PART 2
The War Years
CHAPTER 4
Pearl Harbor
Ralph quickly did the math. He knew they only had fourteen thousand men. He was a signalman, and he knew that the company’s heavy weapons would not land for another week. They were mistakenly sent to the Philippines.
Outnumbered nearly four to one and with no air force or navy, the Hong Kong garrison was doomed. Ralph thought of his father. If he had gone to the funeral, he would most certainly have been on the boats now en route to the Philippines. Maybe his father would get the last laugh after all.
It was decided that a small group would stay on the mainland and set up a security line just outside Kowloon. The Gin Drinker’s Line would be the first line of defence. The Scots and the Indians would defend the ten-mile line just north of Kowloon with enough men to hold out for as long as they could. The Royal Rifles would defend the east under Brigadier Cedric Wallis and the Winnipeg Grenadiers would defend the west under Major Christopher Maltby—the overall commander—would base his operation out of the Peninsula Hotel.
Ralph boarded a small boat with Bookie, Leslie, and Deighton and crossed the harbour. It took all afternoon. Setting foot for the first time on the island they were charged with defending, they congregated at Aldrich Bay. An officer addressed the men. He got them cheering.
Ralph was in Headquarters Company, a group of specialists: carpenters, signalmen, cooks, and drivers. They were, by necessity, spread out as needed across the western part of the island. The problem was that nobody really knew what was needed. Confusion reigned and the Canadians scrambled to prepare for an attack. Ralph spotted his commanding officer, Lieutenant Peter MacDougall, a half-mile down the road. Half the company surrounded him. Ralph dashed over and tugged on Bookie’s sleeve.
“Where is everyone else?” Ralph asked.
“Who the hell knows? I hear a bunch of our guys got stranded back at Shamshuipo.”
“Ralph, come up here,” the CO called. He was opening a large map of the surrounding area. “We don’t know where the Japs are going to land. Take these three men and head to this town—” He pointed at Sheko. “I don’t have any trucks for you, so you better be off at first light tomorrow.”
Ralph nodded. The CO put his hand on his shoulder. “Rifleman, if you see troops landing, shoot to kill. If you see any light at night, shoot it to hell.”
Ralph nodded again. His mouth was so dry he could barely muster “Yes, sir.”
“Good luck. I’ll send a runner up for you with some food and water.”
That was it. With a slap on the back, Ralph had entered the war.
The men slept on the side of the road that night. Most had trouble getting to sleep in the open air. None of them knew this would be the most sleep they’d get for the next fourteen days.
At dawn, Ralph awoke. He took a deep breath as the previous day’s events washed over him. Bookie was up and making a little coffee with an army-issue pot and a small grass-fed fire. He waved Ralph over.
“Be right there. Gotta make some water.” Ralph said as he made his way to the road’s edge away from the guys. He had a view of the harbour and the clear dawn sky. With wispy clouds blowing in from the open ocean, it didn’t look that much different from the sky back home. He wondered if his mother had heard about the attacks of the day before. He started to do his business, looking down as he peed on the dark green grass. When he looked back up, he saw three dark specks falling hard out of the clouds. He zipped and ran.
Minutes later the sky was full of buzzing Japanese Zero airplanes, a nest of hornets swooping in and out of the ocean-blown clouds. They were strafing Shamshuipo and the Gin Drinker’s line. Ralph stood with the other men. A grave silence befell them. All they could do was watch and listen to the horrific first sounds of war, a wave of explosions that struck fear into their souls. This fear was to become their constant companion.
Ralph looked at his watch: 6 a.m. Time to move. He and his companions set out for Sheko, a town he’d never heard of on an island he only knew by the lines of the map he held in his hand. They caught a ride for part of the journey and then walked south for fifteen hours straight.
Sheko was not so much a town as a few houses on the southern cliffs of Hong Kong. By the end of the day, the four men had traversed the entire island. They had not stopped once. Their feet were on fire with blisters the likes of which they’ve never felt before. The final three hours they had had to cut their way through heavy brush as the road had been washed out. One of the chaps had had the foresight to bring a machete. Without it, they might never have reached their objective.
For the next five days, these men experienced the war in slow-motion. They saw nothing of the fighting. They heard only the loudest of explosions off in the distance, like the thunder claps that rang off the cliffs of Pleasant Bay. This was the army’s standard of hurry-up-and-wait at its most agonizing.
The angels were smiling on Ralph and the other three men during those 120 hours. In that time, the Gin Drinker’s Line had been completely overrun. It took the Japanese only two hours. The men who survived the heavy aerial assault and fierce ground attacks were pulled back onto the island. With the mainland completely in their control, the Japanese army set up their heavy artillery and began to shell the island. The Canadians could only take cover and wait for the impending ground assault.
The bombing was intense throughout the day. The thunderous roar sounded like hell had opened up on the north side of the island. Ralph took the watch as the other men caught a bit of sleep.
The Japanese artillery pounded the island. They were systematically blasting away at all the fortified positions along the coastline, one after another. It seemed to the Canadians that they were waiting in line for their destruction. When they would take up a new position, the artillery would find them with unfailing accuracy. Artillery shells fell like rain. Everything within range was left in rubble. Troops’ movements were pinpointed and targeted. It took the defenders two days to realize that their communication system had been compromised.
Ralph and the three men with him were cut off. They had no idea what was happening except that their friends were taking a heavy beating. The sound of falling bombs had them all on edge. Sammy Shane, an American with a Thompson submachine gun, was the jumpiest. He heard a twig snap and unloaded his entire clip into a bush. The culprit, a small brown rabbit, escaped unscathed.
At dusk, after a shared can of bully beef, Ralph took watch again. The others tried to catch a few moments of sleep. They were atop a small hill overlooking a few houses and the shoreline. The wind had begun to pick up, blowing in low-lying clouds, ensuring a dark night without stars. Ralph had just given one of the guys lying beside him a little shove to keep him from snoring. Sitting on his cot, wrapped in his blanket, he saw a flash of light. Or at least he thought he did. Your mind plays tricks on you after days of fear and nothingness. He grabbed his rifle and chambered a round with the bolt action. Standing, he raised and pointed the rifle in the direction of that flicker of light. He had yet to fire a gun in anger. He heard the CO’s voice running through his mind: if you see a light, shoot it to hell.
There it was, the same light. It looked to be coming from one of the houses of Sheko. It was impossible to tell for sure. The light went off and on twice. Was it a message? Again, impossible to tell. Nor did it matter: Ralph had his orders. He lined the light up in his sights and squeezed the trigger, then chambered another round and fired again. The three sleeping lads leaped out of their blankets. They were standing beside him with their rifles drawn by the time he chambered a third round.
“A light, just to our three o’clock,” Ralph whispered.
The light flickered again.
All four men opened up. They heard one bullet ricochet off something tin or metal. The light went out. It did not come back on.
Ralph’s shift was up. He had taken no pleasure in his first piece of action. He unrolled his blanket and tried his
best to fall asleep.
He awoke to the sound of heavy footsteps. It was a runner sent from headquarters. He came with water and another few cans of bully beef.
“How are you guys doing? See anything?” he asked.
“Shot at a few lights last night. Other than that, nothing,” Ralph reported.
“Well, consider yourselves lucky. We are taking a beating on the north end. The shells just won’t stop. They’ve already taken half our pillboxes out along the coast. It’s only a matter of time before they’re all gone. We’ll only have the forest as cover by the time the Japs land,” the runner predicted.
“Any other news?” one of the guys asked.
“A good hundred guys are dead. Bodies are washing up everywhere. Wish I had better news for you. I gotta get back. Take care, guys.” And with that, the runner disappeared into the thick brush along the path that Ralph had cut a few days before.
The following three days brought the same constant drone of artillery explosions in the distance. And then the same runner, looking liked he’d aged a decade, popped out from the bush. He was the first human being Ralph and the others had seen in six days.
The runner led them to Palm Villa, which had been a vacation resort before the war. Now Japanese forces were everywhere. The runner waved his arm and they all crouched down behind some thick brush, then he pulled a pair of binoculars from his pack and found an opening in the shrubs. He searched back and forth, up and down.
“Okay, looks like it hasn’t been overrun yet. Let’s go.”
Yet? Ralph thought as he followed, crouching as low as he could. As they ran alongside the edge of the once-manicured garden, Ralph took in the level of devastation. The building, a turn-of-the-century seaside luxury retreat, had been heavily shelled. Bullet holes riddled the front door and most of the windows had been shot out. The runner hit the side door and it opened to a scene of total chaos. Ralph saw Major MacAuley, his arm bloodied and heavily bandaged, screaming into a phone in order to be heard over the explosions at the other end of the line. A report of relative calm came in from the northwest sector, immediately followed by a report that the northwest sector was being overrun.
“I need five men to head down to the road. I can’t find our goddamn Bren carrier!” the CO said. The Bren gun carrier was one of the few to have made it to the island. The truck was crucial for moving the only heavy guns the Canadians had. Without it, they had only their .303 Lee-Enfield rifles.
Everybody knew how important this mission was. Twenty men stood up immediately. The CO counted them off: you, you, you, you, and you. The five chosen dashed out the door that Ralph just entered. Within minutes, they were all back, with one drunken addition.
“The Bren gun carrier is smashed to hell 150 yards down the road, sir,” a man reported. The scent of whisky filled the lobby. The CO became enraged; he knew the driver was drunk. Throwing down the map he’d been poring over, he took the driver by the collar and punched him in the face three times, then threw him to the floor. Standing over him, he demanded, “Do you know what you’ve done?”
It was only a matter of time now. Everyone in the room knew it, even the drunken driver. The poor chap had been trying to dull his sense of the inevitable.
Ralph found a corner in one of the bedrooms. He had not slept in three straight days. The tile floor felt cool on his face. His reprieve was momentary. Joe Delaney woke him up.
“Ralph, I thought that was you. Come on, I need some help. We gotta get some ammo up to the boys on Mount Parker. A group of ten of us are going.”
Ralph rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t seen Joe since the invasion and was glad to know he was still alive.
“Where’s Mount Parker?” Ralph asked.
“A few miles up from here. Let’s go,” Joe said as he popped up from his crouched position.
“Okay,” Ralph groaned, desperately longing for more sleep. As they made their way down the hall, stepping over men, some wounded, some sleeping, some shell-shocked, Ralph grabbed Joe’s arm. Joe turned. They looked at each other’s dirty faces and red, sleep-deprived eyes. Ralph smiled.
“Joe, we are a hell of a long way from our Grindstone.”
Neither had thought of home for some time. Joe chuckled.
“That we are. That we are.”
They made their way through the mess hall into the storage area in the back of the Villa. An old closet that had been used to store pineapples and mangoes was now stacked to the roof with boxes of .303 shells and some grenades. The men loaded the bandoliers over their shoulders.
“Take as much as you can carry. The guys on Parker are getting the shit kicked outta them,” hollered the guard.
Ralph was loaded up like a pack mule. The metal shells dug into his sweat-drenched fatigues. He heaved forward to support them against his neck and hugged his sides to keep them from swaying as he ran to catch up with the other nine. The ten men stood five to a side, hugging the narrow hallway to the back door. They knelt down. The sentry at the door looked them over and explained.
“We had a sniper out here a few hours ago. I think we took him out, but we’ve been suppressing fire every time this door opens. When I give you the go-ahead, hit the door hard; take the trail at your four o’clock into the bush. Run, you hear? Do not look back and do not stop.”
The sentry stood up and wiped his forehead. “Give me a minute, I’ll give the gunner a thirty-second warning.”
The men waited. Joe was behind Ralph. He put his hand on Ralph’s shoulder.
“Thanks for that, Ralph. I hadn’t thought of home in some time.”
Ralph nodded, and then they heard the sentry’s call.
“Go, men, go!”
The first man hit the door with his shoulder and the rest followed under the roar of a Bren gun.
The men marched the trail in two lines of five. The heat of the jungle quickly wore them down. Two miles in, the point stopped, knelt down on one knee, and held his arm in a fist. The other nine did the same. They all paused, listening for anything. For everything. The point jumped off the trail into the deep bush. Again, the men followed suit. Ralph landed right beside Joe, both men gripping their rifles, pointed for action.
Footsteps.
Ralph peered through the bush to see if it was friend or foe. The weary shuffling gave them away: they were Canadians. Ralph sighed and stood up to see a column of men, most barely able to walk, coming down the trail.
The other party’s scout approached Ralph’s lead man. The other nine just stood and stared as the defeated-looking soldiers walked by. The men did not look up as they passed.
Ralph and the nine others all approached their leader, though they needed no explanation of what had just transpired.
“That’s all that’s left of Mount Parker,” the leader said.
“At least we won’t have to hump all this ammo up that hill,” one of the guys said, as they all turned and marched back to Palm Villa.
When they returned, an officer ran through the line, grabbing men at random for another short mission. Ammo was needed to the south of Palm Villa. Joe went. He never came back. When Ralph returned later that day, he saw a long line of bodies under blankets. He wondered if Joe was under one of them, but he was too exhausted to shed a tear.
It was seventeen days since the attack on Pearl Harbor. The men who were still alive were too tired to care. They were straggling in, two and three at a time, to the relative safety of Palm Villa. Many had spent the previous few days lost, wandering the hills without food or water. Most had not slept a wink. Everyone had watched a pal, a cousin, or a brother die.
Sniper fire was everywhere and the men were no longer able to exit the site without a hail of suppressing fire. A simple fact became increasingly clear: Palm Villa was a death trap.
The men tried to keep their spirits up. They clung to rumours of rescue like life rafts. The Chinese guerrillas may launch a counterattack from the north. The Brits have sent rescue ships from Singapore. They were lies told
by men desperate for hope to equally desperate men.
On his second day at Palm Villa, Ralph resumed his position as a signalman. He was stationed in the operations room, where the officers were sending orders and receiving news from the few soldiers that had communication capabilities. None of the news was good. It was death across the island.
Of the four Canadian companies, only D Company remained largely intact, stationed around Chung Hom Kok. This would not last. Company A had been cut off in and around Repulse Bay. They paid dearly for their isolation, losing over half their men. Company B was scattered throughout the island’s high ground around Mount Stanley. Companies C and H.Q. were huddled in Palm Villa. Everyone knew they had only a few hours left there. Japanese heavy artillery was pounding all held positions. Japanese airplanes owned the sky, swooping in and strafing the men whenever and wherever they were forced into a clearing. Japanese navy supply ships sat off the coast, loaded with food, ammunition, and supplies. Almost every man could see the sea from where he stood and fought. The sea was the last line. There would be no retreat from the shore.
Ralph sat at his assigned wooden table, receiver in hand. Each incoming report had to be shouted over heavy gunfire. Men, good men, men Ralph knew well, were dying. Dairy farmers from Sherbrooke, seamen from Cape Breton, woodsmen from Bathurst. Few were older than twenty. They’d been shot up in a strange land by an unknown enemy.
Ralph grew increasingly frustrated with each incoming message he passed on. He kept thinking one thought over and over: this is not a fair fight. His pals didn’t stand a chance out there. They knew it, the officers knew it, and their officers knew it. Churchill was right: the defence of Hong Kong was no good. And it was about to get a whole lot worse.
“We’re taking heavy fire in the Stanley sector!” a Scotsman screamed over the radio. The officers got quiet. They knew that if they lost Stanley Fort, it would all be over. There would be nowhere to go but the sea.
Forgiveness Page 7