15.
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speakers on the Kowloon side of the harbour and treating us to
recitals of Deana Durbin singing "Home Sweet Home" "The Old
Folks at Home "Way Down Upon the Swanee River", and other
fruity and plaintive numbers. They chose the dawn hours for
these recitals and the conclusion we reached after much thought
was that they were trying to make us homesick.
The story of the siege itself i
itself is soon told. The attack
started on Dec. 8th at 8 a.m. with dive-bombing on the air port.
A few hours later enemy forces crossed the frontier. The
next two days saw our gradual withdrawal, in accordance with
the defence plan, to the mainland inner line guarding Kowloon:
all prearranged demolitions of roads and bridges went off like
clockwork and in the early patrol encounters we seemed to
establish an easy man-for-man superiority.
On the night of
the 11th came the great disaster. The enemy pierced our line
by night, endangering the whole prepared position, and by the
morning of the 12th all our forces had been evacuated to the
island. Kowloon was surrendered and on the 13th was
completely occupied by the Japane se. All European and as
many Portugese as possible were brought over to the island.
There was much bitterness among Chinese that they were left.
Husbands and families were split, some on one side of the
harbour and some on the other. There were heartrending scenes
at the ferries. The European staffs of the hospitals in
Kowloon stayed behinä to carry on their work.
The next four
days/