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courageous rearguard action of the British and Indian troops, includ- ing the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps the Japanese troops advanced rapidly from the Sino-British frontier to the hills north of the Kowloon Peninsula.
within two days, the Japanese succeeded in capturing the most important strong-point in these hills, overlooking Kowloon, from which the water supply for Kowloon and, in part, for supplying Hong Kong Island was derived.
Lest critics should feel inclined to question the resistance put up by our troops, it should be pointed out that the Japanese attacking force was in a superiority of more than four to one. Moreover, the enemy's superiority at the actual points of attack was far heavier because our troops had to take up defensive positions all round the island of Hong Kong, apart from fighting on the mainland. In addition, some reserve had to be maintained to deal with civil disturbances and the possible over-running of defence positions by crowds panicked by repeated bombings and point-blank shelling.
A competent military authority had pointed out some years before the outbreak of the Greater East Asia War that Hong Kong could only be successfully defended provided three conditions prevailed.
Firstly, a minimum of 50,000 reliable and trained
troops were available.
Secondly, adequate air cover was present.
Thirdly, a sufficiency of water, food and fuel
was on hand for the million and a half inhabitants and refugees within the Kowloon Defence Lines for the estimated duration of the siege pending relief by the combined fleets.
In point of fact, less than one quarter of the number
of British troops constituted the defence force. Moreover, the Canadian contingent, a splendid un-standing group from the mid- western prairies, had arrived but a few weeks before hostilities and had had no time to learn the terrein and to be trained in hill warfare. A small portion of the Indian troops had been subjected to subversive propaganda by Japanese agents.
On the afternoon of the 11th of December, when visiting hospitals and first aid posts in Kowloon, I discovered that the Japanese were already in the outskirts of the town, having pierced the hill defences. In order to protect the medical and nursing personnel and stretcher bearers, and with a view to saving the more valuable of the medical stores, I was compelled to withdraw staffs of aid posts and subsidiary hospitals to the three main hospitals on the Peninsula.
My launch was one of the last to leave Kowloon that evening. Looting and rioting were already in progress, no doubt instigated by Japanese agents. It was no easy matter for ambulances to move about the streets those wounded by enemy action and by Formosan and Chinese armed looters.
It should, perhaps, be stated that the British and Indian Police had had to be withdrawn from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island to preserve order in what was to be the last stronghold of defence.
I should be doing less than my duty at this point if I omitted to mention the magnificent pourage of my colleagues and nursing staff. British, Chinese, Indian, Portuguese and Eurasion