The Battle for Hong Kong 1941-1945

by Oliver Lindsay

  Soldiers will find Vincent’s rather contemptuous criticism of British staff officers, who became casualties “through lack of caution”, quite extraordinary. Instead, the 1941 officers concerned should be commended for fighting the enemy so courageously in the front line, rather than keeping safe in the underground Fortress HQ.

  Some other authors try to stir up controversy to sell their books – for example, James Rusbridger and Eric Nave claim in their book Betrayal at Pearl Harbour3 that Churchill lured Roosevelt into the Second World War. More recently we have equally ludicrous suggestions that the terrorists’ attack on the Twin Towers in New York was all the work of the CIA.

  There are also the deliberately deceitful. In 1977 I came across an academic from Britain who had emigrated to Canada. He deliberately misquoted Captain C M M Man as saying that, on seeing the Canadians arrive in Hong Kong, they looked “… confident …”. The academic was unaware that Man (later a Major General) had copied his reminiscences to others who could see that Man had written “overconfident”. The author altered other more significant material to suit his purpose. I passed the evidence to Brereton Greenhous who ensured the man was sidelined.

  * * * * *

  Finally, we come to the controversy that only the Middlesex Regiment should have the Battle Honour ‘Hong Kong’, which was denied to the Royal Scots. It is invidious to compare the fighting ability of each Battalion, but I believe a grave injustice was done to the Royal Scots. The best part of a Japanese brigade swept down upon their new, malarial, three-mile front. No unit could have held such an enemy on such unfavourable ground for long. On the Island, the counter-attacks fought by the decimated Royal Scots against two Japanese battalions at the Wong Nei Chong Gap are what legends are made of. Twenty-seven of their 35 officers became casualties, 12 being killed: there was no lack of determined leadership. Although the Regiment has few men alive today who fought in Hong Kong, a campaign should be launched in Scotland to get them the Battle Honour they so definitely deserve.

  Shortly after my return from two years’ soldiering in Ottawa, I gave a lecture to the Regiment in Edinburgh before their annual dinner. After showing them the Japanese propaganda 1941 newsreel on the fall of Hong Kong and innumerable slides, I was asked the question: “Why did the Middlesex Regiment get the Battle Honour and not us?” It might have appeared a difficult question for a person from a very different regiment in the face of a distinguished audience, but I simply replied that it was a matter of a clash of personalities – between Wallis and the Battalion – just as, in my judgement, unfair criticism was levelled, again by Wallis, against the Royal Rifles, who did their best to overcome their shocking lack of training, in appalling circumstances.

  The truth seems to have been obscured by Wallis and others. As Churchill put it in Volume 5 of The Second World War, “in wartime… truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies”.

  There are inevitably controversies in war – whether they be politicians claiming in the Spring of 2003 that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, or an unbalanced Rajput Brigadier in Hong Kong suggesting that certain battalions were ineffective. Oscar Wilde’s “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple” may strike a chord.

  Notes

  1. Greenhous, B, “C” Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe 1941–1945, Canadian War Museum Historical Publication No. 30, 1997, p. 72.

  2. Vincent, Carl, No Reason Why: The Canadian Hong Kong Tragedy: an examination, Ontario: Canada’s Wings, 1981, pp. 201–4.

  3. Alden, D, Charles R Boxer, Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2001, p. 110, Note 39.

  Part 4

  HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE

  With memories by John R Harris

  Edited by Oliver Lindsay

  CHAPTER 16

  Shamshuipo POW Camp

  and the Escapes

  John R Harris continues his memoirs

  By Christmas Day 1941 we were absolutely exhausted and extremely hungry. The shelling to the east of us intensified.

  Unexpectedly at midday a nun dressed in white opened a small door in the high stone wall of her convent near the Dairy Farm. She beckoned a group of us to come in and the nuns gave us Christmas lunch. The dozen of us Sappers ate roast chicken and apple pie. It was our last good meal for nearly four years. The nuns were Italian: and so theoretically they were the enemy! After the war I went back to thank them but they had all gone – to where I could never discover.

  The next day, following the surrender, my platoon was ordered to go to Murray Barracks in Victoria. We drove in my Morris car, passing a Japanese soldier directing the traffic. Colonel E H Clifford, the senior Royal Engineer officer, met us there. I was told to join a Royal Army Service Corps officer in breaking bottles of champagne so that the Japanese wouldn’t go berserk with drink and commit more atrocities. The same thing happened in Singapore. I don’t expect to see champagne running down a gutter again.

  The Japanese quickly closed in on the barracks and took everything they wanted, including our weapons. That afternoon I took my father’s large binoculars in a leather case and threw them into the harbour; there is now a 60-storey office development on the site! The field glasses had been carried by my father (a Gunner) throughout the First World War: he had given them to me when I left Surrey in July 1940. It gave me some satisfaction that no Japanese would possess them.

  I sought out my two closest friends with whom I had done my officer training in Aldershot. I had travelled with them to Hong Kong in the Viceroy of India and then we had shared a flat together on May Road – Dickie Arundell and Micky Holliday. Where were they, I asked? Both had joined Sapper Field Squadrons.

  Dickie, I discovered, on Christmas Eve had led a section of Royal Engineers from General Maltby’s battlebox headquarters into the street fighting in the Wanchai, moving from pillar to pillar to prevent the enemy infiltrating through the very last defensive lines towards Victoria. He was shot and lay in agony in the street before being dragged into a house by the Japanese. If the surrender had only taken place some 20 hours earlier, Dickie could have survived the war and been alive today to design many fine buildings. He was a good friend and an excellent engineer. It was a terrible shock to me.

  Micky Holliday had become engaged in our flat in November to Brenda Morgan, a charming nurse from Nottingham, a really dear person. Five days previously her Dressing Station in Happy Valley had been bombed, although it had red crosses on it. She, together with some other hospital staff and patients, was killed. This tragedy mentally unhinged Micky: he was last seen brandishing a revolver and charging up the Wong Nei Chong Road with several other Sappers, going to their certain deaths.

  * * * * *

  The top priority was the burial of the dead, for it was too late to find the wounded still alive. This is because the Allies were not allowed to bring in their dead and wounded until the Japanese funeral rites had been completed. This meant they were lying in the open until 29th December when the enemy gave permission for them to be collected. Armed with picks and shovels, our burial parties eventually fanned out in pairs. The dead bodies were ugly: the faces blue and skin purple, with maggots attacking the open wounds. Private R J Wright of the Middlesex Regiment found the body of one of his officers, Captain West, amidst six others. “He had been among the most popular of officers who had inspired that confidence which binds an officer to his men with unbreakable bonds of loyalty,” Wright remembers. “It angered me to see how ignorant we were that none of us knew the funeral service when we buried them. We eyed each other uncomfortably. Then, in the gathering twilight, a tall, gaunt, bearded soldier quoted those moving lines: ‘If I should die, think only this of me: that there’s some corner of a foreign field …’

  “We remained with bowed heads long after the last words had been borne away by the breeze. The Japanese sergeant had gathered flowers during the recital and had spread them over the bodies. Then we restored the earth.”

  Another burial party was
approached by two armed Japanese, whose suspicion soon melted. “They showed us pictures of their families,” recalls Sergeant C B J Stewart of 8th Coast Regiment. “We compared weapons, for there were plenty of ours lying about. The Japanese expressed sorrow over our task and indicated that they, too, had many dead whom they were dragging into large fires.”

  The Japanese cremated their dead in large funeral pyres amidst much ceremony. The ashes were removed with long steel chopsticks and placed in small white caskets, each bearing a man’s name. All the caskets were sent back to Japan.

  There is some disagreement on the casualty figures on both sides. Major General Maltby in his Despatch puts his casualties during the battle at 2,113 killed and missing with 1,332 being seriously wounded. An authoritative estimate of Japanese casualties is 2,654 and some evidence suggests that this figure should be considerably greater, but certainly not as high as the 3,000 killed and 9,000 wounded as claimed by Maltby.1

  On 30th December we were told to gather on the square beside the Murray Parade Ground. I was lucky as I still had a kit bag which I had kept at the Dairy Farm. Apart from personal possessions, it contained a small box of watercolours and pencils for drawing, and a little Bartholomew atlas, The Handy Reference Atlas, with which I tried to follow the progress of the war. It survived and is now in the Imperial War Museum. Also in the kit bag were several favourite books and even my army greatcoat which I still have today! We all owed a debt of gratitude to the Japanese who allowed us to take what we could carry into the POW camps. Without my watercolours I would have been unable to reproduce the sketch on this book’s back cover. British POWs in German camps invariably had few, if any, personal possessions when first imprisoned.

  Some, including the two Indian Battalions, gathered at the Botanical Gardens close by Murray Barracks. “Jap troops rough and bullying (rifle butts),” recorded a British officer serving with the Punjabis. “Hours just sitting on ground. No food until foraging parties raided former stores. Garden ornamental birds rounded up and eaten. Looted clothing from European houses and Murray Barracks stores.”

  We began our march to the dockside in the early afternoon, passing a Japanese band which was playing triumphant military music.2 One sailor asked if the band would play ‘There’ll always be an England’. The ferries were waiting to take us across the harbour to the camp northwest of Kowloon at Shamshuipo. The barracks there had been built for British battalions before the war.

  All the familiar sights were there, but instead of the hustle and bustle of ships, junks in full sail criss-crossing the harbour and motorised sampans darting hither and thither, there was a deathly stillness. The massive Victoria Peak, so magnificent on occasions, now seemed to be frowning upon the desolation spread beneath it. As C H Fairclough, a Lieutenant in 5th Anti Aircraft Regiment, put it, “The ferry passed close to sunken ships and it was difficult to keep my heart from sinking with them. We then moved up Nathan Road to Shamshuipo; it was just a shuffle, an orderly shuffle.”

  I was not to return to Hong Kong Island for 20 years.

  Some apathetic Chinese watched us. Towards the end of our march, I felt faint and dizzy. The world became blurred and my knees felt weak. I knew that it would be a disaster for me if I collapsed and had to abandon my kit bag for I no longer had any other possessions. Alongside our column strode Japanese guards. Extraordinarily, God helped me. Suddenly one of the guards gestured to a Chinese on the pavement, waving him towards me to carry my load for the last half mile. I gave the coolie all the money I had.

  Also in my kit bag was a silver flask full of brandy. Later the unlikely request was passed to all POWs, “Does anybody have any brandy for a prisoner who is critically ill?” I gave the doctor my flask that I had kept for two and a half years. Unfortunately the soldier died that night.

  Finally, at dusk, we reached Shamshuipo Barracks. I was horrified by the conditions there. Altogether, 5,777 of us were crowded in. Quite apart from being bombed and shelled during the battle on the Mainland, the barracks had been looted of everything portable – doors, windows and their frames, furniture, metal pipes and electrical fittings: most of the huts were just empty shells with concrete floors. There was no food. Only a few weeks before, I had been dining on the veranda of the marvellous Peninsula Hotel in all its glory with Dickie and Micky, overlooking the harbour. Now I had sunk to the bottom of my existence.

  I was glad that I had not witnessed the Japanese victory parade which had occurred three days earlier. Over 2,000 men marched through the streets, accompanying Lieutenant General Sano who was on horseback. Europeans were not allowed to watch, while the Chinese were encouraged to line the route and cheer. They were given small flags but they watched with no enthusiasm. The Japanese Imperial Air Force gave a very successful aerobatic display.

  * * * * *

  On 31st December the survivors from East Brigade at Stanley were marched across the Island to North Point Camp, where conditions were even worse than at Shamshuipo. The camp had originally housed Chinese refugees. During the fighting the Japanese stabled their mules there. The huts had not been cleaned and were swarming with flies. Unburied corpses smelt terrible. At least 200 men were crammed into each hut.

  Brigadier Wallis persuaded the Japanese guards to allow him and a few others to take out foraging parties to obtain food, cooking utensils, medical supplies and books. He even obtained a truck to visit a hospital to get news of survivors.

  “During the first few days at North Point Camp a small number of Canadian other ranks started saying that now that we were POWs, everyone was equal and that a camp committee should be chosen by them and that officers had nothing more to say,” wrote Brigadier Wallis.3 “But fortunately some measure of discipline was gradually re-established.”

  Private Wright, the Company Clerk in the Middlesex Regiment, also described the initial days as a POW: “Discipline had vanished. We encountered our superiors only when it was unavoidable; they had lost the respect and authority conferred by rank and uniform. We scrounged, looted and stole, ignoring the respect we owed to each other. We fought and argued over trivial matters and behaved like untutored and inexperienced children.”

  * * * * *

  I am afraid that discipline had collapsed in Shamshuipo Camp as well. People almost preferred to lie down and die. We had neither the knowledge of how to cook rice in such quantities, nor the cooking utensils. Fortunately we had a splendid Royal Engineer officer, Caesar Otway. He designed the cookhouse, in which rice could be cooked, out of oil drums and a barrel. The smell and taste of the rice was awful but, even so, the sensible ones ate it.

  Otway had been manning searchlights in the front line at Lei Mun when the Japanese had landed on the Island. He had only just escaped from them and turned up at the Dairy Farm in a terrible condition, cut, bruised and nearly blinded. We cleaned him up with a hose. He had lost his trousers crawling through a drain and on barbed wire. Fortunately I had two pairs and so gave him one – he wore those trousers, much patched, until the war’s end.

  Seeing the need to maintain discipline, Major General Maltby addressed the POWs from a balcony, giving us all a good ‘pep talk’; he emphasised the need for us to maintain our standards if we were to survive, to try to hold sickness at bay by cleanliness and to respect our neighbours. Things improved gradually thereafter but stealing continued. If you queued up for your rice ration, you had to have a friend to guard your blanket otherwise it would have been stolen.

  I have always understood that, during the surrender negotiations, General Maltby put one particular request to the Japanese. He asked if he could remain with his men, rather than be sent elsewhere as was Sir Mark Young; he wanted to share all their privations. His request was granted.

  Colonel Newnham, whom I got to know very much better than many other POWs, kept the following diary.

  Dec. 30

  Up Nathan Road. Chinese population all silent. All concentrated in Shamshuipo. No food.

  Dec. 31

  45
bags grade 3 rice, broken, given by Japs for 5,777 officers and ORs. No cooking utensils. Late at night 30 small pigs arrived.

  Jan. 6

  Jap band played in camp. Good.

  Jan. 8

  ‘Stew’ wangled by Boon for evening meal. 17 men run in for looting, i.e. destruction of good buildings for firewood.

  Jan. 12

  Colonel Royal Artillery to dine with Lt Gen. Kitiyama commanding all troops in HK area.

  Jan. 14

  Still unburied bodies in Wanchai; oil tanks near Cosmopolitan dock still burning. Weather early Jan. beautiful, gorgeous.

  Jan. 17

  No news of any identification discs having been collected off our dead.

  Jan. 25

  Great bitterness of those forced to vacate derelict buildings which they have worked on (and scrounged for) so hard. General morale and discipline of camp is definitely bad. Perhaps better now in future as units all together.

  Jan. 26

  No news from anywhere. 51 cases of dysentery.

  Jan. 29

  Degrading sight of British soldiers scrambling in dust for odd cigarettes, thrown by Japs from guardhouse upper veranda onto corner of prison compound.

  Feb. 1

  Good sermon by Padre Bennett in ‘Chapel Hall’.

  Feb. 7

  From Jap point of view if POW escapes it is shameful desertion especially by an officer. Difficult to get our views across i.e. our duty to escape.