts were being made to rally them.
There was another serious blow: the Director of Public Works confirmed that “no water was coming from Tytam Reservoir; the Aberdeen supply was out of action for at least two days and only a trickle was coming from Pokfulam. The town of Victoria was now helpless.” The troops were also feeling the shortage of water.
On the 23rd D Company Winnipeg Grenadiers was finally overrun. Ammunition was completely exhausted and the remaining men, 12 at the most, were worn out. Thirty-seven wounded were in the position. Padre Laite, being the only unwounded officer, surrendered the position.
Fortunately the Royal Engineers and two companies of the Volunteers with 40 Royal Marines were holding Magazine Gap; the Royal Scots were fighting off the enemy at Wanchai Gap and two small ammunition convoys had got through to Little Hong Kong during darkness and returned successfully with much needed supplies. Brigadier Wallis at Stanley was being sent ammunition by motor torpedo boats.
Captain C M M Man’s Z Company of the Middlesex was holding on magnificently near Leighton Hill, although the Japanese were infiltrating into the houses and streets around them. He had only 40 men, drawn from the Band and others discarded by companies – the “odds and sods of the Battalion” as he put it. Six machine guns were helping to keep the enemy at bay. It proved impossible to evacuate the wounded, who had to remain in the Company position.
Captain Man’s thoughts strayed to Topsy, his wife of 13 months. She was in the Nursing Auxiliary Service in a makeshift hospital in the University Buildings of Victoria. “In the early days I used to telephone her, using the civilian telephone to let her know that I was still in one piece. She ran even bigger risks, because the Japanese had no inhibitions about bombing hospitals and butchering nurses. On one occasion as a shell passed overhead, I said to her, ‘Hang on a second, that was a near miss.’ Her reply was, ‘That wasn’t over you, it was over me.’”
Man’s next position, after being ordered to withdraw, was in the Wanchai in a Chinese VD clinic, “not the most salubrious of locations, especially as it had been hastily vacated.” There the resolute Middlesex soldiers, still accompanied by several Canadians and Indians, bitterly contested every inch of the ground and resisted to the end, adding fresh laurels to the Regiment’s proud history.3
* * * * *
By the morning of Christmas Eve, West Brigade’s line stretched from the slums of the Wanchai, through the west slopes of Mount Cameron and the Wanchai Gap held by the Royal Scots, down to Aberdeen reservoir and Bennets Hill held by C Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers. A second line was held by two companies of the Volunteers.
* * * * *
We should now return to Brigadier Wallis’s East Brigade which had moved from Tytam Gap to Stone Hill, north of Stanley, on the afternoon of the 19th. (Map on page 126 shows Repulse Bay and the Stanley Peninsula, while photograph No. 9 shows Colonel Tanaka above Repulse Bay.)
Wallis was determined to attack out of the Stanley area towards Repulse Bay and Wong Nei Chong Gap. At 10.00 p.m. on the19th, the Royal Rifles, to be supported by two platoons of the Middlesex and three Bren carriers of the Volunteers, received orders to capture the Gap and join up with West Brigade, taking Violet Hill en route. Wallis pressed Lieutenant Colonel W J Home, commanding the Royal Rifles, to start his attack at 5.00 a.m. on the 20th. Home insisted he could not start before 8.00 a.m. as Companies were scattered and communications incomplete. Home had a good point: the Battalion had no proper wireless sets although the Brigade reserve of signals equipment had already been issued to the Battalion to replace what they had lost earlier. Various static pill-boxes and defences had buried cables leading to them providing telephones which still worked, but, once moving across country away from them, relaying messages became a major problem.
Repulse Bay and Stanley Peninsula
* * * * *
The Japanese usually took no steps to cut the telephone cable system, even when they had captured the cable huts where terminations were made; they presumably preferred listening to the conversations. The same applied to the civilian telephone system. Nevertheless the heavy bombing and shelling cut the cables, necessitating Royal Signals personnel carrying out immediate repairs, largely during darkness so that they were not picked off by the snipers, as Boxer had been. The telephones were therefore in continuous use in Hong Kong until almost the very end.4
It is of interest that this was also the case when the Russians were encircling Berlin and Hitler’s Headquarters from mid-April 1945 onwards. The Führer’s bunker, despite all the efforts and expense that had gone into its constructi
on, lacked proper signalling equipment. As a result his staff officers had to ring civilian apartments around the periphery of Berlin whose telephone numbers were listed in the Berlin directory. If the inhabitants answered, they asked if they had seen any sign of the advancing Russians. And if a Russian voice replied, usually with a string of exuberant swearwords, then the conclusion was self-evident.5 By this means Freytag von Loringhoven and others could establish the extent of the Red Army’s advance before Hitler’s situation conferences. Russian soldiers also used the telephones, but for fun rather than to gain information. While searching houses, they would ring numbers in Berlin at random. Whenever a German voice answered, they would announce their presence in unmistakable Russian tones or shout abuse as the mood took them.
* * * * *
Brigadier Wallis watched the Royal Rifles advance towards Violet Hill, seeing that it “was slow and overcautious. Men were taking cover every time a distant shot or burst of machine-gun was heard,” recorded the Brigade Diary.6 By 10.00 a.m. it was obvious that a strong party of Japanese had reached Violet Hill first. Attempts to push on to Middle Spur failed although the Japanese were cleared from Repulse Bay.
The hotel there was in an atmosphere of siege. A mixed force of Canadians, Volunteers, Middlesex Regiment, naval ratings and men of the Hong Kong Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve tried to defend the area. At one point a Gunner officer, Major C R Templer, was ordered to replace the local commander, who was drunk, but Templer’s tactless remarks necessitated his temporary removal. The women and children who had gathered in the hotel were experiencing the worst days of their lives.
D Company Royal Rifles attempted to reach the Gap by going across country. After an exceedingly stiff climb, the Canadians advanced almost 3,000 yards through two water catchments before coming under heavy artillery fire. The Company gave up the attempt and returned badly disorganised and without their 3-inch mortars to Stanley View at 9.00 p.m.
By nightfall on the 20th, Colonel Tanaka’s 3rd Battalion held Middle Spur and Violet Hill; more Japanese were moving to Stanley Mound. At 11.00 p.m. Colonel Newnham in Fortress HQ ordered Wallis to launch a major attack on a more easterly approach via Tytam Tuk and Gauge Basin. “Hold what you have, including Repulse Bay Hotel, and do what you can to get through. Boldness will pay especially if you get in the enemy’s rear. Use your carriers boldly in recce,” Wallis was told.
The following morning, two 3.7-inch howitzers were positioned near Stanley Prison and one 18-pounder from the beach defence role was manhandled forward to fire over open sights at the enemy. These three pieces were the only ones left. Major T G Macauley Royal Rifles commanded the advance guard with great energy. It consisted of one company each from the Volunteers and Royal Rifles; Macauley so impressed Wallis that he subsequently recommended him for an award. The remainder of the Brigade which followed consisted of two companies of the Royal Rifles and one of the Volunteers. In effect, therefore, it was a battalion battlegroup, rather than ‘a brigade’. The Volunteers’ carriers were slow in moving off, having failed to refuel overnight. In the meantime the enemy forestalled the column by occupying Red Hill and the Tytam Tuk crossroads. Brigadier Wallis wrote in the Brigade Diary that he went forward to the leading troops to find out what was happening, as Lieutenant Colonel Home was too far back. Wallis ordered Home to bring forward a second company to outflank the enemy. Home replied that he would send a runner back to call forward the company commander to give him orders. Wallis felt this would take too long and so “went himself, met the company commander and gave him orders direct”.
It is not unknown in war for a battalion commander to go forward to take command of the leading company in exceptional and vital circumstances, but here we have the Brigade Commander, Wallis, running the Battalion.
“The morning was hot and steamy after the rain and the going very hard over rocky ground with few and bad tracks. The Royal Rifles, heavily clad in thick battledress, moved terribly slowly and held up the machine guns of No. 2 Company of the Volunteers. In spite of their heavier loads, these Volunteers were first on top of Notting Hill,” continues the Brigade Diary. “The Brigade Commander went forward again to find Lieutenant Colonel Home sitting in a house and put him in the picture and then he went on to find Major Macauley, who had Major Templer with him, working hard. He was operating two 3-inch mortars.”
At 1.00 p.m. Wallis spoke to Maltby in Fortress HQ on the field telephone, saying that he could at last see men of Macauley’s D Company nearing the crest of Bridge Hill, where a hand-to-hand grenade fight was in progress. Wallis told Maltby that he was “very worried over the terrible slowness and lack of training of the Royal Rifles but that they were really doing their best that day at any rate and fighting gamely”. Maltby ordered that all available men were to be sent to Repulse Bay with all carriers in a further attempt to break through and connect with West Brigade.
By dusk that night, the 21st, Wallis’s only battalion was dispersed in three different directions. Fifty survivors of Major Young’s A Company were pinned down at Altamira House, as related earlier, close to the Ridge and just south of the Gap. Sixty more Royal Rifles were in the Repulse Bay Hotel, around which Japanese sniping was continuing. The rest were scattered about one mile northeast of Stone Hill. It is not surprising that they were making no progress because two Japanese battalions, on the commanding high ground facing them, were well supported by mobile howitzers and three light tanks. Major Macauley had been wounded and all the officers of No. 1 Volunteer Company lost. A further advance was impossible. There was a grave danger of Stanley Mound and Stone Hill being captured, in which case the enemy could cut off all troops to the east. Wallis therefore withdrew his forces to Stanley. This was his last serious attempt to recapture the Gap or break through to relieve Repulse Bay Hotel where Major Templer had taken command.
Japanese aircraft occasionally flew over the bay. John Harris at the Dairy Farm saw the anti aircraft Gunners nearby shoot down a Japanese aircraft. An abandoned Motor Torpedo Boat, disabled earlier, had been grounded on a small island; the Japanese bombed it regularly several times each day.
Templer received orders to remove his force from the hotel so that the women and children, if abandoned there, would not remain mixed up with the military and be killed in the ensuing battle. On the first floor, around a single screened candle, a few families sat in silence. Lights were suddenly seen flashing in one of the rooms in the north wing; an enemy patrol was going from room to room.
Templer took Bombardier Guy and a few others to investigate. He heard Japanese conversing at the other end of a corridor. “So I bowled several hand grenades down it, withdrawing into a doorway as they exploded,” he wrote later. “It was a grand scene in the pitch dark. The Japs left and I resumed my post at the front door waiting for the moon to set.”7 The military escaped via a drain tunnel which led to the beach, and then south along the road or across country to Stanley.
The small group of residents awaited the enemy’s arrival. Only the formidable snoring of Mr Hogdon broke the silence. He had been banished to sleep in a large clothes closet because he prevented anyone else sleeping. The tension grew. Jan Marsman, a Dutch engineer who had been due to fly to Manila the very moment the Japanese bombed Kai Tak, repeatedly called out into the eerie emptiness: “Come in… Come in… No soldiers here… No soldiers here!” At last a door opened. Two Japanese entered menacingly; hands were raised. A section with fixed bayonets approached a few badly wounded in their beds.
Four days earlier at the Silesian Mission at Sau Ki Wan the same men had overrun a non-combatants’ Advanced Dressing Station medical post; on a hillside they had bayoneted the “unsuspecting men from the rear amidst cheers from enemy onlookers. Some had been bayoneted three times before they would fall. All the while, the Japanese were talking and laughing,” recalled Captain Osler Thomas of the Volunteers who feigned death in a ditch, drenched in blood.
As the Japanese approached the helpless wounded in the Repulse Bay
Hotel, the thin, elderly, white-haired figure of Miss Mosey in her white nurse’s uniform barred their path. She stared straight through the Japanese as though they did not exist. “You will have to kill me first before you kill them,” she said. They hesitated and then abruptly turned away.
The decision to abandon the families proved fully justified. The Japanese respected both her courage and the fortitude of the dejected and bedraggled families.
The successful defence of Repulse Bay for over 72 hours had interfered with the Japanese timetable and delayed their drive to the south against Stanley.
* * * * *
At 10.00 p.m. on 21st December Lieutenant Colonel Home told Brigadier Wallis he wished to speak to the Governor, Sir Mark Young. He said the Royal Rifles were “dead beat and he felt further resistance would only result in the wasting of valuable lives. He explained that, as the senior Canadian officer, now that Brigadier Lawson was reported killed in action, he felt a grave responsibility.” Wallis tried to dissuade him from such a course and said that he should first inform General Maltby. Home had already had a long conversation by telephone with Lieutenant Colonel Sutcliffe commanding the Winnipeg Grenadiers. Sutcliffe also felt that the situation was quite hopeless. Wallis told Home “he had always found it best to rest and have a sleep before acting on a big problem not of any urgency”. With much difficulty “Home was sent to rest. It was clear that he was physically and mentally exhausted,” concluded Wallis.
On the 22nd the enemy increased their activity against the defenders on Stone Hill and Stanley Mound, while accurate artillery and mortar fire started pounding Stanley Peninsula.
At 10.30 a.m. Wallis told Maltby that Home had woken up without changing his mind. Wallis added that he hoped to keep the Royal Rifles “going somehow but it was impossible to make them operate offensively”. They agreed that ‘Stanley Force’, as the Brigade was now called, would fight on so long as ammunition, food and water were obtainable. The water supply from the Tytam Pumping Station to Stanley had already stopped, making it necessary to start using reserves.
The Battle for Hong Kong 1941-1945 Page 14