RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j
177

produced the best performances. A scheme would be worked out round a certain bridge, on which a guard would be placed representing the enemy. The teams would have to make a reconnaissance without being discovered, work out a plan for a raid, prepare the list of demolition material required, draw it from the store, make up their charges, and carry out the raid. It was a treat to watch the agility and dexterity with which these keen soldiers climbed on to the bridge and fixed the charges against timing by a stop-watch; there would often be only seconds to choose between the time taken by the first and the last team.

We met with many difficulties in the training. Quite a few of our students, for instance, had never seen a steamship or a locomotive, and had never ridden in a car. We fortunately had our own lorry on which we could demonstrate the various ways of sabotaging motor vehicles, and we also used the lorry to run over the dummy mines laid by the students. A badly laid mine might fail; it only needed a little mud to work its way into the switch to prevent it going off, so a lot of practice was necessary. Reginald, who at some time or other in his career had lived on ships, cut out a lovely wooden diagram of a ship, on which the engine room was marked and various other parts in which our teaching took a particular interest. We also had an old copy of Jane's Fighting Ships which was circulated in class. Being an English publication it naturally showed pictures of many more English warships than those of other nations. One naive student remarked, "If you have so many ships why don't you give China some?"

But the competition in which our students excelled was that of electric booby-traps. In the ordinary booby-trap, where one had a limited number of switches on which to ring the changes, there was not so much scope. However, with a small torch battery, a length of thin insulated wire, and an electric detonator there was no end to the variety of gadgets that one could produce. It was only necessary to provide a mechanism which would bring the two ends of the wire together to complete the circuit; for instance one end might be concealed in the lintel, and the other might be fixed to the door, so that they met when the enemy walked in and closed the door. For weeks before the end of the course the students would come to us with all sorts of strange requests for things like paper clips, cigarette tins, these generally for cutting up - even hair pins; but the most useful material was bamboo, which they would cut themselves from the hill sides. Electric booby-traps are very dangerous things with which to play and we unfortunately had some accidents.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278
162

quite early on to professional military strategists. War, when it came to Hong Kong, would have to be waged by means other than conventional warfare. Realistically, occupation would be a foregone conclusion: the challenge was to struggle on by covert means and to develop some resistance mechanism. In short, a new concept of waging war, based on intelligence and action behind enemy lines.

Military intelligence

Three years after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, [Hon. Ed. - I find it difficult to see how Japan's unprovoked occupation of large parts of China and the atrocities committed by its army can be termed a 'war.'] the British Army, Navy and Air Force created a 'Far East Combined Bureau.' It operated openly, employed no agents and depended on information volunteered by customs officials, commercial travellers and the like. Its offices, based within the Naval Dockyard compound, discouraged visits from casual informants, and much of its work involved monitoring personal reports from China sent by courier, rather than proactive intelligence gathering. Naval Intelligence provided support and maintained a signals station on Stonecutters Island for transmitting information to Singapore. GE Grimsdale, later to become Major General, joined the FECB in its early days. One of his earliest recommendations on curbing Japanese espionage in Hong Kong was to suggest that tourists be banned from using cameras! Later he was to acknowledge that espionage was harmless in a place like Hong Kong where defences were open and unsophisticated - one snatched photo of a ship leaving the naval dockyard revealed less than its official description in Jane's Fighting Ships." In any case, Japanese had been known to go to Kelly and Walsh, the booksellers in Central District, to find maps better than their standard issue 1:20,000 series.

In January 1937, Capt. Charles Ralph Boxer, of the Lincolnshire Regiment arrived in Hong Kong. Everything about Boxer contrasted strongly with the stereotype of a colonial in the Far East. Although he came from a family of military men, he was an unconventional individualist. Moreover, he was a scholar, who spoke fluent, literary Japanese, studying Japanese history and culture to the extent that he was welcomed in some of the most influential Japanese social circles. After the war, these values would pit him against bigots for whom any sympathy for the Japanese was anathema. But pre-war, he represented
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