Jonnie took stock of his resources. His water bottle was full, and his musette bag held five packets of hard biscuits. He could not bring himself to search his dead comrades, though he slipped Peter Hardin’s revolver from its holster with a murmured prayer. Swept by blinding waves of pain, he improvised a sling for his arm from a leather strap. The worst ordeal still confronted him.
Three construction coolies lay dead among the Volunteers’ corpses. Painfully using one hand, Jonnie stripped the largest coolie. Each movement agonizing, he pulled the black tunic and trousers over his tattered uniform. The coolie’s clothing was essential camouflage, while, he reasoned muzzily, his uniform would prevent the Japanese shooting him as-a spy if he were captured.
But he had no intention of being captured again. Wearing the anonymous black garments and speaking colloquial Cantonese, his features shadowed by a conical woven-bamboo hat, he could pass as a wounded civilian. After discarding his military boots for a coolie’s straw sandals, he began the long, circuitous journey along back trails to the fort on the Stanley Peninsula, the last defensible British position.
The Governor of His Britannic Majesty’s Crown Colony of Hong Kong turned in exasperation to the Major General commanding the Defense Force.
“Another damned message from London,” Sir Mark Young said wearily. “We must hold out to the last man, buy time …”
“Time for what?” asked the Major General.
“That is, unfortunately, not clear. Just quantities of Churchillian bumph about honor and glory and the invaluable contribution we can make.”
“I’d prefer two effective brigades and a squadron of pursuit planes.” The General’s clipped Sandhurst accents were ironic.
“Not a prayer, old chap,” the Governor answered. “But our orders are clear.”
“Damned bombastic fellow’s just putting the monkey on our backs,” the General sighed. “It’ll be our decision … ours not his … when the time comes. When we either sacrifice even more lives in vain—or surrender.”
“But, meanwhile,” the Governor persisted, “there is one hope.”
“I’m glad you see hope. There’s no joy whatsoever, as far as I can see.”
“These reports of a Chinese relief column.…”
“Nothing official, not a sausage, Your Excellency,” the General objected.
“Still, there could be something to them. Haven’t been out here long enough to judge. But my people, the old hands, tell me the bamboo wireless can be damnably accurate.”
“We’ve had nothing from the Chinese,” the General objected.
“That’s my point,” the Governor answered. “To find out—if we can. Your man Sekloong’d make an ideal liaison officer. All the Chinese know him, and there’s no question about his loyalty.”
“Worth a try, perhaps,” the General conceded. “He’s no use here now. Coordinate communications and intelligence, in God’s name! He did a fine job, but we seem to have run out of both communications and intelligence.”
“Then you concur? You’ll detach him to make contact with the Chinese?”
“It’s worth a try,” the General agreed grudgingly.
Just before dusk on December 22, 1941, a fishing junk sailed out of Taitam Bay, its tattered sails a patchwork of red, brown, and purple against the gray sky. The British-held Stanley Peninsula still dominated the Bay, and the Japanese did not interfere with the fishing fleet. On the eve of victory, the Imperial Army was already worried about freeing Hong Kong’s million and a half civilians. On the scale-flecked deck, wiry fishermen were rigging the net booms. But the junk was not bound for the rich fishing grounds to the southwest. Its course was northeast to Haumun one hundred and eighteen miles distant on the Kwangtung coast, a minute foothold the Nationalists still controlled amid the Japanese torrents that had swept over East China.
The heavy rudderpost squealed in its wooden gudgeons as the junk passed the Poktoi Island group and the sea wind filled the sails. In the big stern cabin, where the fishermen and their families lived in comfortable squalor, a middle-aged French lady huddled in her lustrous mink coat. The timbers’ creaking and the rudder’s squealing reverberated through the cabin like a cello’s soundchamber. Her servant deferentially asked whether she was suffering mal de mer.
“Rien. Je fais très Men, Monsieur Woo,” she replied. “It’s nothing. I’ll manage, Woo.”
The lady, her passport attested, was Madame Marie Draché. Caught in Hong Kong by the Japanese attack, she had extravagantly chartered the junk for $2,000 to escape the vengeance the mad British might still wreak on a loyal citizen of the collaborationist Vichy government before the Japanese forces rescued her from their power. The manservant had protected her since the death of her husband, a regimental commander in Indo-China. He spoke adequate French for a Chinese, and he walked with a limp that favored his left leg.
The elaborate deception was supported by impeccable documentation, including identity cards, false passports stamped with immaculately forged visas, and the Draché family Bible with the names and birthdates of the lady’s children and grandchildren recorded on the flyleaf in ink that had faded from light black to rusty gray according to the age of the entries. The documents’ preparation had provided a pleasant diversion for the Intelligence Section of the Hong Kong Defense Force Headquarters, whose officers found little other occupation to divert or cheer them. If Mary and Charles Sekloong, who were concealed behind the façade of paper, were captured, they would, presumably, be treated by the Japanese as friendly neutrals. For their part, the Chinese had nothing against the French.
Only the junk’s master knew its destination, and he was prepared for his crew’s inevitable questions. Why not, he would ask, combine a foray to the neglected northern fishing grounds with the profitable transport of the foolishly apprehensive Frenchwoman? Besides, it was only prudent to avoid Hong Kong during the first confused day of the inevitable Japanese occupation.
Mary and Charles chatted desultorily in French, preserving the distance proper between mistress and servant. But their thoughts dwelt on Hong Kong Island, which was a dark conical mass against the red ball of the setting sun. Sarah had refused to accompany them—to the relief of the Intelligence Section, which did not relish manufacturing an identity for the daughter of a Frenchwoman whose French was rudimentary. Absolutely convinced that Jonnie still lived, Sarah Haleevie Sekloong had chosen to remain and help at the makeshift hospital set up at St. Stephen’s School in Stanley. If he were alive and free, she knew, her husband would eventually find his way to Stanley.
“I am Chinese, and shall stay,” Sir Jonathan had snorted, refusing even to consider leaving Hong Kong. “You know I’d only be a burden. I’m no longer up to such games. Besides, where else could an old man help China? I am the father of Sek Sai-loong, the assassinated premier of the pro-peace Nanking Government, the martyr to Sino-Japanese friendship. I’ll get on well with the dwarves—and perhaps find, shall I say, opportunities.”
Opal had nodded vigorous agreement, having never considered leaving the Old Gentleman. With the remaining servants, they were secure in The Castle on The Peak—as secure as anyone could be in the crumbling Colony. When Mary advised Opal to think of her own safety and her own future, the Polynesian girl’s straightforward reply was tinged with surprise at the suggestion.
“The Old One’s been good to me. How could I leave him now? Anyway, he bought me. I belong to him.”
Awed by Opal’s devotion, Mary wondered whether she herself was playing the coward by leaving. The General could command Colonel Charles Sekloong but not her. Yet she had to accompany Charles if he were to deceive any stray Japanese patrol-boats. His soft hands and light complexion enabled him to pass as a superior servant, but certainly not as a fisherman. Besides, her place was with her husband, who had been surprisingly tender during the past four years.
“You’re still a damned attractive woman,” Charles had said, hastily adding: “Damned attractive for any age. But I’
m glad you let your hair go gray. Makes you look younger.”
Other compelling reasons had guided Mary’s decision, though she was surprised by her feeling of guilt at deserting beleaguered Hong Kong to a fate that would be shrouded by the confusion of war. She did not know whether Jonnie was alive or dead, while death could claim Sir Jonathan at any time, even without the intercession of the Japanese. Someone had to survive to rebuild the Sekloong empire, and Charles would require her assistance.
While Mary brooded on her decision, the junk was making heavy weather against the southwest monsoon. The clumsy vessel tacked repeatedly, covering only two miles northeast for every five miles actually sailed. The corkscrew motion was excruciatingly uncomfortable since the junk was built—to a design unchanged for more than a millennium—to ride over the waves rather than to plow through them. Having thought herself a good sailor, Mary was appalled at being strapped onto the narrow wooden bunk shelf. But Charles, too, was suffering from the erratic motion, Charles who had clung to the shrouds of Regina Pacis in a half-gale shouting exultantly at the shrieking winds. The deep-hulled, heavy-keeled schooner was quite different from this Chinese walnut shell.
Even if their mission were to prove foolish rather than essential, they had at least undertaken it. Mary felt a welling of pride at the gallantry of her sixty-five-year-old husband, and she was struck by the realization that he had in recent years grown more like the dashing youth she had married forty years earlier. She was warmed by the realization that Charles loved her deeply, had always loved her as she now loved him, despite their differences. She could not know whether this voyage was the final chapter in their lives or the beginning of a new volume, but their accounts were finally in balance.
The third day at sea dawned clear and tranquil after the dark turmoil of the gale. Only the long swells under the junk’s keelson recalled the storms. Mary and Charles gratefully shared the fishermen’s rice gruel topped with shavings of salt fish. Veiled half-glances conveyed their relief in their survival and their pleasure in each other. They could not touch except by apparent accident, and they could communicate their affection only in stilted French. Charles had warned her that the junk’s master might understand English.
As if raised by the storm’s cessation, a plume of smoke feathered the horizon. Within an hour, a sleek Japanese destroyer of the Chidori class bore down upon them. The junk-master ignored the signal flags fluttering on her shrouds.
“More foreign devil nonsense,” he muttered contemptuously, but he hove to when a shell threw up a water-spout fifty feet from the junk’s blunt prow. That language anyone could understand.
The war was still young, and the Imperial Navy, aglow with its victories, was punctiliously carrying out its orders to search all shipping, even junks. Unwilling to risk his bright new paint by pulling alongside the junk, the destroyer’s captain sent off a motor-launch under a lieutenant. Four armed sailors swarmed up the junk’s side behind the lieutenant.
Mary was terrified by the officer’s resemblance to the young private who had threatened her with his bayonet at the hospital in Hong Kong. He too possessed a light skin, and features sculptured like a Noh mask.
“Well, old girl,” Charles murmured behind his hand, “we’ll see what kind of job our counterfeiters did.”
“Thank God, the terrible storm is over.” She smiled wanly and spoke in stilted French. “It is comforting, too, that the Imperial Japanese Navy guard the seas against pirates.”
As she intended, the lieutenant overheard her. His bow gracefully combined the sweeping salutation of a French courtier of the eighteenth century with the deep inclination Japanese etiquette prescribed.
“À votre service, Madame,” he said. “Matsudaira, Lieutenant, Flotte Impériale Japonaise.”
My God, Charles reflected in dismay, we would run up against the one Jap lieutenant who speaks perfect French.
Mary took the lead, expressing voluble delight that the officer spoke her own language. Sprinkling her rusty French with exclamations, she almost laughed at her ludicrous performance, despite her fear. She did laugh in relief when she realized that Lieutenant Matsudaira’s French was even worse than her own.
After apologizing profusely for the necessity, the Lieutenant ordered his men to search the junk. The sailors poked long poles into the salted fish, while Madame Draché pathetically told him of her decision to flee Hong Kong before the perfidious British turned upon her. Despite his sympathy, he leafed through her documents and examined her passport meticulously before returning it. With renewed apologies, he insisted upon opening her luggage.
Charles grasped the knife in his sleeve when the officer lifted the lid of the leather valise containing the field radio. But Lieutenant Matsudaira recoiled from the froth of lingerie Mary had strewn on top of the transceiver.
“We need not trouble Madame further,” he said. “I am giving the master a certificate of examination. I regret that I cannot offer passage to Madame and her servant. But we are ordered south. Bon voyage et bonne chance.”
The boarding party slithered down the rope-ladder into its motor-launch. Braced against the small boat’s roll, Lieutenant Matsudaira tendered Mary a stiffly formal salute.
“We’ve been weighed in the balance and not found wanting,” Charles whispered hoarsely. “We now sail under protection, the protection of the Imperial Japanese Navy, no less.”
“What would you’ve done if he found the radio?” she asked. “I saw you finger your knife.”
“Damned if I know,” Charles admitted cheerfully. “But I suppose I’d have done something.”
“Something foolish, no doubt,” she smiled.
“Something like that,” he agreed. “Something very foolish.”
A day later, the junk tacked into the small fishing port called Haumun. It was already too late, a sympathetic Chinese major told them. They had lost their race against the Japanese, and Hong Kong was on the point of surrender. The mythical Chinese relief force did not exist, and Charles’s hopeless mission was over.
“What now?” Mary asked. “What now, Colonel?”
“Chungking, I suppose,” he replied dolefully. “I should report to someone.”
“It will be a long walk,” Mary said. “But I’m game.”
“Not that bad. There are ways. But first, we’re entitled to a few days’ rest.”
Captain Jonathan Sekloong discovered during his long walk from Lyemun to Stanley that Hong Kong’s Chinese population was at odds with itself. Hidden in the bushes above Taitam Gap, he watched a platoon of Japanese infantry guided by two men, one dressed in the black coolie clothing he himself wore, the second plump in the gray-wool tunic of a prosperous merchant. Twice he met small bands of armed Chinese flaunting blue-and-white Nationalist cockades in their sun-helmets, and they fed him. The mansions on Taitam Road, just northeast of Stanley, swarmed with looters bearing off possessions ranging from porcelain chamberpots to gramophones. Jonnie chuckled, for the central mansion, set amid sweeping terraces, belonged to a notorious collaborator who fervently supported Wang Ching-wei’s puppet regime.
Captain Jonathan Sekloong won his race against the Japanese, reaching Stanley at the southwesternmost point of the Island on Christmas Eve. As he hobbled on blistered feet down Stanley Road from the northeast, the enemy was advancing from the northwest to isolate the only remaining organized British resistance on the Stanley Peninsula. The three regiments that made the initial landings had been heavily reinforced, and the Japanese were enraged by the dispersed resistance they had encountered. Such uncivilized behavior, officers complained, they expected of barbaric Chinese guerrillas, but it was no way for civilized men to fight a war.
“They should know they’re beaten,” exclaimed a disgusted Japanese major after his battalion had taken heavy casualties to push two platoons of the Royal Scots off Chunghomwan Peninsula, the western promontory enclosing Stanley Bay. “I don’t expect brave men to surrender, but they could commit suicide with dignity.�
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On Christmas Eve, small units fought in isolation on Hong Kong Island. St. John’s Cathedral, half a mile from the northern shore where the Japanese had first landed, was still a British strongpoint, and the Dean presided over the saddest Christmas service in the Colony’s memory. At Pokfulam, three miles west, a mixed detachment of the Volunteers and the Middlesex Regiment occupied positions on the hills where the Dairy Farm’s milk cows had grazed. In addition, the British still held Matilda Hospital on The Peak, hurling elite Japanese assault troops down the precipitous slopes.
British obduracy and Chinese stubbornness were enough to enrage any rational man, and Lieutenant General Sakai Takashi was by that time not quite rational. Tokyo was pressing him to finish mopping up, while the tall white horse he planned to ride in triumph into Victoria had been curry-combed so often that his Korean grooms snickered behind their hands. Perhaps irrationally, Major General C. M. Maltby, the British commander, ordered a suicidal counterattack to break the Japanese pincers closing on Wanchai Gap, the key road to The Peak. He was resolute, but he was not hopeful.
Jonnie Sekloong wandered into the British defense lines on the Stanley Peninsula at 6:00 P.M. on Christmas Eve. Intermingled without regard to their original units, men of the Rajputs, the Winnipeg Grenadiers, the Royal Navy, and the Volunteers manned positions on the hillock called Stanley Mound. Assessing the bedraggled, bleeding figure that had appeared from the dusk, the major commanding ordered Jonnie to report to the hospital at St. Stephen’s School, less than two hundred yards behind the line.
Half-dazed and exhausted, Jonnie stumbled into the charnel-house classrooms. Moving like rusty automata, doctors and nurses tended the wounded and the dying. Their stocks of drugs and bandages almost exhausted, they could offer little more than verbal consolation. Forgetting his own relatively minor wounds, Jonnie watched a dark-haired nurse kneel on the slimy floor to hold the hand of a blond private of the Middlesex Regiment. She murmured low-voiced endearments to the dying man, stoically enduring his convulsive grip. The private stiffened and fell back. The nurse remained on her knees for a full minute before rising to brush tears from her eyes.
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