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extensively damaged; and close range fighting never actually reached us. The Japanese (as we discovered later) never actually located the two field gun batteries though they could tell their approximate position. They also seemed to suspect that something was concealed in the woods running down the valley from the Peak to Pokfulam, so this area was fairly intensively searched. So there was a rain of trench mortar and field gun shells and of air bombs (both high explosive and incendiary) all round us, and sufficient direct hits on the block of flats itself as well as near misses to make things unpleasant.
The Japanese landed on the Island on December 18th-19th and we had hardly absorbed this unpleasant information when we learnt that they had already crossed the hills and were in Aberdeen and Repulse Bay, thus cutting the island in two. On the morning of Christmas Day the Police sent round an urgent warning that the situation on the Peak was critical and that everyone who could move should go down the hill. Mrs. Witham and her baby got a lift in what must have been the last car to get through but there was no room for my wife and myself, and as we could not walk we had to stay where we were. Our fellow evacuees struggled down to Pokfulam and the servants disappeared so we were left alone in the flat. Our situation was, however, not so bad as it sounds, as there was a Police post in the same block of flats and the Police were very helpful during the following days in getting food and water for us. Hongkong surrendered on Christmas afternoon and the fighting, so far as we saw it, ended with a heavy burst of fire about 5 p.m. from one of our own anti-aircraft guns posted on one of the adjacent islands which was in Japanese hands.
The troops in our neighbourhood gradually collected, firing off their ammunition, blowing up batteries and dumps and making bonfires of stores. There were so many stores that if we had been mobile my wife and I could have provisioned ourselves comfortably. Even as it was, we got some tins of biscuits, jam and other odds and ends which came in very useful during the next fortnight. The troops were marched off to internment next morning but it was not until late that evening that we saw our first Japanese, when a Gendarmerie post was established in a nearby building. There followed a very disagreeable period. Though the Japanese established Gendarmerie posts here and there they seemed to make no serious effort to patrol the Peak area effectively, and it was in consequence being very thoroughly looted by bands of Chinese. The Japanese themselves were also very troublesome. Though the