166
JAMES HAYES
four or five years after the end of the war, after a period of not unexpected lack of interest in any kind of soldiering, it is recorded by Colonel H. Owen Hughes that an evening spent in the Cricket Club brought forward a whole platoon (No. 1 Platoon of No. 1 Company) "many of whom had held a Commission in the War"46 Many of the Volunteers of this time had also served pre-war in Volunteer units elsewhere, and their records of service make interesting reading. As time went on, too, several generations of families, Portuguese, Eurasians, Chinese and also some Europeans with either a home or family continuity in the Colony through business or professional interests, provided several generations of volunteers. This is particularly true of the last 40 years, and many of the present generation of volunteers can give the names of fathers, uncles and cousins who have been volunteers, not just during the period of conscription, but stretching back into the inter-war and even to the pre-1914 period.
An interesting study could be made of the social composition of the officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the Hong Kong Volunteers, at different periods in their history, to relate recruitment to the various racial groups and classes of persons available and to establish, what, if any, barriers were raised to the entry of any of these at any time.
DRESS AND EQUIPMENT
(a) Dress.
Few photographs have survived from the earlier days of volunteering in Hong Kong. Of two that are mentioned in our records, one is of Volunteers in the 1860s and was shown at the centenary exhibition in 1954.47 Another dates from the 1880s and was sent by H. H. Read, mentioned above, with his letter to the Commandant for the Year Book for 1937. Some light on dress at this period is shed by the Rules and Regulations of 1882 (but not, unfortunately, by those promulgated in 1862). Section 27 of the 1882 Rules and Regulations state that "the uniform of the Corps will consist of a blue cloth Tunic with
* Plates 11-20 illustrate this article. They relate to the middle period of Volunteer history, 1895-1932.
46 Vol, 1964, p. 42.
47 Vol, 1954, p. 239.