[ { "id": 214761, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "140\n\neverything off just before dark. The AIS is full of naval personnel all trying to find accommodation and food. After a mad scramble, manage to find a bed and retire early, tired and hungry.\n\nThursday eleventh. Commander Millet OC AIS asks me to form antiaircraft and defence posts for Aberdeen as RAF only people with machine guns. I fix up four posts on the roof with tommy gun posts on the verandahs. The AIS makes a wonderful target being only half a mile from the naval dockyard. A hospital has been set up next door to the armoury. For breakfast we get one slice of bread and a little butter and tiffin is the same. For supper, if we're lucky, we get hot stew. Intensive bombing of Aberdeen harbour causing heavy casualties. How we curse the bombers and wish we had a few Gladiators which would make short work of them. Jap fighters are quite slow.\n\nFriday twelfth. Up early and drive in to HK. Buy food, cash a cheque and have a steak at Jimmies. Send cables to Pam and Mother. HK shelled from Kowloon. All our troops evacuated from Mainland. Hear that Walter Rosa, Dick Stanton, Houston Boswall and Bell who messed with us at Kai Tak have all been killed. Small party of Indians still fighting on Devils Peak. Royal Scots fired on in Nathan Road by Chinese fifth columnists using automatic weapons but Scots wipe the whole lot out. Chinese reported assisting Japs on large scale. Amazed at sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse, also Jap successes against Americans. No one however doubts the final outcome and we realize that HK is only small fry in a tremendous issue.\n\nSaturday thirteenth. I set up antiaircraft positions on Bennetts Hill and Reservoir Hill with RAF personnel. CO goes to battle HQ, leaving me in charge. Dolly goes to Little Saiwan and the Colonel to Stanley. After much sweated labour get guns etc. in position. Whimpeys is in charge of Reservoir Hill and I of Bennetts Hill. I return to AIS for the night and at midnight there's a hell of a commotion and everyone is roused as the Japs are supposed to have landed on Aberdeen Island. Whole thing a farce and return to bed.\n\nSunday fourteenth. Set up positions on Bennetts and start digging holes in side of hill for billets. Junior and I dig like mad but, owing to rocks, make little progress. Quiet day except for a few air raids. Bed extremely hard and rain comes in.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215000, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "52\n\nfound four such phrases.\" They added, in answer to a question, that the CWGC commemorates all members of the Commonwealth forces who died in conflicts regardless of the circumstances of their death. Those who died following sentences given by Courts Martial are commemorated in exactly the same way as anyone else.\n\nOfficers and NCOs supplied by the British consisted of volunteers from the British Army as well as British officer-candidates from China, consisting of missionaries and members of the China Customs Service from Treaty Ports. Some were promoted from the ranks.\n\nThose from the Chinese Customs Service in Shanghai include Arthur H H Abel, who was gazetted as a 2Lt in May 1918; George B Appleton, who enlisted with the 16th Bn Middlesex Regt in February 1915 and transferred to the CLC in April 1917 as a sergeant, being promoted to 2Lt in May 1918; Charles N Cross, who in August 1917 joined the CLC as a 2Lt, transferred to the Royal Air Force in July 1918 and transferred back to the CLC in March 1919 as a captain; Arthur HF Edwardes served with the CLC from April to July 1917 as a 2Lt, and in August 1917 was promoted acting captain commanding No 59 Company CLC in Belgium; Ernest N Ensor, enlisted in December 1914 in the 9th Bn Royal Irish Fusiliers and, after promotion through the ranks, to captain in August 1916, was transferred in July 1917 to command No. 27 Company CLC. Amongst his medals, and being Mentioned in Despatches, he was awarded the Order of the Wen Hu, Fifth Class, for military services. Hugh G Lowder served in various Army battalions before transferring to the HQ CLC from which he was demobilised in March 1920 in the rank of captain. He also received the Order of the Wen Hu, Fifth Class, in 1919. Walter Moore served two and a half years with the CLC, from June 1917 to October 1919. John Murphy served with the Royal Marine Artillery, first in German New Guinea and German West Africa, then in France and also on HMS Warspite. In September 1917 he transferred to the Army and from the Armistice to May 1920 he was attached to the CLC conducting coolies from France back to China. Norman Travers was commissioned as a 2Lt into the CLC in May 1917 and was attached to the Royal Flying Corps, with Chinese, on forward aerodromes, subsequently working also in the forward area in trench, ammunition and lines of communication, finally assisting clearance of the devastated areas.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215675, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 452, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "404\n\nIan Morrison's Last Dispatch\n\nPOHANG IN HANDS OF\n\nNORTH KOREANS\n\nAnnex\n\nTOWN IN FLAMES\n\nFrom Our Special Correspondent\n\nBIHAR ARMY HEADQUARTERS, August 12 —\n\nA serious situation has developed at Pohang on the east coast. North Korean forces, who for several days past were known to be working their way south through mountainous country inland from the coast, and who yesterday were reported at a point seven miles north-west of Pohang, attacked the town early this morning and are now threatening the airfield five miles to the south-east. Fires are burning in the town and it may become necessary to evacuate the airfield.\n\nFor several weeks past the South Korean forces based on Pohang have been fighting in and around Yongdok, a small town 25 miles north of Pohang. Their supply line has been the road which runs along the coast. The mountains to the west are some of the steepest in Korea, but they have not deterred the North Koreans from making the obvious outflanking movement. The exact strength of the North Korean force is not known. Three days ago it was reported as two regiments. Probably it consists of a nucleus of regular troops and several hundred guerrilla troops who have long been established in these mountains.\n\nThe allied command apparently minimized their threat, because it was only yesterday that reinforcements were hurriedly rushed to this coastal sector. These consisted of South Korean infantry and a small American task force equipped with light tanks. Exactly what happened is still obscure, but the American convoy was ambushed soon after midnight on the main road 15 miles south of Pohang and pinned down until dawn. Air support was called for, which eventually drove off the North Koreans, believed to have been a number of guerrilla troops, and permitted the convoy to continue after considerable delay.\n\nMustangs were still using the airfield up to 5 o'clock this afternoon, and in some cases pilots were firing their guns only two or three minutes after taking off. The North Koreans had moved south of Yongdok, and pilots claimed to have destroyed two tanks, 10 vehicles, and two ammunition cars. Transport aircraft also were still flying into the airfield this evening and bringing out certain unessential staff such as ground engineers.\n\nAccording to these arrivals, North Korean mortar shells were landing in the general area of the airfield, but it was not under small arms fire. American gunners who have been supporting South Korean infantry in this coastal sector were shelling North Korean positions on the ridge about two miles north of the airfield between the airfield and the port. Large numbers of Korean civilians who had evacuated the town had gathered round the airfield, which is situated close to the shore of the bay, and two ships were standing by offshore in case evacuation should become necessary.\n\nLieutenant-General Walker, commander of the Eighth Army, and Major-General Partridge, commander of the Fifth Air Force, flew over the area this morning.\n\n97", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215940, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2002", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "173\n\nHong Kong had symbolic meaning: he could not be seen to desert until the last minute. The drama of his escape with such a show of force and British aid was a clear and explicit political statement. The KMT had their own escape network but this particular escape was a means of showing that the British, too, had a credible system for dealing with the exigencies of occupation.\n\n+ XY\n\nMany reasons were circulated at the time to explain the escape. A smokescreen had to be concocted to disguise whatever the true purpose of the mission might have been. Much has been made of the story of a plot by the triads to massacre thousands of Europeans in Hong Kong during the Battle. The source of this story was GS Shaftain, head of Criminal Intelligence in the Police Force. He said an informant told him of the plot on 11th December to activate two days later. He then claimed that he assembled hundreds of triads leaders in a hotel, where, through the intervention of a senior Shanghai triads leader, they were persuaded to desist, in the nick of time, on payment of a large bribe. This story passed unquestioned and lauded by the kind of European whose racial stereotypes assumed that Chinese were basically untrustworthy criminals, motivated only for money. (Shaftain claimed the triads leaders stole the silverware from the hotel). However, it is, as even Shaftain himself was to admit 'an implausible and fantastic story'. As a police officer, he would have known that the idea of hundreds of triads leaders meekly turning up for a mass meeting in the middle of an invasion was bizarre. The triads were originally political secret societies as well as criminal, and many had strong links and loyalties to the KMT. Indeed, the Nationalists had long been working with the triads sympathetic to themselves against the Wang Ching Wei faction and the triads who supported them. A pragmatic police officer would also have understood the sheer logistics of preparing and indeed calling off such a huge plot in the midst of battle. Certainly there were fifth columnists, but violence towards foreigners was minimal, particularly considering the intensity of anti-foreign feeling and riots during the 1920's and 30's. In any case, the triads rank and file were gainfully employed looting and extorting in the wake of the Japanese advance. The idea seems to have developed because some of the Japanese propaganda leaflets advocated killing white people, but there does not seem to be any evidence that this was taken seriously, except perhaps by the Europeans, aware of being defeated by an enemy who believed in Asia for the Asiatics. Shaftain must have been delighted at the ease with", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]