00255
Extract from note on Colonial Military Forces
in the Second World War.
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X
XV.
HONG KONG,
جی
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106. The Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force. In Hong Kong as in Ceylon and Malaya, a Volunteer force with a small permanent staff had been established long before the war. This was the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, which at the end of 1938 was 1,175 strong. It included British, Portuguese Eurasians, Chinese and Indians. On the outbreak of war the numbers and the amount of time devoted to training increased, and by June, 1941, the force was 2,400 strong. Colonel H. B. Rose, M.C., the commandant, in his report on the force for 1940-1, said that owing to other calls on European manpower no further expansion of the European element in the Force was possible, and also that it was difficult to obtain Chinese recruits. Many of the Chinese could not get away for training and preferred A.R.P. work to service with the Volunteers.
107.
Training. Training in the last year before the Japanese attack consisted of two weeks in camp, a half-day parade a week, one or two evening parades a week, week-end manning exercises and musketry or special parades on Sundays. The corps comprised machine-gun companies, artillery, an
The corps was enginer company, signals and other units. considered keen and efficient, its weapon training most satisfactory but its tactical training rather less 80. regular units in Hong Kong assisted the Volunteers' training and relations between them were good.
The
108. We have no detailed account of the Volunteers' part in the sixteen days fighting before Hong Kong fell, but we have also had no criticism of the Force. There was a far clearer case for a Volunteer Force in Hong Kong, where most of the Europeans were engaged in commercial activities which would cease in time of siege, than in Malaya where many of the European population were engaged in planting or mining enter-
The prises which were producing materials necessary for war. only serious criticism of the Hong Kong Volunteers was that - like the rest of the Hong Kong Garrison, there were not enough of them.
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Ref:
CO 537/1260
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