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status, since there were 'so many other senior officers working in the area,' and he saw it as ‘axiomatic that all branches of the service will cooperate and pool their information.' The new section was to have 'full authority to control the movements of all Europeans whether military or civil who had escaped.' Having left Hong Kong less than a month earlier, having by his own admission no knowledge of escape and evasion organisations, he was now to command, and to 'have authority to add to his strength such British or Chinese as are available.' The full story of the BAAG is too complex to tell here, but the transition was not seamless. By 16th May 1942, Ride was given the letter he wanted stating 'from the time of escape until they reach Chiyang all escapees of whatever rank and whatever service will come under your command.' This should be made clear to them at first responsibility. xxii This included the men who had spent so long setting up the groundwork, who had met the Ride group and brought them to safety.
Another even more fundamental change in direction was the change in emphasis from a general resistance function to an organisation primarily for the escape of Prisoners of War, and particularly of Europeans at that. Ride consistently thought in terms of mass escapes from camp, larger scale and more spectacular than the Chan Chak escape. In the summer of 1942, he planned the escape of 500 or more POWs by junk, and as late as September 1943 proposed paying millions to guerrillas to conquer Canton so an airborne assault of paratroopers could descend on Hong Kong to free the POWs.**** The gathering of intelligence and support of other forms of resistance were corollary to this basic function. An analysis of why the escape of POWs became the central focus of British activity in the Hong Kong region when it was not of paramount military strategic value in the overall conduct of war in the theatre is again beyond the scale of this piece. However, it illustrates that the plans British military strategists had developed to challenge Japanese occupation and to continue the struggle by alternative methods had to adapt to new conditions. SOE and SOE related agencies were by no means silenced in China but continued to play a very important role, even around Hong Kong. The chrysalis opened, but what emerged had to shape itself to a new situation.