On that same morning, John Harris drove in his small Morris car to Fanling, close to the Chinese border, because he had heard rumours of a large Japanese fleet nearby. Accompanied by Jimmy Wakefield, Willie Clarkson and Dickie Arundell, he indeed saw the ships unloading in an adjacent bay. They felt certain that war was imminent. After a picnic they returned that evening, passing barbed wire concentration points, concrete pill-boxes and ammunition dumps nestling under camouflage nets among the hills.
Well to the south, the Royal Rifles of Canada and Winnipeg Grenadiers moved to their trenches along the mountainous range of the Island, to oppose any landing from the sea. On the Mainland, the Royal Scots, Punjabis and Rajputs similarly manned their battle stations, watching the rapidly changing shadows as the clouds raced across the moon. Victoria Peak was usually a sparkling Christmas tree of lights; that night it was in darkness, sullen and unfriendly. Covered by the massive guns of Stanley Fort, Motor Torpedo Boats patrolled far out into the South China Sea to give early warning of the enemy’s approach. In the misty, heavily camouflaged pill-boxes of Hong Kong Island, the machine-gun battalion of the Middlesex Regiment stood-to. The Hong Kong garrison was ready for war.
After darkness that night Major Charles Boxer, together with Geoffrey S Wilson who was Head of the New Territories Constabulary, went to the top of a hill overlooking the Japanese frontier positions a few thousand yards away. They could not see any movement, not even a lighted cigarette. Boxer remarked that it did not look as if anything was going to happen that night. He returned to Victoria to the Battlebox Headquarters for night duty.
Even at this eleventh hour, the possible concentration of at least a Japanese division close to the border was contemptuously dismissed by at least one senior staff officer that day: an astonishingly erroneous intelligence summary was sent to the War Office from Hong Kong stating that “the reports are certainly exaggerated and have the appearance of being deliberately fostered by the Japanese who, judging by their defensive preparations around Canton, appear distinctly nervous of being attacked.”10 There is no proof that Boxer drafted that cable, but it seems highly unlikely that, being the garrison’s senior Intelligence Officer in Hong Kong, he would not have approved its contents. This suggests that some officers were totally out of touch with reality.
Notes
1. Letter MacGregor to author, 1977.
2. Letter Wallis to author, 1977.
3. File 593 (D14) MO10, National Defence Headquarters (NDHQ), Ottawa.
4. Greenhous, Brereton, “C” Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe 1941–1945, Canadian War Museum Historical Publication, No. 30, 1997, p. 19.
5. Burd, Frederick, ‘CANLOAN’, The Guards Magazine, Winter 1996, p. 244.
6. Alanbrooke, F M, War Diaries 1939–1945, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001, p. 181.
7. File 106/2400 (PRO).
8. Letter MacGregor to author.
9. Sebag Montefiore, Simon, Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003, p. 309.
10. File 106/2400 op. cit. (PRO).
CHAPTER 8
Shingmun Redoubt: The Vital Ground
8th–10th December 1941
The story which follows reflects great courage, which Churchill recognised, and considerable controversy. Was it fair that only one of the British Regiments should be awarded the Battle Honour ‘Hong Kong’ to be emblazoned on their Colours for ever more, when the other Regiment was denied this coveted honour? Was it appropriate for the Canadian battalions to be so severely criticised that Montgomery had to intervene on their behalf to have the Official History altered? Is it possible to produce convincing new evidence, 64 years after the fall of Hong Kong, that some soldiers’ reputations were needlessly maligned? At the conclusion of Part 3 of this book, the reader can make his own mind up on these issues.
* * * * *
The Japanese attacked three nations almost concurrently. Masanobu Tsuji, Chief of Operations 25th Japanese Army, Malaya, stated that the first landings at Kota Bharu on the east coast of Siam and Malaya took place 80 minutes before the initial raid on Pearl Harbor (7.53 a.m. local time).
At 4.45 a.m. local time on Monday 8th December in Hong Kong, Major Charles Boxer heard on a Tokyo broadcast instructions in code to their nationals that war was imminent with Great Britain and America. Sir Mark Young was immediately informed and the garrison alerted.
Major G E Grey, commanding the border force of C Company 2/14 Punjabis and the Engineer demolition parties to the east and north of Fanling, immediately and successfully blew up all forward demolitions, having received orders to do so at 5 a.m.
At 6.45 a.m. the garrison was told that the British Empire and Japan were at war. Some 75 minutes later the loud crescendo of an air raid warning ominously disturbed the bright sunny morning. Practice alerts had never taken place at that hour before.
John Harris went out onto the veranda of his flat in May Road, halfway up the Peak, in time to see planes circling over Kai Tak airport. The loud rattle of anti-aircraft and machine-gun fire mingled with the explosions of falling bombs. So sudden was the attack that people elsewhere at first thought that “the bloody Royal Air Force was practising for a display”. He also saw bombs landing very close to a Royal Navy ship in Victoria Harbour. She was moored fore and aft and was trying frantically to sail to safety. He had never seen the Navy unloose a ship so quickly.
John drove in his Morris car to his battle position at the Dairy Farm, close to the Royal Artillery gun positions on Mount Davis in the northwest of the Island and near Queen Mary Hospital. He met there about a dozen other Sappers. The Dairy Farm was a well-built, single-storey agricultural building on a beautiful site overlooking the Canton Delta. His role was to repair any structural damage and to maintain the pumps which carried water to the Gunners. He did not anticipate that he would have to undertake infantry patrols when more and more men were lost in the desperate days ahead. We will return to his adventures in due course.
The Japanese attack on Kai Tak had been most successful. All but one of the five ancient Vildebeeste and Walrus aircraft were left blazing on the airfield close to wooden buildings which had crumbled into sheets of flame. Eight civilian aircraft had also been destroyed. The implications of losing so much so soon were serious: Maltby no longer had the ability to mount air reconnaissance to discover the location of the Japanese. Attempts to camouflage the dispersed aircraft were futile; no dispersal bays had been built due to the expense involved.
The Japanese then switched to their secondary targets. Ignoring the port, gun positions and troop emplacements on the Gin Drinkers’ Line, they chose to attack the 2,000 Canadians still in Shamshuipo camp. Heavy bombs descended upon the barracks while fighter aircraft machine-gunned the huts from 60 feet. But the Japanese intelligence was faulty: both Canadian battalions had moved on the previous day. There were only two Canadian casualties – Sergeant Routledge and Signalman Fairley. They were the first Canadian soldiers to be wounded in the Second World War.
The Japanese had over-estimated the strength of the RAF in Hong Kong. They gleefully reported on Radio Tokyo the destruction of 14 large and 12 medium planes.
The Hong Kong scene had changed dramatically. Trucks, cars, buses, wagons, carts and rickshaws still ran through the narrow streets, but air raid wardens, auxiliary nurses and uniformed Volunteers of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps were already at their posts.
Conscription for British residents had been introduced in Hong Kong in 1941. Most had joined the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, referred to hereafter as ‘the Volunteers’. They had become something very special, for they alone were training to fight for their families and homes. They came from many professions: there were humble clerks and dockyard artisans as well as prosperous bankers and the taipans of the big trading firms. All parts of the British Isles were represented in their ranks, which also included Chinese, Free French, Russians and Portuguese. There were also Scandinavians and Americans who can even more truly have been considered Volunteers since their nations were then neutral.
As Hong Kong prepared for its first morning of war, Sawyers, Churchill’s butler at Chequers, carried in a cheap portable radio to the Prime Minister’s dining room. A programme of music was suddenly interrupted by a warning to listeners to stand by for an important announcement. Averell Harriman from Washington and Churchill heard the calm, grave voice of the BBC announcer tell Britain that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. The Stars and Stripes and Union Flag were now irrevocably entwined.
In Hong Kong furious work continued on the demolition of the railway bridges over the Sham Chin river. (See Map on page 37) The British could see the Japanese quite clearly, scarcely 300 yards away to their front – well within shot. But the Japanese made no attempt to rush the bridges or open fire, since they too were equally busy preparing their own bridge which they would push across when the British had blown theirs and departed.
As the dust settled after two enormous explosions, the British and Japanese alike saw that both bridges had been destroyed. The Japanese eagerly rushed forward with their replacement as the demolition party pulled back behind Major Grey’s covering force.
Forward observation posts reported hundreds of Japanese sweeping south in two separate thrusts at best possible speed, travelling across country rather than by roads when necessary. At 6.30 p.m. the railway tunnel south of Tai Po was destroyed, while defensive positions were taken up for the night on the higher ground to the south.
Despite the inevitable loss of the obsolete RAF aircraft, the first day of the battle for Hong Kong had gone to plan, thanks to Major General Maltby and his garrison. The 12,000 British, Canadian, Indian and Chinese troops were in their defensive positions and the ships at battle stations in good time. Maltby had ordered the blowing up of the demolitions four hours before the Japanese 38th Division had attacked.
* * * * *
This should be compared to developments elsewhere. We have seen how the British Expeditionary Force in France had no warning of the German onslaught; at Singapore the first Japanese air raid on the installations was an instant success; everything was beautifully lit up because the man responsible for blacking everything out had gone off duty taking the key to the electricity power station with him.
An American radar unit at Pearl Harbor had detected the approach of aircraft. Close to the island an American warship had sunk a Japanese submarine. Nevertheless the alarm was not raised. When the Japanese started positioning themselves to attack the US Pacific Fleet at Hawaii several Americans started making out low infringement flying reports, still believing the aircraft must be their own. There subsequently occurred one of the strangest episodes in American military history: the destruction of General Douglas MacArthur’s air force, on the ground, nine hours after word had reached him of the disaster at Pearl Harbor. The need for momentous decisions in Manila that morning proved to be too much for him. The United States lost most of their aircraft in the Philippines, practically all the B-17s and most of their fighters, surprised on the ground, with negligible cost to the Japanese.1
* * * * *
By dawn on 9th December, Major Grey’s forward troops were between the northeast of Needle Hill, on Monastery Ridge and Sha Tin – the last of their delaying positions. They had fulfilled their role admirably. Communications had been well maintained, over 100 casualties inflicted on the enemy and 16 major demolitions carried out on the bridges, roads and railway. By dusk they withdrew behind the Royal Scots, Rajputs and Punjabi Battalions on the Gin Drinkers’ Line. But the Japanese were clearly fit, skilful and well led. The ability of the Japanese to move rapidly and stealthily, particularly at night, disturbed and probably surprised Maltby.
On the Island, theatres, cinemas and some restaurants still functioned normally. At the Palace Floating Restaurant, which resembled a Mississippi steamboat, diners leisurely chose their lobsters, shrimps, crabs, scallops, oysters, squids, prawns and garoupa, all of which wallowed alive in large cages beneath the restaurant, a few paces from the toilets which spilt their contents into the static, stagnating water.
The South China Morning Post on Tuesday 9th December was as reassuring as always. Life went on as normal on the Island “as if we were taking part in yet another exercise”, recalled Captain A G Hewitt, the Adjutant of the Middlesex. “We were not very concerned that the Japanese had advanced rapidly. I drove round the Island with the RSM and visited our companies and the Winnipeg Grenadiers, drinking Scotch with our people and Canadian rye with the others. Morale was high.”2
To what extent they were influenced by Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham’s stirring Order of the Day is doubtful. It read: “We are ready. We have had plenty of warning and our preparations are made and tested… We are confident. Our defences are strong and our weapons efficient. Whatever our race, we have one aim and one aim only. It is to defend these shores, to destroy such of our enemies as may set foot on our soil…”
General Maltby’s Order of the Day was “… I expect each and every man of my force to stick it out unflinchingly, and that my force will become a great example of high-hearted courage to all the rest of the Empire who are fighting to preserve truth, justice and liberty for the world.”
By 9th December the Japanese closed up to the Gin Drinkers’ Line. The blow was to fall on the Royal Scots’ Shingmun Redoubt – the ‘vital ground’ to the British and Japanese alike, the key to the defensive position on the Mainland. The redoubt was the dominating ground which, if captured by the enemy, would enable them to choose the most advantageous approach into Kowloon City itself, bypassing the Rajputs and Punjabis to the east.
Brigadier Wallis commanding the Mainland Brigade was well aware of the extreme vulnerability of the redoubt. He had participated in exercises earlier in the year when his Rajput Battalion broke through the position. Little did he realise that the tracks he was using would be used by the Japanese some months later. A Royal Scots officer made a ‘dummy’ attack on the Redoubt in early December to practise the defences. He had no difficulty in getting a section through the perimeter wire onto the position undetected. There are two reasons why this vital ground was so vulnerable. The principal one is that only No. 8 Platoon Royal Scots, an artillery observation post and A Company Headquarters, 42 men in all, could be spared to hold the position because all Maltby’s forces, in particular those on the Gin Drinkers’ Line, were spread too thinly. Secondly, the ground favoured the attacker because the front consisted of a confusing complex of defiles, re-entrants, bowls, sloughs and streams, varying in height between sea level on the west to over 1,000 feet on the east. There was, therefore, no prospect of many of the platoons being able to support each other.
In keeping with Brigadier Wallis’s orders, the Commanding Officer of the Royal Scots, Lieutenant Colonel S E H E White, impressed on all ranks that the concrete defensive works were only to be used for Vickers machine-gun teams in the special weapon bays, for storage and, as a last resort, as protection against artillery or mortar fire. The need for sustained patrol activity was stressed. No mines could be spared for the redoubt’s front.
The Royal Scots clearly had their problems, but so did Colonel Doi Teihichi and his 228th Regiment, whose leading battalion was advancing towards Tai Wai at the foot of Tide Cove.
* * * * *
To digress very briefly by introducing a personal note, having served in Hong Kong in the mid 1970s, I was posted at my request to Ottawa to serve ‘on exchange’ for two years in the Canadian National Defence Headquarters. Knowing that I was about to meet veterans of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, which had much in common with my own Regiment including the same cap badge and Regimental March, I visited the Canadian Historical Branch. I enquired there if they had any files in their archives on the Winnipeg Grenadiers who had fought in Hong Kong. To my amazement, Brereton Greenhous showed me shelves of dusty files which contained all I needed, including numerous files with personal accounts by the senior surviving Japanese officers. These accounts are in no other archive. It transpired that the Japanese officers in question were brought back to Hong Kong after the war to face trials on the atrocities they had allegedly committed. Canadian prosecuting teams met them there and they all frequently walked the ground together with interpreters, and so the accounts ended up in Ottawa. The Japanese first-hand stories which follow in this book can therefore be relied upon.
* * * * *
By 3.00 p.m. on the 9th, Colonel Doi, ahead of his two other battalions, was on Needle Hill watching the Gin Drinkers’ Line. “For about two hours we carried out a reconnaissance of the main line of defence,” he recalled. “Although the enemy was not to be seen, a good view of the trenches and defensive positions was obtained, and a sighting of something like white clothes being dried gave a clue to the likely presence of enemy troops. My impression was that the enemy was still inactive perhaps because of their estimate that it would take at least several more days for the Japanese troops to approach their position. Heavy fog suddenly limited the visibility to about 20 metres, and as the rain began to fall and the wind was increasing it became utterly impossible to continue the recce.”3
Colonel Doi’s communications had failed and he had lost touch with his three battalions. Moreover, although he was being drawn irresistibly to attack the Shingmun Redoubt, it lay firmly in another Japanese regiment’s sector. In the Japanese army, orders, once issued, had to be rigidly obeyed forthwith; there was no flexibility, or opportunity for commanders to use their discretion.
At last Doi located his battalions, which had already had an exhausting approach march; his supporting artillery had been delayed well back due to the British demolitions on the Tai Po Road and would not be available.
Near Jubilee Reservoir he ordered his 2nd Battalion on the left to recce the enemy. The 3rd Battalion was to attack at 11.00 p.m., with two Companies, containing at least 150 soldiers, leading. Obstacle-clearing teams moved forward to clear the pathways through the wire entanglements; this would take them an hour. As the Japanese prepared to attack the vital ground, Colonel Doi wondered what the British were up to.
At 8.00 p.m. 2nd Lieutenant J S R Thomson left the Redoubt with a patrol of nine soldiers. The remaining 17 men of his platoon were largely manning the Vickers machine guns or on sentry duty in the pill-boxes, of which there were five – all constructed of concrete and steel and connected to each other by underground tunnels.
The Company Commander, Captain C R Jones, had received orders from Colonel White that his Company should patrol to the north, to check on any enemy being on the southern slopes of Needle Hill and in the Shing Mun Valley, and that his patrols should then return via Captain H R Newton’s D Company of the 5/7 Rajputs. It had been moved earlier that day to Smuggler’s Ridge, which lay to the southeast of the Redoubt.
Thomson returned at 10.20 p.m. having spent some time with Captain Newton. “It seems beyond doubt, in view of the short time that had elapsed, that Thomson did not patrol towards the Shingmun river or Needle Hill. If he had, he would have run head-on into the advancing Japanese,” recorded the history of the Royal Scots.4 Had Thomson discovered that Doi’s battalions were massing for an attack, he could have sent runners to the Forward Observation Officer, Lieutenant L C Wilcox, on the Redoubt. The FOO could then have brought artillery fire down on the Japanese, while all the mortars within range could have lobbed explosive projectiles at a high angle into the Japanese forming up points. Instead, Thomson reported to Jones in the artillery observation post, which was located underground alongside the Company Headquarters, stating that there was no indication that the enemy was near.
Ten minutes later Jones received a message that F W Kendall, who was nearby with another platoon, wanted to speak to him. Kendall was in charge of ‘Z’ Force, which had received some training to sabotage the enemy behind their lines. Because of the poor visibility, Jones ordered his runner, Private Wyllie, to guide Kendall to the observation post. Wyllie, contrary to orders, borrowed the key to the grille at the entrance of the post from the sentry there and, on departing locked the gate on the outside and went off with the key. The only other entrance was by the ‘trap’, or upper grille. “Although those inside the observation post were not aware of the situation the reality was they were trapped below ground. Thomson was the first to discover this predicament when he tried to return to his platoon,” continues the Royal Scots’ history.
At 11.00 p.m. Corporal Laird, on sentry nearest to the Shingmun river, saw lights and a group of shadowy figures approaching the wire. He challenged them. Receiving no reply, he opened fire with a sub-machine gun. Grenades were flung at him and his fire was returned. Laird alerted his section commander and shouted to the signaller to inform Sergeant Robb and Captain Jones of the situation.
“The Companies leading the attack,” wrote Colonel Doi, “assaulted the eastern position. First, a small number of troops threw hand grenades into the air ventilation chimneys of the connecting tunnels, and the infiltrating teams went into the tunnels and engaged in fierce close-quarter fighting.”
Jones told Brigadier Wallis on the field telephone that he had heard muffled explosions and shouts. Wallis ordered that this serious situation must be quickly dealt with and told Jones “to get out with all his men to evict the enemy quickly”. Never, to his dying day, did Wallis ever discover that Jones was trapped inside the post with the Platoon Commander and Forward Observation Officer. The Japanese started to drop grenades down through the grille. The field telephone line became silent at 1.30 a.m. Over an hour later there was a large explosion which blew the roof off the observation post. By that time the three officers within the position, Jones, Thomson and Wilcox, were all wounded as were six soldiers, while two Indian Gunners had been killed. In these circumstances Captain Jones decided to surrender. They were virtually on their own because 18 men of the Royal Scots had decided to ‘live and fight another day’ by moving southeast up to a mile away to join Captain Newton’s Rajputs, whom they reached at 3.30 a.m. on 10th December.
The last Royal Scots section post on the Redoubt held out for a further 11 hours before a British shell caused the concrete pill-boxes to cave in. Four soldiers were dug out alive by the Japanese.
“The capture by surprise of this key position which dominated a large portion of the left flank and the importance of which had been so frequently stressed beforehand, directly and gravely affected subsequent events and prejudiced Naval, Military and Civil defence arrangements,” wrote General Maltby. “The possibility of mounting an immediate counter attack that night was considered but was ruled out as the nearest troops were a mile away, the ground precipitous and broken, and the redoubt very obscure.”
The collapse of the Redoubt, which Maltby had hoped would be held for seven days, was one of the major disasters of the campaign, and “really caused chaos in Fortress HQ. I have never seen General Maltby more shocked or angry,” recalled one of his staff officers.
So, where does the blame lie – with Captain Jones, inadvertently locked in the artillery post? With the Royal Scots platoon of 27 men facing three battalions of highly experienced Japanese soldiers? Or with Brigadier Wallis who had first-hand knowledge of the extreme vulnerability of the position and no reserves, yet expected a handful of men to achieve the impossible?
Notes
1. Manchester, William, American Caesar, New York: Dell, 1978, p. 238.
2. Interview Hewitt with author.
3. Colonel Doi’s progress report in National Defence Headquarters (NDHQ) Directorate of History, Ottawa.
4. Paterson, R H, Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard, Vol. 2, The Royal Scots History Committee, 2000, p. 107.
CHAPTER 9
Nothing but Darkness Ahead
10th–13th December 1941
Following the collapse of the Shingmun Redoubt, the Royal Scots were ordered to withdraw to a new line farther to the rear between Golden Hill and Lai Chi Kok. (See Map on page 37.)
Paradoxically, having punched a gaping hole in the Gin Drinkers’ Line, Colonel Doi, to his astonishment and dismay, was ordered that same morning of 10th December to withdraw from it immediately. His Divisional Commander told him that he had flouted the orders given to him by entering 230 Regiment’s sector. Doi refused to obey two specific orders to abandon the position. His initiative was later censured. The Divisional staff officer, Oyadomani, was “sharply rebuked” for not curbing Doi’s enthusiasm. By midday, however, Doi’s achievement was recognised and he was permitted to remain on the Redoubt.
The Japanese were suffering casualties: their advance south of the Gin Drinkers’ Line was stopped by artillery fire and the vigorous action taken by Captain Newton’s Rajputs. One enemy company attacked and was driven back into the redoubt, which was then shelled by 6-inch Howitzers. The gunboat, HMS Cicala, built in 1916 and of 616 tons, had been covering the left flank of the Royal Scots during the last three days, and discovered a Japanese working party clearing demolitions. Fire was opened with 6-inch guns and direct hits obtained.
That afternoon the last of the Eastern Telegraph Company cables between Hong Kong and the outside world were cut by enemy action.
During 10th December Japanese torpedo boats, minesweepers, one cruiser and four destroyers were observed. This increased Maltby’s uncertainty as to whether he should concentrate his forces to face further attacks from the Mainland in the north, or leave the two Canadian battalions, and the Middlesex in their pill-boxes, all spread around the Island. Meanwhile the battle for the Mainland continued, with the Japanese attacks falling again only on the Royal Scots. 2nd Lieutenant J A Ford in D Company was ordered to establish his platoon on the highest point of Golden Hill. The appalling strain of that climb in the dark was never forgotten. The soldiers, burdened by equipment and ammunition, and weak as some of them were with malaria, were in a state of exhaustion as they crawled on hands and knees over rocks and scrub to the bare hilltop. There they found a few shallow weapon pits dug over three years previously. There were no mines and the broken, rusted wire was valueless.1 Yet this position was to be referred to as “the strong Golden Hill Line” in Maltby’s despatches. Sentries were posted, while others tried to rest despite the bitter cold. No food could be carried up to them. Each man received a tot of rum for breakfast, while they stood to awaiting the next Japanese attack.
Captain D Pinkerton commanded D Company. Ford had nothing but praise for him: “It was his courage, his cool insistence on standing fast under merciless Japanese mortaring that gave D Company the reputation they won on Golden Hill. Pinkerton was a tall, unbending man, sparing of words and unsparing of our energies as well as his own… We were proud of him, perhaps partly because he made us proud of ourselves.”
The remainder of the Battalion was to the west of Ford’s platoon, on lower ground. At 7.30 a.m. on 11th December, the Japanese 230 Regiment attacked in great strength the whole Battalion front. “I saw Captain Pinkerton lead a bayonet charge to clear the top of Golden Hill ridge. From then on throughout the day we were heavily mortared,” Ford continues. “There could be no fighting back. And the mortaring was carried out with deadly accuracy.”
The Companies had been unable to establish field cable communications. The Official Report, published over seven years later as a supplement to The London Gazette, deals inadequately with what happened: “11th December – On the mainland at dawn the enemy opened up mortar fire and then attacked the left flank of the 2 Royal Scots, driving them back in disorder and exposing the junction of the Castle Peak and Taipo Road, thus seriously endangering the withdrawal of all the troops based on the Taipo Road… The situation was critical but the company of the 1 Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Bren carriers from Kai Tak aerodrome defences were moved into position covering the gap.” As an afterthought, probably prompted by someone else, a note was added that both Royal Scots Company Commanders were killed. They were Captains W R T Rose and F S Richardson.
During this action, the Battalion Signals Officer, Captain Douglas Ford, went forward to a southern spur on Golden Hill because he knew that the supporting artillery had misjudged the range: British shells were falling amidst the Royal Scots. He found a field telephone and through Colonel White had the range increased. At 7.30 a.m. C Company had been 35 strong. Within three hours it had received 25 more casualties.
At 10.00 a.m. Brigadier Wallis told Colonel White that “the good name of the Battalion was at stake. It was emphatically stressed that further withdrawals must stop or all troops based on the Tai Po road to the east would be cut off.”2
At this critical moment, one can but wonder why Wallis, less than three miles away from Colonel White’s Battalion Headquarters, with the good Castle Peak Road between them, could not have visited him to discuss the rapidly deteriorating situation. This also applies to General Maltby in his ‘battlebox’ in Victoria. Should Maltby have gone forward, as some other generals in different circumstances certainly would have done? He could have discovered what was going on, with a view to planning accordingly. A Motor Torpedo Boat would have carried him across the harbour to the Mainland very quickly. Wallis’s headquarters was three miles beyond, so the entire journey would have taken less than half an hour.
Throughout the day 2nd Lieutenant Ford had commanded the troops defending the summit of Golden Hill. “In the end he was literally blown off the hill by Japanese mortar fire. When he withdrew, under orders, he found that both his Company Commander and Second in Command had been wounded and that his two fellow platoon commanders had been killed,” continues the Royal Scots’ history. “When he reached Battalion Headquarters with the remnants of the Company he was given a large whisky by the Commanding Officer and, not surprisingly in his famished and semi-exhausted condition, he immediately fell asleep.”
The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel S E H E White MC, was a bluff Irishman, known to his officers as ‘Scram’, his favourite order of dismissal. He was a tallish man, dark-skinned from years of exposure to the sun. During the 18 days of war in Hong Kong he was to see his Battalion almost literally blown to bits.
When the news reached him of the virtual disintegration of B and C Companies, he went forward to meet the survivors of D Company, upon which the full Japanese attacks had now fallen; the Company was ordered to fall back to less exposed ground closer to Kowloon.
The Royal Scots had already received casualties amounting to about one sixth of their effective strength. The ratio of officer casualties was significantly greater.
At 11.00 a.m. the Royal Scots, with the supporting Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, were ordered to withdraw to a line extending obliquely back almost to Shamshuipo in Kowloon. On their far right, the two Indian battalions were still relatively unscathed on the Gin Drinkers’ Line.
Alarming reports reached Fortress HQ of a possible invasion by sea. The enemy had landed on Lantau Island, to the southwest of Hong Kong. They were fired on by the heavy guns at Aberdeen. An enemy party in sampans attempted a surprise landing at Aberdeen Island within 300 yards of the Naval Base. They were driven off by machine-gun fire from a platoon of the Winnipeg Grenadiers and by 3 Battery of the Volunteers. Orders were given to the Royal Engineers to lay anti-personnel mines on the beaches on the southern shores. After the surrender some of these mines were to be defused by Jimmy Wakefield, by order of the Japanese.
At midday on 11th December, General Maltby made the momentous decision to withdraw all his troops from the Mainland that night, except for 5/7 Rajputs which would remain on the isolated but commanding position on the Devil’s Peak Peninsula indefinitely, in accordance with previous orders.
The Kowloon denial plan was being implemented as quickly as possible. The cement works, power station and dockyards were all destroyed. Merchant ships, including a Swedish vessel, were sunk.
In Kowloon an unpleasant stench filled the air since the bodies of the dead, following the Japanese bombing and shelling, were rotting in the bright sun. Sewage seeped into the streets from broken mains. The refrigeration system had broken down in the godowns: the goods stored there began to rot. Exhausted soldiers buried their faces in their arms to keep out the stench of death, excreta and putrefaction.
Doctor Isaac Newton in Kowloon noted in his diary: “11/12 December. Unfortunately much valuable time that was spent collecting stores, food and drugs was frittered away by an order from Hong Kong to prepare a camp for 10,000 evacuees from the Island. 60 to 70 casualties admitted and two operating theatres in continuous use for 12 hours. All lights have gone except for emergency installations in the hospital.
“Terrible riots have broken out in Kowloon and it is most dangerous to go out. As I stood in the compound this evening, I could hear the roar of the looting in the Nathan Road. It was a very nasty sound. No sooner was the camp for the evacuees stacked with food, when rioters broke in.”
A few looters were shot, their crumpled bodies being left on the ground as an example to others. But law and order was disintegrating and, as the fighting drew nearer, less attempt was made to control the chaos.
The withdrawal of the Mainland Brigade went ahead as planned with little interference from the enemy, who failed to follow up. The Royal Scots began to embark at Kowloon City pier at 7.30 p.m. and, by 10.00 p.m., it was back on the Island. “A strange journey,” wrote 2nd Lieutenant Ford. “After all the Battalion had been through, we left the battlefield in buses, as if we were going back to barracks after an exercise in the hills. The ferry boats were waiting for us at the pier. We looked across the water, usually ablaze with the lights of the Island. That night there was nothing but darkness ahead.”
D Company Winnipeg Grenadiers crossed over to the Island after midnight. All armoured cars, some trucks and nearly all the Bren carriers were successfully evacuated.
The difficult withdrawal of the Rajputs and Punjabis the same night, with all their equipment, towards the Devil’s Peak in the southeast was also successful despite a strong Japanese blocking position on Tate’s Cairn. One group of Punjabis became lost and found themselves on the outskirts of Kowloon fighting Japanese patrols and fifth columnists. Fortunately RAF launches picked them up from the wharf just as the Japanese were closing in.
By dawn on 12th December, the Rajput Battalion was holding the Ma Lau Tong defensive line, last fortified in 1941; it was an extension of the Gin Drinkers’ Line. Behind them Brigadier Wallis had his small headquarters. Fresh rations and ammunition were ferried forward to them all. The Punjabis meanwhile were gradually evacuated to the Island.
At 5.45 p.m. the Japanese launched a battalion attack on the Rajputs but failed to break through and received heavy casualties due to machine-gun and artillery fire supported by the 6-inch battery of howitzers.
At 4.30 a.m. on 13th December, General Maltby decided that the Devil’s Peak Peninsula would not be held after all. He asked the Rajput Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel R C Rawlinson, if he could withdraw his entire Battalion during the next two hours of darkness. Rawlinson replied that it would be difficult, but fortunately the enemy had taken a nasty knock.
The evacuation presented additional problems because the reliability of the Chinese boats’ crews was such that they had to be under guard to prevent them from deserting. Chinese engineers had already run away; staff officers from Fortress HQ went forward to operate the boats in their absence. The withdrawal fell behind schedule, despite the efforts of four Motor Torpedo Boats.
At 8.30 a.m. the last covering troops were withdrawn in broad daylight in MTBs. The 120 mules which had carried heavy equipment had to be left on the Mainland because of the desertion of the crews of the ship to carry them. There had been no Japanese air activity or any attempt to follow up the withdrawal; the evacuation had been completed without casualties.
Brigadier Wallis was the last to leave the Mainland. He deserves credit for planning the successful withdrawal following the defeat at the Shingmun Redoubt.
When Brigadier Wallis took over from his predecessor, Brigadier Reeve, a little over a month earlier, he had asked him his views of the Royal Scots. Reeve had replied that Lieutenant Colonel White “would be a good average Commanding Officer and one the men knew and trusted”. Wallis replied that he was “none too happy with the discipline of the Battalion as exemplified by the number of courts martial, some of them officers; the high rate of venereal disease and the high percentage of malaria.” Brigadier Reeve replied that “he thought in the event the Battalion would fight well – after all they are Jocks”.
Wallis wrote in the War Diary of the Mainland Brigade that he attributed the weaknesses in the Royal Scots to be due first to too many inexperienced officers – “perhaps ‘milking’ had been too great?” he wondered. “Secondly the Battalion had been left too long overseas without relief – 12 years in all.” Third that the previous Commanding Officer, “Lieutenant Colonel D J McDougall, was a bad CO. He drank heavily himself and did not control his Battalion. It caused great astonishment in Hong Kong when it was learned that on vacation of command this officer was to command an officers’ school in Burma.”3
In short, Brigadier Wallis blamed the Royal Scots for the failure to hold the Gin Drinkers’ Line and positions to the south. Even if the Japanese had been a third rate force and unable to fight at night, as Air Chief Marshal Brooke-Popham and others had earlier claimed, there would still have been no justification for Brigadier Wallis to expect that one platoon could defend the Shingmun Redoubt. This is because the advantage and initiative invariably lies with the attacker. The defenders, too few in numbers and too thinly spread, have no knowledge where the weight of the attack is to be anticipated. So it can only be expected that an assault, with the advantage of surprise, pressed forward in great strength at a few points, will succeed in breaking through. The Japanese 38th Division consisted of highly trained troops with a wealth of battle experience from years of fighting in China. Their artillery was greatly reinforced beyond the normal establishment.
Brooke-Popham stated in his despatch that at least two divisions – some nine brigades – would have been required to hold the Gin Drinkers’ Line. In fact only one brigade was available. The Shingmun Redoubt was insufficiently supported by fire and was located with an open flank.
The Royal Scots had been asked to achieve the impossible. The Battalion received over 100 casualties on the Mainland. To anticipate events, the Royal Scots had well over 200 more casualties in the battle for the Island. Thereafter, three officers and 59 soldiers died in captivity and, as will be related, a horrifying total of three officers and 178 soldiers died at sea when the ship taking the POWs to Japan was sunk by an American submarine.
Many officers and soldiers of the Royal Scots gave of their best. For that, and for their conduct during nearly four years of dreadful captivity, the 2nd Battalion Royal Scots occupies a special place in the long history of the Regiment.
Notes
1. Interview Ford with author.
2. War Diary and Narrative, Mainland Infantry Brigade and attached troops, p. 37.
3. Mainland War Diary, p. 88.
CHAPTER 10
“Clay Pigeons in a Shooting Range”
13th–17th December 1941
The speed of the Japanese thrusts in Hong Kong and Malaya, and the success of their operations against Pearl Harbor, were being studied by Hitler at Berchtesgaden. He followed with jubilation every development in the war in Asia and congratulated himself on declaring war on America following the Pearl Harbor fiasco. Hitler eagerly awaited his share of the plunder of tin, rubber and oil to be captured in Malaya, Burma and the Dutch East Indies. Possibly the key positions of Ceylon and Port Darwin would eventually fall too. The glittering prizes were endless. As Churchill put it in a different context: “All sorts of greedy appetites have been excited, and many itching fingers are stretching and scratching at the vast pillage of a derelict Empire.”
“We are watching day by day and hour by hour your stubborn defence of the port and fortress of Hong Kong,” signalled Churchill to Sir Mark Young. “You guard a vital link long famous in world civilization between the Far East and Europe. All our hearts are with you in your ordeal. Every day your resistance brings nearer our certain victory.”
As the exhausted Rajputs and the last of the guns were being evacuated from the Devil’s Peak Peninsula, Lieutenant General Sakai despatched at 9.00 a.m. on 13th December a launch flying a white truce flag. Aboard were two Japanese officials, a civilian administrator, and two British hostages – Mrs Macdonald who was very pregnant, and Mrs C R Lee, the wife of the Secretary to the Governor, who brought her two dachshunds, Otto and Mitzi, with her. A young American reporter of the Detroit News, Gwen Dew, obtained a notable scoop by running to the scene at Queen’s Pier to report the conversation. The Japanese leader politely introduced himself as Colonel Tala of Military Information. The bespectacled, younger, stocky figure clutching the flag was Lieutenant Mizuno while the third Japanese carrying a portfolio was Mr Othsu Dak.
Major Charles Boxer met the delegation and immediately recognised the dark, thickset Mr Othsu, whom he had come to know during his frequent liaison trips to the Japanese at the border. To the dismay of some observers including Gwen Dew, Boxer and the Japanese spent some time bowing and saluting each other. Gwen Dew asked Mr Othsu what the conditions were for the surrender offer. “Equitable terms for both sides and safe conduct for all,” was his reply. Boxer quickly intervened with “Let’s leave the terms to the Governor.” Travelling by staff car, he took the surrender terms to Sir Mark Young in Government House. The terms consisted of General Sakai demanding the Island’s immediate surrender, with threats of unrestricted bombardment if he refused.
An hour later Boxer returned with the Governor’s categorical rejection of the terms. The Japanese, expecting such a reply, said that their forces would refrain from resuming the bombardment until 4.00 p.m. to give Sir Mark Young time to reconsider. After further salutes and bows, they re-boarded their launch and returned to Kowloon with Mrs Lee and the two dogs.
General Sakai, who commanded the forces attacking Hong Kong, read the Governor’s reply with growing irritation and impatience. “Not only is this Colony strong enough to resist all attempts at invasion, but it has the backing of the people of the British Empire, of the United States of America and of the Republic of China. British subjects and all who have sought the protection of the British Empire can rest assured that there will never be any surrender to the Japanese.”
Sakai reluctantly contemplated the many problems of invading the Island, but he never doubted the success of his mission, knowing that Hong Kong was cut off and could not be reinforced, for the Japanese had complete control of the air and seas.
After all, three days before, torpedo and bombing attacks on Repulse and the Prince of Wales had sunk both ships off Malaya. Admiral Phillips had been keeping wireless silence and so no fighter aircraft had been sent from Singapore because the RAF did not know his position until it was too late. “The efficiency of the Japanese in air warfare was at this time greatly under-estimated both by ourselves and by the Americans,” recorded Churchill. “In all the war I never received a more direct shock. As I turned over and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American capital ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except for the American survivors of Pearl Harbor, who were hastening back to California. Over all this vast expanse of waters Japan was supreme, and we everywhere were weak and naked.”
When most people in Hong Kong heard of the loss of these two great ships, their morale was badly shaken. However, a new hope arose: the local Hong Kong radio announced that the Nationalist Chinese Seventh army was only a little more than 100 miles away and rushing to relieve the Colony. Many prayed that this was true. Certainly, the constant hope that Chinese armies were marching south encouraged the garrison and civilians to sustain their efforts. General Maltby was not confident that Chiang Kai-Shek’s divisions would arrive in time, if at all. Nevertheless, according to Japanese records examined in 1946, the Chinese did step up their guerrilla campaign and attempt to divert attention from the Hong Kong operation. They also sent reinforcements to the Canton area and moved a force, about one and a half divisions strong, towards Hong Kong.1
General Sakai took the Chinese threat to his rear very seriously and ensured that a Japanese regimental group, the Akari Detachment, was positioned some 40 miles northeast of Hong Kong to prevent Chinese interference. They reported later that the Chinese effort to reach Hong Kong was minimal.
General Maltby appeared confident that the Colony could be held; the battle for the Mainland had not amounted to a major defeat, in as much as the enemy had received more casualties than they had inflicted. Numerically, he had a force equal in number to the Japanese. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we know the truth: the complete lack of air support and inadequate sea power, referred to earlier, made the defeat of the Colony a foregone conclusion.
Maltby’s dilemma on how best to defend the Island was acute. Lieutenant General Percival in Singapore favoured putting his troops well forward to overlook the beaches. Similarly, Field Marshal Rommel in the Spring of 1944 wanted to hold his Panzer Corps close to the coastal defences in Normandy, knowing that the Allied air forces would bomb any subsequent forward movement.
The factors facing Maltby were, first, lack of transport. Secondly, the narrow roads over mountain passes were quite inadequate to move any battalion quickly in any direction. He anticipated the enemy attacking from the northwest, across the harbour, landing in Victoria. This was because the distance was short; Victoria was within easy reach of the Japanese mortars, and mobile artillery was already starting to destroy one pill-box after another with remarkable accuracy.
Maltby therefore deployed his troops, after many confusing changes. (See Map overleaf.) The Punjabis and Rajputs would man the forward defences on the left and right respectively. The Royal Scots would be held centrally, well forward. His greatest strength therefore covered the threat to Victoria. The Winnipeg Grenadiers and Royal Rifles would be spread out behind them, guarding against an invasion from the sea. Maltby believed his best plan involved the Middlesex machine-gunners, supported by scattered companies including the Volunteers, who would hold and destroy the enemy while ‘flying columns’, consisting of Winnipeg Grenadier reserve companies, hurried forward. The General felt that a Japanese landing on the northeast coast was improbable because ships sunk under the demolition plan would hinder any approach.
The RAF had earlier destroyed their last remaining aircraft on the ground to prevent the Japanese capturing it and so reconnaissance from the air was impossible. When Japan first attacked the Colony, the cruiser squadron and submarine flotilla had immediately been despatched to Singapore. One destroyer, Thracian, four gun boats, eight Motor Torpedo Boats, seven auxiliary patrol vessels and an auxiliary craft used for minefield duty were the only ships left in Hong Kong. Naval personnel numbered 1,300 British and 300 Chinese. The naval base at Aberdeen was sheltered from enemy artillery firing from the Mainland, being protected by the massive mountain, Victoria Peak. As many sea approaches as possible had been mined.
Hong Kong was divided by a narrow, winding road which led from Happy Valley, close to the Wanchai, and ran between Mount Nicholson and Jardine’s Lookout. (See Map overleaf.) From there the road met with three others at Wong Nei Chong Gap before dropping 300 feet towards the beautiful Repulse Bay and its famous hotel. Three miles farther to the south, beyond Stanley Mound, lay the Chung Hom Kok peninsula and Stanley Village. Stanley Fort was on the most southern tip of Hong Kong.
By 14th December, West Brigade consisted of the Royal Scots, Punjabis and Winnipeg Grenadiers. East Brigade comprised the Rajputs and the Royal Rifles of Canada. Both Brigades contained units of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, which consisted of five batteries and seven rifle companies in defensive positions spread throughout the Island.
The inter-brigade boundary lay largely to the east of Happy Valley, Jardine’s Lookout, Wong Nei Chong Reservoir to Chung Hom Kok.
Western Brigade was commanded by Brigadier J K Lawson MC. He had been born in England, but his family had emigrated to Canada when he was still a child. He had served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and the Motor Machine Gun Brigade in the First World War. In 1941 he was the Canadian Army’s Director of Military Training before being promoted to Brigadier to command the 2,000 men destined for Hong Kong. He lacked experience of handling anything more than a Company – 100 men. He was largely responsible for selecting the two Canadian Battalions for Hong Kong.
Eastern Brigade was commanded by Brigadier Wallis, who had no knowledge of the ground in Hong Kong Island because he had always been stationed with his Rajputs on the Mainland. He also had not met any of the officers or men of the Royal Rifles of Canada and through no fault of his own never discovered, before the Japanese attacked the Island, what the Battalion might achieve.
Neither Canadian Battalion had radios, 3-inch mortars or transport. Although the Force had been allotted 212 vehicles in Canada, the Awatea was a troopship not a freighter: there was room for only 20 vehicles in her holds. Owing to incompetence, none of the 20 reached Vancouver before the Awatea sailed. The 212 vehicles were loaded on another ship, which was diverted to Manila and never reached Hong Kong.
The Commanding Officer of the Royal Rifles was a veteran of the First World War – Lieutenant Colonel W J Home MC. He had been removed from command of a company of the Royal Canadian Regiment in 1939 as “unfit to command in war”.2
The Royal Rifles had spent ten months in Newfoundland, mostly guarding a railway line and airport. There was neither time nor opportunity for worthwhile training. Three months before arriving in Hong Kong they were on coast defence in New Brunswick where “anything more complicated than section or platoon tactics was abandoned”.
The Winnipeg Grenadiers had been mobilised as a machine-gun unit, converted to conventional artillery and posted to Jamaica in May 1940. They too had found little opportunity for serious training. “One ex-corporal (who deserted before the unit sailed for Hong Kong) told the subsequent Royal Commission that, while in Jamaica, he ‘saw’ a 3-inch mortar once, but was not allowed to examine the sight as he was told that it was too delicate. This prohibition applied to the men of the Mortar Platoon as well.”3 There were some misgivings about the ability of the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel J L R Sutcliffe, who “made a series of elementary mistakes in regard to the state of training and equipment of his men in a report submitted to National Defence Headquarters Ottawa on 6th October 1941. Officers who get the simplest facts about their men wrong are rarely found in command of efficient, well motivated units,” wrote a distinguished Canadian historian.4
When the two Battalions were selected for Hong Kong 151 men were eliminated when they failed a subsequent medical examination. Moreover, each Battalion was required to take six officers and 150 men over establishment as “first reinforcements”. Suddenly, therefore, at the eleventh hour 16 officers and 436 men, or almost a quarter of the total force, were needed to bring the two units up to the required numbers. Reinforcements were quickly posted in; most had completed their basic training, but nearly a quarter of them were still only partway through it. They had virtually no knowledge of mortars, which were essential for Hong Kong. Fifty Canadians attempted to go absent from the ship in Vancouver and others were restrained by force from joining them. Compared to the 1,000 Australians who went absent at Cape Town en route to Britain in 1941, 50 may seem a paltry figure. These, then, were the Canadians whom Brigadiers Lawson and Wallis were about to command in battle.5
Who was to blame for such a shambles? Certainly not the men of the Royal Rifles or Winnipeg Grenadiers who had volunteered to fight. Nor, to some extent, those who had chosen or ‘trained’ the individuals, because it was anticipated that they would receive thorough training in Hong Kong for perhaps a year or two before, possibly, the war spread to the Far East.
Can similarities be drawn with other theatres of war, both during the Second World War and more recently?
Lieutenant General Charles Foulkes, the CGS in Canada, stated in a report to the Minister of National Defence on 9th February 1948 that a unit which contains men who have not completed their recruit training is not fit for battle. “We found, in training formations for war, that even after recruit training, section, platoon, company and battalion exercises had to be carried out,” he said. “Then battle inoculation using live ammunition and exercises in every phase of operations were necessary. I can say without fear of contradiction that even after four years of arduous training I found the 2nd Canadian Division just ready for battle when we landed in North West Europe, and even after the first battle it was necessary for me to make several very serious changes in order to win further battles. The training of men for war is like training a racehorse for a race. It is necessary to re-train after each battle, eliminate the weak, tired or battle-weary, and correcting the mistakes in the last battle to ensure victory in the next.”
The above was, and is, equally applicable, of course, to any other army. From the end of the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940 to the start of the fighting in France in 1944, the Guards battalions in the British Army, for example, undertook exhaustive exercises to prepare for battle. Tactics evolved, they felt, to best defeat the Germans. Yet at their very first major operation, in the breakout southeast of Caen during Operation Goodwood, it became immediately apparent from the British defeat then, that the Guards Armoured Division’s organisation was faulty. Lorried infantry following the advancing armour should instead fight alongside, if not in front of, the tanks in the close bocage country of hedgerows and ditches, behind which lurked the deadly German anti-tank weapons.
The Territorial Army units sent earlier to fight in the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium in 1939 and 1940 were found to be woefully ill-trained, just as the men fighting in Malaya, Burma and Singapore in 1941 and 1942, against a smaller Japanese force, proved to be unable to move fast across country or fight against an enemy which was trained to bypass and then set up road blocks behind the road-bound British formations.
The 1982 Falklands War can certainly be contrasted to the despatch of the Canadians to Hong Kong. The 2nd Battalion Scots Guards and 1st Battalion Welsh Guards were Public Duty battalions on London ceremonial duties when the possibility of their being sent 8,000 miles to the South Atlantic arose. “Few really believed that they would actually leave Britain (a view apparently shared at a high level within the Ministry of Defence) and, if they did, the battalions’ role was expected to be that of garrison troops, the Argentinians being assumed to have surrendered [to the Royal Marines and Parachute battalions] long before 5th Infantry Brigade could arrive to influence events,” wrote Major General Murray Naylor in the Scots Guards Regimental History.6 As so often happens in war, plans went awry. At the vital battle of Tumbledown Mountain, on the approaches to Port Stanley, the Scots Guards on 13th June 1982 had to undertake a night attack against a strong, motivated enemy, sited on dominating and often insurmountable crags, well-entrenched with machine guns covering their minefields. Due to the outstanding courage and leadership of the officers and NCOs, such as Lieutenant Colonel Mike Scott DSO and Major John Kiszely MC, the Guardsmen overwhelmed the enemy. The following day all the Argentinians in the Falklands surrendered. (By 2005 Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely was commanding all the British forces in Iraq.)
Just as the Canadians en route to Hong Kong were told in 1941, “Don’t worry, lads, you will be training in Hong Kong, there’s ample time,” and the Guardsmen 41 years later were assured, “the Argies will have surrendered; it’s garrison troops for you,” so recriminations in the 21st century, as to where the blame lies, will not get us far.
* * * * *
On 17th December, four days after the withdrawal from the Mainland to Hong Kong Island, Lieutenant Zempei Masushima led a patrol of four Japanese to choose landing sites on the Island’s north shore. Dressed in Chinese clothes, they approached the Tai Koo Docks in the northeast. A British searchlight spotted them; a Rajput pill-box quickly opened fire, so the patrol jumped into the water and swam on, pulling the boat behind them. After landing at the docks, which had a 600-yard frontage with a Rajput pill-box at each end, Zempei carried out a full reconnaissance. He noted the location of pill-boxes, obstacles and wire and found several pill-boxes to be empty. The patrol then returned to Kowloon, being fired upon once more. Zempei was decorated for his gallantry. “Owing to the success of this officer’s patrol it was decided to make the landings at this point,” concluded the citation.7
Ironically, Captain C M M Man of the Middlesex Regiment was also in the area of the Tai Koo Docks that night because it was regarded as a possible enemy landing point. “I shall never forget the eerie sensation of walking through this large complex of sheds and workshops, all apparently empty with no sight of life,” he wrote. “All the time I was conscious of the feeling that I was being observed. Try as I could I could not see anyone.”8
Brigadier Wallis had established his East Brigade HQ alongside the Royal Rifles HQ at Tytam Gap well to the east of the Island, nearly two miles from the Tai Koo Docks. Sir Mark Young, the Governor, visited him there and asked him for his frank opinion on what the chances were. “I told him that once again we were spread too thin with little depth,” recalled Wallis. “That lacking air cover and with widely dispersed machine-gun posts, and as the Japanese had ample artillery and mortars, while our own men had had little rest from incessant bombardment, it would only be a matter of time before we were forced back. I think Sir Mark was shocked by my reply.”9
Brigadier Lawson had moved his West Brigade HQ from the Wanchai to the Wong Nei Chong Gap where several steel-doored anti-aircraft shelters cut into the rock. He had, unwittingly, placed himself on the vital ground which was a key Japanese objective because whoever controlled the Gap and the high ground which overlooked it, controlled the key crossroads, the very heart of Hong Kong Island. The harbour to the north and Repulse Bay to the south were both within 15 minutes’ drive.
The Royal Scots on the waterfront in the Wanchai became difficult to supply due to the intense shell fire. Some loaves and stew occasionally reached them. Chinese prostitutes, some of whom knew them in happier days, came out of their densely built-up Chinese quarters, oblivious to the danger, and offered flasks of green tea. They had no food to give, but they offered little gifts of aspirin tablets and safety-razor blades.
Some of the Wanchai streets were piled up with dead bodies; attempts were made to cart them off for burial in communal graves. “Refuse was gathering in heaps everywhere,” wrote 2nd Lieutenant Ford, who had rejoined D Company from hospital. “On one rubbish heap I saw a dead monkey and alongside it a dead baby, side by side.”
Each day was a terrible nightmare, particularly for the Chinese. Mrs Mabel Redwood, an Auxiliary nurse, was working day and night in a makeshift hospital at the racecourse and wrote in her diary, which is now at the Imperial War Museum in London: “After prolonged shelling, the planes came. They seemed to be directed at the communal kitchens where Chinese were being supplied daily with cooked rice. Later I ventured home. I saw more horror in that journey than I ever want to see again. They had got the Chinese queuing for the rice well and truly. I had to step over mutilated bodies. Poor things had no chance and there were no military objectives nearby.”
Fortress HQ suddenly received a message late at night that a large force of ‘Japanese cavalry’ was advancing across Happy Valley racecourse. Captains Iain MacGregor and Peter MacMillan, both on duty at the HQ, were sent with a small scratch force in a lorry with machine guns to engage them. Captain MacGregor saw “shapes of dozens of wraith-like animals which might have been cavalry. A number of bursts of machine-gun fire killed many of them; it transpired that the horses, terrified and bewildered, had escaped from the Jockey Club’s stables. One of my own Australian ponies was among those killed. It seems silly and illogical now, with all the smell and sight of human death constantly around us then, to have felt so much pity, disgust and compassion for those slaughtered animals.”10
MacGregor’s force was next ordered to fight off an enemy landing in the Wanchai. They discovered that the three large boats they saw contained friendly Chinese who had escaped from the Mainland. Another landing had apparently taken place on 17th December when retreating Gunner personnel at Pak Sha Wan, opposite Devil’s Peak in the northeast, had reported that “the enemy are as thick as leaves in the battery position”. Concentrated fire was brought down on over 100 people in small rubber boats and rafts. All were killed in the water and the position was reoccupied without opposition four hours later. It is likely that it was more fleeing Chinese rather than Japanese who were annihilated that night.
As the Japanese indiscriminately shelled and bombed Hong Kong, their armed fifth columnists became increasingly active. They attacked an AA searchlight position and incited the Chinese to riot. Transport drivers, among others, were encouraged to desert, sabotaging their vehicles before running away. Several traitors with primitive lamps “operated from a dry battery, with a small but adequate mirror, were reported signalling from the Island to the Mainland,” recorded General Maltby. “When these operators were intercepted they were shot… The morale of the civilian population remained shaky, chiefly due to rice distribution difficulties. The Chungking Government representatives had been most helpful in assisting in the maintenance of order… In the A.R.P. tunnels in certain cases armed gangs of robbers were operating. Pamphlets were dropped by the Japanese.”
On 17th December, on the same day that Zempei Masushima had chosen the landing sites on Hong Kong Island after swimming across the harbour, two Japanese launches carried their ‘peace party’ to Victoria. Sir Mark Young replied that he declined “absolutely to enter into negotiations for the surrender of Hong Kong, and takes this opportunity of notifying Lieutenant General Sakai and Vice Admiral Masaichi Mimi that he is not prepared to receive any further communications from them on the subject.”
“Jap envoys came over and said all military installations have been destroyed, no use going on fighting,” wrote Brigadier Lawson in his diary, which was lodged after the war in Wolsey Barracks, London, Ontario. “Governor told them to go back and destroy some more.”
Japanese bombers intensified their attacks; one bomb alone in a built-up area caused 150 serious civilian casualties. The long nightmare continued. “We were,” observed Gwen Dew, the young American journalist who had witnessed the first Japanese ‘peace mission’, “clay pigeons in a tiny shooting range”.
General Sakai lost patience with the Colony and reluctantly decided that he would have to invade the Island. He gave out orders accordingly: the sands of time were rapidly running out for the attackers and defenders alike.
Notes
1. File 982.013 (D3), NDHQ.
2. Report by Lt Gen. C Foulkes (CGS to the Minister of National Defence), 9.2.48, reproduced as Annex C in Vincent, C, No Reason Why, Ontario: Canada’s Wings, 1981.
3. Vincent, op. cit., p. 60.
4. Greenhous, B, “C” Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe 1941–1945, Canadian War Museum Historical Publication No. 30, 1997, p. 23.
5. Details of the Australian absentees are in Clarke, Michael, My War, self published, 1990, p. 152.
6. Naylor, Murray, Among Friends: the Scots Guards 1956–1993, London: Leo Cooper, 1995, p. 135.
7. Japan Times Weekly, 17.9.42.
8. Letter Man to author.
9. Letter Wallis to author.
10. Letter MacGregor to author.
CHAPTER 11
Triumph or Disaster:
The Japanese Landings
18th–19th December 1941
Sakai discussed his plans in Kowloon with Major General Sano, the Divisional Commander, who gave out the orders to regimental and battalion commanders. The landings would start at 10.00 p.m. on 18th December; they would all be launched against the northeast of the Island, whereas General Maltby expected the attack in the northwest.
The Japanese Division consisted of three Regiments, each equivalent to a Brigade, and each of which was to commit two of its three battalions to the attack.
Each battalion was organised on a four-company basis and was up to 1,000 men strong. It also contained a company of 12 heavy machine guns and a platoon of 70-mm support guns. Each battalion was supported by 12 75-mm field guns from the divisional artillery regiment.
The Shoji Regiment (230) was to attack 500 yards east of North Point, after embarking from west of the Kai Tak area. (See Map on pages 90–1.)
The Doi Regiment (228), following its success at the Shingmun Redoubt, was to embark from east of Kai Tak and land in the centre at Braemar.
Finally, the Tanaka Regiment (229) was to embark from the Devil’s Peak peninsula and land at Sau Ki Wan.1
Each regiment was to cross the harbour in two waves: the first in collapsible rowing boats, each of which carried 14 men. The second wave and follow-up troops were to cross by powered landing boats which would tow more assault craft. One hour was allowed for the first wave to cross. “The sunken shipping offered some concealment, but apprehension was felt that small bands of the British enemy might hide amidst the wrecks in a desperate effort to obstruct the crossing.”
The Japanese were acutely conscious that up to now their plans had not proved as successful as they wished on the Mainland. Compared to fighting against the Chinese, they had suffered considerable casualties. “Two or three British gunboats were active along the flank of our attacking unit during the offensive (on the Mainland), menacing by bombardment and obstructing our action considerably,” Colonel Tosaka recalled. “Their long range fortress artillery bombardments were extremely effective. The Japanese Army was greatly hampered, especially in moving its heavy guns. Little thought had been given to an attack on Hong Kong Island if indeed the British should entrench themselves there. In actuality the British Army did not show great resistance on the expected Gin Drinkers’ Line. However the Japanese Army at that time was thrown into considerable confusion in making adjustments to the situation and new attack preparations.”2
* * * * *
The 18th December was a cool, overcast and rather miserable day. Father F J Deloughery, the Roman Catholic Chaplain to the Canadians, who had been among the first to be bombed during his Communion service at Shamshuipo Barracks, heard confessions, administered Holy Communion and comforted the soldiers as best he could. He had spent the last week visiting the companies by day and wounded in hospital by night.
That evening he had a long chat at Wong Nei Chong Gap with Brigadier Lawson. Both were worried about the Canadian companies, several of which had not received a hot meal for at least 24 hours. Why had the administration of the battalions tended to break down already? What were the Quartermasters, Company Second in Commands, Company Quartermaster Sergeants and others doing to ensure that in the five days before the Japanese attacked the Island, they could provide, at least, hot meals and drinks to their men? It was their responsibility. The Punjabis, Royal Scots and Rajputs were largely in the very front line overlooking the harbour. Couldn’t those well behind them meet the challenge of delivering hot meals to their soldiers?
The desertion of Chinese drivers, referred to earlier, was a factor. Under the defence scheme it had been decided that the NAAFI (Navy, Army, Air Force Institutes) would open canteen services in accessible areas. (This did not remove the responsibility of battalions to feed their own.) Alternative plans for NAAFI to send mobile canteens to visit troops in their positions fell through due to the lack of transport.
The food re-supply organisation included Wenzell Brown, a Hong Kong University professor, and Mrs Gwen Priestwood. The former recorded in his memoirs that, despite his best efforts, he was unable to find any of the Canadian “food distribution centres”. Mrs Priestwood was given a brilliant yellow milk wagon with pictures of cows plastered on it, and was asked to move tobacco, arms and food between stores. With an armed escort she raced through air raids, past barbed wire, wrecked buildings, shell holes and road blocks. Eventually the van was painted a dull, inconspicuous grey; she missed the cows’ calm, imperturbable faces.
* * * * *
Between 5.00 and 6.00 p.m. about 200 Japanese were seen to be approaching the Devil’s Peak pier in the far northeast. They were fired at by the Gunners. The Japanese retaliated just before dusk with an extremely heavy bombardment of Lei Mun. The soldiers there felt sure that the Japanese attack would come in a matter of hours straight at them. They were right.
That night Brigadier Lawson realised that his position at the Wong Nei Chong Gap was much too vulnerable. He decided to move it the following morning to a less exposed area half a mile to the west on Black’s Link. A new site had already been chosen and a telegraph link had been laid to it.
In the gathering darkness, the Japanese soldiers silently entered their assault craft while Rifleman Sydney Skelton scribbled in his diary; it eventually ended up in National Defence Headquarters, Ottawa. High in the mountains above Tytam Reservoir, the Rifleman had entered in his diary ten days earlier: “Our heavy guns can be heard now. They are firing at Japanese ships. With us are the Middlesex Regiment. They are a good bunch of chaps. Two of our boys have lost their minds. Gone crazy in the head. The bombing has snapped their minds. Some have been machine-gunned from the diving Japanese planes. Sixty-five per cent of us have had to be awake at night and no one is allowed to undress.”
As Colonel Doi stood at the water’s edge as his first boats pushed off from Kai Tak into the darkness, Sydney Skelton made the penultimate entry in his diary: “Huge fires are raging in Victoria. The bombardment is still on. This one day I shall never forget. Tomorrow will tell another story.” It did.
* * * * *
Fifty-four years later in the military cemetery at Stanley, John Harris and I were attending a moving ceremony arranged by the Royal British Legion. Wreaths were laid, prayers were said. A band softly played, Oh God, our help in ages past… We stood on the grass amidst the graves and flowers. Glancing to my side, I saw the grave closest to me. I read the name upon it – Rifleman S Skelton. My reaction? It was no sense of horror. Having become so familiar with the short entries in his diary over the years, I looked around me – to gather my thoughts, perhaps. I then looked at my friends on my left and right; their heads were bowed for we were praying for all those buried there. I looked at the blue sky, and then again at Sydney’s grave. He had come a long way from Canada, “the land of the free… ”. Even now, ten years on, I feel that he had found an eternal peace there – in a ‘foreign field’, it is true, but a more beautiful well-kept spot it would be hard to find. He is remembered now, in these pages. Indeed, to use the words familiar to all of us “… At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.” So remember Rifleman Sydney Skelton. Remember also the other 500 Canadians who were killed, died of wounds or sickness or were reported missing.3
* * * * *
At 7.00 p.m. on the 18th, the 2nd Battalion 228 Regiment in groups of 14 silently embarked in the small collapsible assault craft. Colonel Doi climbed on a large barge which carried 80 officers and men of his tactical HQ.
The night was exceptionally dark. The sky was overcast with frequent showers of rain. Thick black smoke was being blown across the harbour from the burning oil tanks at North Point.
Colonel Doi gave the following account: “Halfway across the harbour, our attempt had gone undetected because the grounded ships concealed our move. But time and again the water was lit as brightly as broad daylight by the flare of burning heavy oil in the storage tanks on the opposite shore. Searchlight beams from Lyemun Point also played on the harbour. Streams of enemy machine-gun fire from the opposite shore and Lyemun Point slowed the boats, and since they failed to take a straight course, units were either mixed up or separated while they were still in the water. The resultant confusion made it almost impossible to maintain complete command of the battalion. Some boats had their oars broken and men rowed with their entrenching shovels. When exposed to enemy fire on the water, which offers no shelter, it is absolutely useless to turn the boats away from the direction of enemy fire, but perhaps it is only normal human psychology to react that way.
“It was a spectacular and grim crossing, but for the most part men went ashore on schedule. The assault boat carrying my leading battalion commander reached the spot (to the east of Braemar Point near the Taikoo Docks) where an enemy pill-box was located. He was wounded. The situation ashore was such that the squad leaders didn’t know the whereabouts of platoon leaders and the latter in turn did not know the position of company commanders. It was very difficult to maintain the battalion under complete command. The only chance under the circumstances was for the men, on reaching the shore in their assault boats, to form up as a group and charge into the enemy immediately.”
As the first wave approached the Island, they signalled to the second, still at Kai Tak, to start their crossing: “The harbour was still being illuminated by the searchlights and the flare of the burning oil. The enemy machine-gun fire was all the more intense. I, the Regimental Commander, led the 1st Battalion in the crossing. When we landed I found a wire net fence, something like the one ordinarily found around a tennis court. It blocked our advance inland. Unlike ordinary wire entanglements, the net could not be cut by wire cutters, and we spent some time climbing over it with a ladder which we had brought with us.
“Enemy machine-gun fire was as intense as ever. Our second wave was forced to lie prone at the water’s edge for a time after the landing. The anti-tank Company lost so many men that only one gun could be manned. It took three hours for the commander of the 1st Battalion to regain complete control of his battalion. The main reason for the delay in restoring command was that our shouting at the time of landing invited the enemy fire. Also runners who were dispatched failed to establish contact because of rampaging enemy Bren carriers. The only alternative was to join up and regroup by a slow process of communicating from one adjoining unit to another.” Their objectives were Jardine’s Lookout and beyond to Wong Nei Chong Gap.
On each side of Colonel Doi the first waves of the flanking regiments pushed inland. Colonel Shoji’s 230 Regiment was soon in considerable confusion among several concrete pill-boxes half a mile to the west at North Point. Shoji remained on the shore as his companies moved towards their objective – Mount Nicholson to the west of the Gap. The leading platoons quickly became pinned down by artillery fire.
On the extreme east, Colonel Tanaka’s 229 Regiment had a shorter crossing and landed between Sau Ki Wan and Lyemun Fort. They too headed rapidly inland with Mount Parker as one of their objectives.
The battalions, once ashore, were ordered to bypass opposition, secure the high ground well inland, and take the commanding features of Mount Parker, Mount Butler, Jardine’s Lookout and Wong Nei Chong Gap. On the following night – the 19th/20th of December, they were to attack west and southwest to capture Mount Nicholson and Repulse Bay. The three battalions not committed to the invasion were to remain in Kowloon to garrison the City and provide subsequent reinforcements.
No specific orders were issued regarding the disposal of prisoners.
* * * * *
“The landing of the enemy at North Point and Lyemun at approximately 20.30 hours appears to have been simultaneous and was closely followed by landings at Aldrich Bay, Taikoo Docks and the Sugar Refinery Wharf,” was the entry in the Fortress HQ War Diary Preliminary Summary.4
The next few hours were vital if Hong Kong Island was to be held. Or had General Maltby already left it too late? As already stated, 200 Japanese had been seen several hours earlier approaching the water’s edge from the Devil’s Peak peninsula – men of Colonel Tanaka’s No. 229 Regiment. Yet Maltby still clung to the belief that it was Victoria which was to be attacked from Kowloon. So he did not react to the visible threat. The British post-war Official History would criticise him for this error.
When it was obvious that the enemy was landing, one Rajput reserve company was moved forward and three Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC) armoured cars were sent to Brigadier Wallis’s HQ as a mobile reserve. At midnight two Canadian platoons of the Royal Rifles with artillery support tried to recapture the Sai Wan position but were unsuccessful. By now the Rajputs manning the pill-boxes on the shore line had all been overwhelmed or bypassed. Could Brigadier Lawson have committed the Royal Scots to counter-attack? Where were his ‘flying columns’ of the Winnipeg Grenadiers? Had these units been speedily despatched, the roads were still reasonably clear of debris but the vehicles carrying such a force would have been extremely vulnerable. In any event, the Japanese were deploying inland across country, led by fifth column guides, en route for the mountainous, inaccessible areas of Mount Parker, Mount Butler and Jardine’s Lookout, which lay between the two Brigade HQs and overlooked the Wong Nei Chong Gap.
At about 4.00 a.m. on 19th December Colonel Shoji gave out fresh orders to his two leading battalion commanders: his 2nd Battalion was to attack east through the Lookout towards the five-road junction at the Gap. The 3rd Battalion was to attack to the right and capture the north slope of Mount Nicholson beyond the Gap. The Japanese had clearly advanced with astonishing speed.
Jardine’s Lookout had initially been held by only two HKVDC platoons. Realising their vulnerability, Brigadier Lawson had committed at 2.00 a.m. three platoons of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, one of the ‘flying columns’, to reinforce the Volunteers. Lieutenant S A Birkett found the ascent up to the Lookout impossible in rain and darkness; he decided to wait until daybreak. The leading Japanese patrols and main body close behind, under a barrage of grenades, swept the Volunteers from their positions.
Brigadier Lawson sent for his only other reserve – A Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers at Little Hong Kong. He briefed the Company Commander, Major A B Gresham, at the Wong Nei Chong Gap, ordering him to move across Jardine’s Lookout to secure the massive Mount Butler. Neither Maltby nor Lawson appreciated that the Japanese had several thousand troops on the high ground moving fast towards the Gap. Nevertheless A Company reached Mount Butler where they forced at the point of the bayonet scattered Japanese sections to withdraw.
Company Sergeant Major J R Osborn personally led the assault on the mountain and held it for three hours until the position became untenable due to three companies of the Japanese being in the area. When Major Gresham ordered a partial withdrawal, Osborn alone engaged the enemy, enabling the other Canadians to rejoin the Company. He then had to run the gauntlet of heavy rifle and machine-gun fire to get back himself. He had been in tight corners before. He was a lean, granite-jawed ex-able seaman, aged 41. Born in Norfolk, he had joined the RNVR and fought in the Battle of Jutland. After farming in Saskatchewan and working on the railroad in Manitoba, he had enlisted in the Winnipeg Grenadiers in 1933. The Battalion, although militia, had a small nucleus of regular NCOs.
During the afternoon the Company continued to be cut off from the rest of the Battalion. The enemy surrounded them, throwing grenades. Sergeant W J Pugsley wrote afterwards: “CSM Osborn and I were discussing what was to be done now, when a grenade dropped beside him. He yelled at me and gave me a shove and I rolled down the hill. He rolled over onto the grenade and was killed. I firmly believe he did this on purpose and by his action saved the lives of myself and at least six other men who were in our group.” Corporal W A Hall also saw the grenade fall in their midst. “CSM Osborn on my right threw himself on it. Speaking for myself and the rest of the men who are still alive today, it is hard to say in words the admiration which we have for his gallant sacrifice.”
CSM Osborn was certainly an inspiring example of courage. In his death he displayed the highest quality of heroism and self-sacrifice. Shortly afterwards, the Japanese rushed the position and took the survivors prisoner.
A different kind of unique courage was shown earlier that morning by 80 elderly men of the Volunteers, called Hughesiliers after their founder. They had been given the sedentary role of preventing sabotage of the electrical plant at the North Point power station. When Colonel Shoji’s most western battalion stormed ashore, the Hughesiliers found themselves in the very front line. A Middlesex platoon of 24 men reinforced them, despite the three vehicles carrying them forward being hit. Forty-four other Volunteers linked up with them, too. Even so, the Japanese surrounded the exhausted defenders, who decided to fight their way out after being under concentrated attack for 18 hours.
A derelict bus in the King’s Road outside offered some cover. Private ‘Tam’ Pearce, aged 67, the Chairman of the prestigious J D Hutchison & Co. and Secretary of the Jockey Club, told Major the Hon. J J Paterson, the Chairman of Jardine, Matheson & Co. and the senior member of the Legislative Council, that he would as soon be killed under a bus as roasted alive inside the burning power station, and “at the time there seemed to be quite a bit in what he said – not much choice either way”. Five men reached the bus, but all became casualties, one being killed, and were captured with the others.
The Hughesiliers’ battle was remarkable, not only because the elderly veterans had sought action rather than safety, but also because they had won time for fresh defences to be established in their rear. Maltby was full of praise for them. Their courage was typical of most who fought on in isolated positions long after there was no hope of relief or reinforcements. Bullet-scarred, impersonal pill-boxes hidden by overgrown vegetation in long forgotten gullies are today a mute reminder in Hong Kong of other less celebrated actions. The long list of ‘missing in action’ is indicative of their courage. All too often there was no survivor, and so there is no possibility of recording their no less gallant deeds.
* * * * *
By about 6.00 a.m. on the 19th, the Japanese were closing fast on Wong Nei Chong Gap. Photograph No. 6 shows Brigadier Lawson’s Brigade HQ on the road which lay between Happy Valley and the road junction above which was the police station, marked on the photograph. Beyond, the road led to Repulse Bay. Also in the photograph are shelters held by D Company Winnipeg Grenadiers (or D Company HQ and two platoons to be precise).
At 6.30 a.m. a party of 70 British and 70 Chinese soldiers of the Royal Engineers under Lieutenant Colonel R G Lamb arrived as reinforcements at the Gap and reported that the area was under heavy mortar and machine-gun fire. An hour later, states the Fortress War Diary, A Company Royal Scots left Wanchai Gap in trucks and then on foot to counter-attack the Japanese but was pinned down by heavy fire from Jardine’s Lookout. A few of the Royal Scots succeeded in fighting their way forward and joined the Brigadier.
Lawson had, as said earlier, placed his Brigade Headquarters on the vital ground. He was clearly now in the very front line while the Winnipeg Grenadiers, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel J L R Sutcliffe, were well over a mile behind it, to the west, a reversal of the normal arrangement.
“Why did Lawson move so far forward?… We shall never know why he virtually abdicated his responsibility as Brigade Commander and chose to act instead as a Company Commander. Did he recognise the desperate need to hold the Gap, and believe that the sight of their Brigadier in the front line would hearten his men?” ponders Brereton Greenhous of Canada’s Directorate of History.5 “Whatever his reasoning, his action was a mistake.”
Lawson telephoned Brigadier Wallis at Tytam Gap and “told me his HQ was being threatened and could I try and put in a counter attack to relieve the pressure. I managed to collect a small force of Volunteers and artillery personnel under a Gunner officer, but Lawson was some two miles away over mountainous country,” recalled Wallis. “This counter attack never got further than the lower slopes of Mount Parker. A little later he called me again and said his HQ was almost surrounded and that he and his staff were going outside to fight it out, rather than be killed inside like rats. I told him of the failure of the counter attack.”6
Brigadier Lawson also appealed for help from Sutcliffe of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, and then, at 10.00 a.m. he told Maltby that the enemy was firing on his shelter at point blank range. Lawson’s Brigade Major, C A Lyndon, told Fortress HQ that the Headquarters was being evacuated to Black’s Link. It was arranged that D Company Winnipeg Grenadiers would give covering fire. The Brigade telephone exchange was destroyed and the HQ totally abandoned.
Some of the Winnipeg Grenadiers watched Lawson and others run for cover. Japanese machine gunners also caught sight of him in his distinctive Brigadier’s uniform. Sergeant R Manchester, 100 yards away, saw him stagger and fall. The Japanese continued to fire into the small, broken group.
Four days later Colonel Shoji received reports of the discovery of Lawson’s body. The Japanese medical officer, Captain Kimura, wrapped the dead Brigadier, the former commander of the Canadian Forces, in the blanket of Lieutenant Okada, the nearest Japanese Company Commander. “He had died of a wound to the right leg and loss of blood,” wrote Shoji. “I ordered the temporary burial of the officer on the battle ground on which he had died so heroically.”
Notes
1. The Japanese plans and reports quoted in this and subsequent chapters are taken from personal accounts and interrogation reports of Lt Gen. Ito Takeo in July 1947; Maj. Gen. Shoji Toshishige in November 1946 to Capt. E C Watson; Maj. Gen. Tanaka in January/February 1947. All these accounts are in NDHQ as are Col. Doi Teihichi’s notes and statements.
2. Statement taken by GHQ Far East Comd M 1 SECGS, NDHQ.
3. The figures quoted are taken from the War Office report on operations in Hong Kong, 8th–25th December, in the Supplement to The London Gazette dated 27.1.48. The figures, the Supplement states, are approximate.
4. The diary is undated, typed on Army Form C 2118, marked Copy No. 3, headed ‘Preliminary Summary’, and has numerous additional references and some notes added in manuscript.
5. Greenhous, B, “C” Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe 1941–1945, Canadian War Museum Historical Publication No. 30, 1997, p. 86.
6. Letter Wallis to author, 21.8.77.
CHAPTER 12
Hell’s Destruction
19th–20th December 1941
By 10.00 a.m. on 19th December, the Japanese were in possession of much of the high ground in the east of the Island, including most of Jardine’s Lookout, the lower slopes of Mount Butler and the northern slopes of Mount Parker. They were fanning out towards Leighton Hill, and the Wanchai which contained the most filthy overcrowded slums in Hong Kong.
Major General Maltby learnt from Brigadier Wallis that the Royal Rifles were having immense difficulty in holding their positions in the northeast. C Company’s war diary recorded on 19th December: “No one had had a hot meal for five days owing to the destruction of the cooking arrangements. They had been doing continuous manning for over a week with no chance to sleep but in weapon pits. Some would fall down in the roadway and go to sleep. It took several shakes to get them going again.”1 The breakdown of the feeding arrangements, already commented upon, was extraordinary considering that for four of those five days the Japanese were on the other side of the harbour still on the Mainland. The “continuous manning” was also unfortunate. The inference that men in weapon pits could get no sleep is implausible because those fighting in northwest Europe or Italy, when close to the enemy, invariably slept in the bottom of their slit trenches. (Those who slept in the open would be vulnerable to enemy artillery, mortars and fighting patrols.)
After Colonel Tanaka’s 229 Regiment had landed at Sau Ki Wan and infiltrated through the Rajputs, it had come up against C Company of the Royal Rifles commanded by Major W A Bishop. The enemy greatly outnumbered the Canadians. Bishop withdrew his force to prevent Tanaka’s men breaking through to Tytam Gap. Even so, the Company had gone into action at 10.00 p.m. on 18th December with five officers and 172 men, whereas when the roll was called 18 hours later, only four officers and 64 men were present, their history tells us.
Brigadier Wallis had not expected the withdrawal. He began to realise that the Battalion was simply not trained for war. This is not surprising because, as already noted, it had come from coast defence duties where “attempts at anything more complicated than section or platoon tactics were abandoned”.
At 10.00 a.m. on the 19th, Maltby “conferred with Brigadier Wallis about the stabilisation of the position,” as Maltby put it. There was the grave danger that if the enemy staged a serious attack on the combined Headquarters of Wallis’s East Brigade HQ and the adjacent Royal Artillery HQ, they would probably suffer the same fate as Lawson’s HQ and his co-located artillery personnel. Not only would these HQs be lost, but also the Battalion Headquarters of the Royal Rifles.
The Japanese could then sweep on south, thereby “cutting off all the troops in the area Collinson Battery–d’Aguilar Peninsula included in which were the wireless personnel of the Civil Government at d’Aguilar wireless station,” continues Maltby. “Accordingly I authorised Brigadier Wallis to withdraw his HQ to the Stonehill Company HQ.”
Almost everyone who has ever written a book about Hong Kong over the last 60 years has severely criticised Maltby and Wallis for moving south, thereby enabling the enemy to penetrate between the two Brigades, splitting the defences. The critics, or “armchair warriors” as Colonel David Fanshawe put it earlier, have boldly announced that Wallis should instead have moved due west to Wong Nei Chong Gap to link up with West Brigade. These critics have failed to appreciate that up to six strong, battle-hardened battalions of Japanese were already between the two Brigades; we have seen how Lawson’s Brigade HQ had already been wiped out there; the Royal Scots’ determined counter attack towards the Gap had failed, as had Wallis’s earlier attempt to move west to relieve Lawson.
Virtually all the critics have another thing in common: they have not visited Hong Kong, let alone ‘walked the ground’ to appreciate the difficulties which exhausted, ill-trained troops, unfit after a long sea voyage from Vancouver, with no communications, would have in moving west across rugged, mountainous terrain split by precipitous valleys, nullahs and gullies. May I express the hope, with genuine humility, that those who plan to write about the battle for Hong Kong in the future first visit all the battlefields, as I have done on over a dozen occasions? (The military cemeteries should be visited, too.)
* * * * *
Maltby planned that Wallis’s East Brigade should carry out “offensive operations from the area of Red Hill and the Tytam Reservoirs and connecting up with Wong Nei Chong Gap when cleared… or to operate via Repulse Bay area in order to link up with West Brigade.”
Since the two Brigades were now split, we will follow the fortunes of West Brigade first, before returning to Wallis’s Brigade in the south.
* * * * *
At 1.30 p.m. on 19th December General Maltby issued orders to Western Brigade for a general advance to commence 90 minutes later. 2/14 Punjabis were to attack east towards North Point to relieve the Hughesiliers at the power station. Lieutenant Colonel G R Kidd, commanding the Punjabis, was already heavily engaged to the east of Leighton Hill with two companies; the orders never reached him. This left the Royal Scots, who were ordered to fight south to recapture Jardine’s Lookout and the Wong Nei Chong Gap. Eight field guns were promised for the attack but none materialised. There was too little time for proper reconnaissance, the coordination of all arms, or adequate briefings of the men.
A composite force of HQ and B Companies commanded by Captain Douglas Ford advanced via the south of Mount Nicholson, while C Company was ordered to attack the southwest side of Jardine’s Lookout with Captain Pinkerton’s D Company on its left. However, Pinkerton was suddenly told, much to his surprise, to attack the Gap immediately as it was apparently lightly held. As a result some trucks with Vickers machine guns mounted on them and the remaining three carriers led the advance. The carriers were open-topped, armour-plated caterpillar tracked vehicles armed with a light machine gun.
They reached the point about 200 yards north of the Gap where Captain K J Campbell’s A Company had been ambushed earlier that morning, resulting in all the officers being killed or wounded and casualties reducing it from 76 to 15.
Pinkerton’s D Company found the way blocked by a tangled mess of burnt-out vehicles and corpses. “Suddenly without any warning whatsoever,” wrote one of his men, “the Japs brought down on top of us everything they had.” A heavy mortar bomb hit the first carrier killing Captain A M S Slater-Brown and the Battalion Intelligence Officer. D Company, on foot behind the vehicles, crouched in the ditches and scrub alongside the road. “If one of us moved a hand, it brought down a tornado of lead on top of us from Jardine’s Lookout.” The Japanese were firing from pill-boxes captured earlier from the Volunteers.
Lieutenant Colonel White ordered his Royal Scots Companies to halt and wait until darkness. When night fell, the three Companies, Ford’s composite one, C and D, advanced. Pinkerton stormed through the Gap and reached the steps of the police station shown on the left of photograph No. 6. 2nd Lieutenant J A Ford found him seriously wounded on the steps and carried him back to safety. A second battalion attack was no more successful; the leading platoon commander, A K MacKenzie, was blinded while V R Gordon was so severely wounded he died later. Captain Ford decided “to withdraw all Royal Scots from a hopeless position in which complete annihilation would be certain with the coming of daylight. Yet another ‘gamble’ had failed, though not for any lack of tenacity in those engaged.”2 During the fighting on the 19th, four Royal Scots officers and 20 soldiers were killed and four officers and 48 soldiers were wounded.
Thereafter the Battalion was withdrawn to positions on Mount Nicholson, from where it could overlook the Gap and prevent any movement to the west.
The Japanese were finding the fighting more difficult than they had anticipated. The six battalions ashore by dawn on the 19th had become uncoordinated due to the initial Rajput resistance and the unfamiliarity of the ground. Colonel Shoji’s 3rd Battalion, short of ammunition, had suffered the heaviest casualties and was still unable to capture the Gap, where D Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers was holding out. Shoji sent his apologies to the Divisional Commander at Tai Koo Docks. Colonel Doi’s left battalion had been delayed by heavy artillery fire; many of the Japanese wounded had not been evacuated because the medical units had not arrived. The dying and wounded of all combatants were lying abandoned in the rain and darkness.
* * * * *
The map of Hong Kong Island shows the Allied front line on 19th December. It ran south of Causeway Bay to Mount Nicholson and on towards Deep Water Bay and was held by the Middlesex, Volunteers, Royal Scots and Punjabis.
In the south, Brigadier Wallis, with the Royal Rifles, Middlesex, Volunteers and Gunners, was holding the line from Repulse Bay to the east.
* * * * *
The Gloucester arcade in the centre of Victoria was packed day and night by Chinese sheltering on the cold concrete. Trash and ruin littered the streets, crumbled stone blocked the pavements. Fifth columnists, gangsters and thieves were busily at work, looting, murdering and sniping, adding to the chaos as best they could.
Government stocks of rice were being sold in Victoria at ten cents-worth per person. Chinese University students tried to keep the crowds in orderly lines.
Air raid sirens screamed while the heavy rumble of guns gradually became louder. Numb despair crept over Europeans and Chinese alike. Most British families thought it too dangerous to stay in their houses; those who could fled to the leading hotels, although their servants were loath to see them go. All were now committed to war work. Americans and other foreigners had joined one or other of the various Volunteer Defence Auxiliary services. Nurses, air raid wardens, food and transport workers grimly stood to their posts.
* * * * *
Ten days earlier it had all been very different. The Americans had entered the war; the Chinese were said to be advancing south to relieve the Colony; encouraging reports were coming from the Mainland; a string of stirring, optimistic messages from Churchill, Brooke-Popham, Sir Mark Young, Maltby and others were eagerly relayed around the Crown Colony.
“The city carried on as usual,” recalls John Harris of the Royal Engineers. “The shops and offices were all open. It was as if Hong Kong for centuries had seen these flaps before. The story still prevailed that the Japanese could neither move nor see at night! The very first morning that the enemy bombed Kai Tak, my watch broke so I went in uniform into Victoria, to Lane Crawford, the Asprey’s of Hong Kong, to replace it. The staff there were in morning coats. The head of the department, an Englishman, asked me why I had chosen a cheap replacement. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘You can have any watch in the shop you like. And there’s no need to pay.’ Then he added the prophetic words, ‘None of our watches will be here in a few weeks’ time.’ At least one man knew what was going on; they were all looted.
“Then I drove back in my Morris car to my position at the Dairy Farm near Mount Davis in the northwest of the Island.
“My job, as already related,” (continues John Harris), “was to carry out engineering tasks of any description, with about a dozen others, in the northwest – keeping the water pumps going, repairing bomb damaged equipment, keeping the roads partly destroyed by shells open and so on.
“I particularly remember the night of 18th December. It was exceptionally dark; the sky was overcast, with frequent showers of rain. Thick black smoke was blown across the harbour from the burning oil tanks at North Point which the Japanese artillery had set alight to obscure their crossing. Occasionally there was a brilliant red flash across the sky as the enemy hit another strategic point, which burnt fiercely. It was like daylight for a minute; I could almost read from the glow.
“I was very close to Mount Davis, the Royal Artillery West Fire Command Headquarters, with its massive 9.2-inch guns, its Fire Command Post, Fortress and Battery Observation Posts, Plotting Rooms, encoder and much else. Learning later of the heavy casualties inflicted on the enemy by our artillery, I took great pride in their success, not that I really knew what was going on,” remembers John Harris.
The Mount Davis gun position was clearly a key enemy objective to destroy at the first opportunity. At 4.00 p.m. on 13th December, the position was heavily shelled. The battery’s top gun, which had been particularly useful for landwards firing, was hit by a dud shell which damaged the inside of the bore; if the gauge – a standard measure to which things must conform – would not pass, then a shell could not be fired.3
“Fortunately about one in three of the Japanese shells, throughout the battle for Hong Kong, failed to explode. A 9-inch shell had entered the Fortress HQ plotting room – the holy of holies – and did not go off. Eventually the shell was dislodged. Very plainly on the case were stamped the words ‘Woolwich Arsenal, 1908’.
“On 14th December I could see that Mount Davis was being heavily shelled: the anti-aircraft gun site was severely damaged and nine men killed. One gun was demolished and the other could only fire over open sights with no assistance from height or range finding instruments,” continues John Harris.
“Two days later the Mount Davis Battery Plotting Room was hit by another dud: it worked its way through a ventilation shaft and finished up covering the 20 men there with dust and debris, all lucky to be alive. Forty-eight hours later all communications with Royal Artillery Central at the Wong Nei Chong Gap were cut when Brigadier Lawson’s HQ was overrun. Major G E S Proes was amongst the many Gunners killed there. (Some 40 years later Oliver Lindsay took Proes’s son to the precise spot: the tragedy and sorrow can be imagined.) Attempts were made at Wong Nei Chong Gap to bring artillery fire onto the Japanese whom the Royal Scots were attacking but it proved impossible to support them with effective fire owing to the mountainous terrain.
“In due course the Mount Davis gun position was so heavily bombed all the guns were put out of action and the Gunners were swept up in the fighting elsewhere. This is typical of what happened to other artillery locations.
“During this period, I and the few other Sappers with me all slept as best we could on the concrete Dairy Farm floors by day in order to spend each night patrolling between Mount Davis and the Naval Base at Aberdeen. Our mission was to prevent the Japanese landing on the northwest shoreline and infiltrating through our lines. They had already tried an unsuccessful landing on Aberdeen Island,” recalls John Harris.
“The Winnipeg Grenadiers, who had been there, and many Royal Navy personnel from their base, had all been committed to the battles to the east, and so our rather forlorn Royal Engineer patrol seemed to be the only one patrolling the area. The road running through the Wong Nei Chong Gap and centre of the Island was held by the Japanese, making the busy road we patrolled in the west important, for it was now the only one connecting the south of the Island – Stanley and Repulse Bay – with the north – Victoria and the Wanchai.
“On 19th December, after receiving a lot of contradictory orders, about ten of us under command of Major Parsons were ordered to climb the hills above Aberdeen, leaving our transport there. An officer told us to lie in a broad line amongst the scrub and rocks there. Our position gave no protection from the continuous shelling. We could see several fires and parts of the road which led from Repulse Bay to the Wong Nei Chong Gap. Clouds descended upon us from Victoria Peak; it was a miserable cold day. I felt helpless. I reflected on my life for I could see no way that I could survive the next few hours.
“At 6.00 p.m. my group was ordered to move to the Ridge which lies just south of the Gap. (It is marked on the map of Hong Kong Island and a photograph of the Ridge is at No. 7.) There were about five big houses there, all in a state of defence. It was under occasional heavy mortar bombardment because it was in a fairly important place, blocking any Japanese approach from the Gap.
“After a two-hour hard march we reached the Ridge and found up to 200 people running and firing in all directions. Some Japanese fired back from a catchwater 100 feet above us, inflicting some casualties. The position was being strengthened by barricades connecting one house to another and by stragglers, isolated from their units, drifting in.
“I saw quite clearly the attack on the Wong Nei Chong Gap police station, part of which was on fire. In the darkness amidst the chaos we didn’t know what to do. I was carrying a large, heavy revolver which was awkward to manage and did not fill me with confidence. You must remember that we Sappers were not really intended to act as infantry; we were cold, wet and had had no food since early morning. To our relief the officer in charge, Lieutenant Colonel E C Frederick of the Royal Army Service Corps, told us that the Ridge was full and ordered us to ‘get out’ and return to the Dairy Farm and man the shoreline below it. We retraced our footsteps back down the narrow road cut through the rock, under cover of the rocks on the north side of the road, and eventually picked up our transport at Aberdeen; all the buildings were without light and there was no movement in the streets. We reached the Dairy Farm at about 2 a.m., lay down on the concrete floor and fell asleep instantly.
“I will describe what happened at the Ridge after we had gone because it was typical of the muddle which was going on at the Repulse Bay Hotel and elsewhere.
“Lieutenant Colonel R A P Macpherson had no confidence in the Ridge’s defences and ordered a mixed group of Royal Navy and RASC to leave. On moving south they came across two crashed trucks which had been ambushed. The Japanese were beneath the vehicles firing at the group, some of whom returned to the Ridge. ‘We were reduced to drinking water from the fire-buckets and what rain water we could catch,’ reported Captain A H Potts.4 ‘The Japs had cut off the water supply. The stench was awful because the lavatories could not be flushed, and some of our foolish troops continued to use them instead of going outside.’ Night came with pouring rain. The following morning, Sunday 21st December, was brighter. The Japanese had grown so confident that they had erected a tent within sight of the Ridge; their reconnaissance aircraft circled overhead. On Mount Nicholson they had spread out their flags to mark their positions.
“That afternoon Major C A Young of the Royal Rifles arrived, amidst cheers, at the Ridge with A Company after an unsuccessful attempt to break through to the Gap from Repulse Bay. Towards dusk two ambulances made the perilous run to evacuate wounded but the Japanese fired on them. Even so, after dark they were removed, apart from Macpherson who refused to leave despite himself being wounded.
“The telephones were still largely working; Macpherson was told by Maltby that he could abandon the position. Messages were relayed to Repulse Bay in French in case the Japanese were listening.
“The enemy decided to assault and surrounded the buildings, losing men in the process. Macpherson decided to surrender and went out with a white flag but was shot at so returned indoors. Captain Strellett of the Volunteers waved a white sheet fixed to a handle. He could feel the bullets hitting it so left the flag by a window. Macpherson went outside to hail the Japanese but fell wounded a second time. Fortunately some did succeed in escaping through a nullah later that night.”
A Company of the Royal Rifles remained at another house called Altamira on the other side of the road. Major Young remembers that “The enemy closed in on us but we held them off for three hours until darkness came. I had the men remove their noisy boots, and we cut our way through 28 barbed wire entanglements trying to reach the Repulse Bay Hotel. I told the Company that from then on it was each man for himself and to filter through in small parties; it was almost daylight so we had to hide among rocks until the following night. Eventually four parties started out, each under an officer. Two of these officers were later found with their hands tied behind their backs – killed by bayonet wounds.”
The Japanese hunted down those who had left the Ridge and other areas. One British officer was about to be executed when a Japanese noticed that he was wearing the First World War Victory Medal, which they had also received. “Ah! Japanese decoration! Let him go,” they cried.
The prisoners were taken to Eucliffe, a Chinese millionaire’s castle on the north shore of Repulse Bay. Having been beaten up by rifle butts, their hands were tightly bound behind their backs and they were prodded forward with bayonets to the edge of the cliff. They were then forced to sit facing the sea with their feet dangling over the edge. “We knew that we were going to be shot because on top of the bank were pools of blood and at the bottom of the cliff there were dozens of bodies,” stated Company Sergeant Major Hamlon of the Royal Rifles at the post-war War Crimes Trial. “It was evident that they had been shot on top of the cliff and fallen down. Then a firing squad came forward and we were all shot. Owing to the fact that I turned my head to the left as I was being fired at, the bullet passed through my neck and came out of my right cheek. I did not lose consciousness and the force of the bullet hitting me knocked me free from the others and I rolled down the cliff.” He lay at the cliff’s foot bleeding all day until dark when he moved “a mess of blood” into a dank cave where he remained shivering as Japanese sentries patrolled above.
Later 54 bodies were found in the area. Many had been shot, others bayoneted to death and the rest beheaded.
The Japanese were to commit other horrifying atrocities elsewhere.
Notes
1. Garneau, Grant, 1st Battalion The Royal Rifles of Canada, Bishop’s University, 1971, p. 90.
2. Muir, A, The First of Foot, Edinburgh: The Royal Scots History Committee, 1961, p. 71.
3. Rollo, Denis, The Guns and Gunners of Hong Kong, The Gunners’ Roll of Hong Kong, 1991, p. 132.
4. Luff, John, ‘The Hidden Years’, South China Morning Post, 1967, pp. 99–105.
CHAPTER 13
Slaughter and Manoeuvre:
The Japanese Advance
West and South
20th-24th December 1941
By dawn on 20th December Western Brigade was holding an ill-defined and confused line. In the north was Z Company of the Middlesex at Leighton Hill with Rajput survivors. The Royal Scots held the centre including part of Mount Nicholson. D Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, isolated and unsupported, were still hanging on at the Wong Nei Chong Gap. The line then swung south through Little Hong Kong and Shouson Hill. Most of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, less D Company, had withdrawn to reorganise on the slopes of Mount Cameron.
That morning the Japanese began to force their way west, first in the direction of the Naval Base at Aberdeen. Meanwhile, they continued to ferry troops across the harbour from Kowloon. The British shelled the likely crossing places, but direct observation of the landing points was now impossible.
Brigadier A Peffers, Maltby’s senior staff officer, tried to encourage Lieutenant Colonel Sutcliffe commanding the Winnipeg Grenadiers, who had been ordered that night to clear all Mount Nicholson. The Battalion “had earlier withdrawn from its position somewhat precipitately. I spoke to Sutcliffe. He seemed tired, discouraged and distressed, saying his men were exhausted, as indeed they and everyone else were,” Peffers stated. “I told him he could have six hours rest and that his Battalion must be ready after that to take its place again in the line. It did so and put up a grand show in the final days.”1
Maltby’s staff officers in the Fortress HQ battlebox were getting equally exhausted. The General Staff Officer Grade 1 (GSO1) there was Colonel L A Newnham MC, the former Commanding Officer of the Middlesex Battalion. He had a long record of outstanding service; in the First World War he had been twice wounded and later served in Egypt, the Rhineland and Bermuda. “Colonel Newnham was constantly everywhere seeing for himself what was happening,” recalls a Warrant Officer of the Middlesex who was aware that Newnham had visited Wallis up on the Mainland during the fighting there. “He was very reserved and conscientious, a strict teetotaller, non-smoker and a man who kept himself fit with golf and tennis under normal conditions. A first-class soldier, in fact,” wrote Captain Freddie Guest in his book, Escape from the Bloodied Sun.2 Guest came across him in the battlebox; Newnham “had been at it for five days and nights without a minute’s rest and was practically out on his feet. He simply refused to let up and the General was distinctly worried about him,” recalled Guest, who offered Newnham a light ale. He drank it reluctantly, being a teetotaller, looked surprised and immediately flopped into a chair and was asleep. Guest had laced the drink with a stiff measure of neat whisky!
The temptation for Maltby’s staff officers in Fortress HQ to survive the bitter fighting by remaining in total safety at their posts 20 feet underground was resisted by one and all.
On the 20th Major Charles Boxer took a staff car and drove, presumably by the western road patrolled by John Harris, to the Repulse Bay Hotel. He found that the celebrated cocktail bar had become an emergency hospital filled by many wounded, including sailors from the abandoned destroyer Thracian, which had been heavily damaged and deliberately grounded.
Boxer saw a company of Punjabis falling back in disorder after trying to attack Japanese Gunners on Brick Hill, to the southwest of the Ridge. The Company’s officers had all become casualties. Impulsively, Boxer tried to lead them out of a gully but was shot in the back by a sniper. Boxer’s biographer states he was wounded near Brick Hill, but this action could have taken place farther northeast. He lay seriously wounded for hours before he was rushed to a hospital’s morgue.
Others on Maltby’s staff who became casualties included Captain T M Pardoe, a brilliant Chinese and Japanese linguist; he was killed by a shell when visiting units. Major G E Neve with two other staff officers had been ambushed when on a reconnaissance. As they got out of the car grenades were thrown at them; Neve died a few days later.
These losses were irreplaceable and further increased both the strain in Fortress HQ and the difficulties of others trying to deal with them. Brigadier Wallis felt, justifiably or not, that they didn’t trust his reports and that the HQ underestimated the problems, which led to piecemeal attacks and failure.
Fortress HQ was completely out of touch on one vital matter: what had happened to Brigadier Lawson? No new Brigade Commander had been appointed after he had closed down his HQ at the Gap. As a result, there were no proper orders given for coordinated counter-attacks, and they were indeed largely piecemeal. This was particularly unfortunate because many sailors and airmen, for example, were being sent to the front line although, like John Harris, they had received no training in infantry tactics. At last on the 20th Colonel H B Rose MC commanding the Volunteers was appointed to succeed Lawson.
One group which was holding out with great tenacity was D Company of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, still at the Gap close to where Lawson had been killed. Padre U Laite did his best to sustain the courage of the exhausted Canadians. Throughout each day and night this United Church Chaplain cared for the wounded in the kitchen shelter between the trenches. “The position was being fired upon from all sides. The main road running through the position was cluttered for hundreds of feet each way with abandoned trucks and cars,” recalls Captain H Bush. “The Japanese were using mortars and hand grenades quite heavily. Casualties were steadily mounting, but at the same time reinforcements were trickling in, so that at the end of the day, while the killed and wounded were 25, the effective fighting strength was about the same.”
Protecting the eastern approaches to Victoria was Z Company and Battalion HQ of the Middlesex on Leighton Hill. The other Middlesex machine-gun companies had barely yet been in action because they were continuing to man the coastal defences. It was appreciated that the main threat were the Japanese Regiments now on the Island and so the Middlesex were gradually withdrawn from their pill-boxes to be pitch-forked into the fighting.
Serious fires were now out of control in the Central District of Victoria. The Civil Fire Brigade asked Maltby for troops to tackle them; the General had to reply that none were available.
Early on 21st December the Winnipeg Grenadiers were ordered to try once more to recapture the Gap. They advanced under darkness, but were unsuccessful after meeting the enemy unexpectedly before deploying.
The Punjabis near Victoria were ordered to face southeast to prevent an enemy breakthrough from the Wanchai area. Those Indian soldiers in pill-boxes on the north shore were withdrawn to join the Battalion.
At about midnight a cable was received from the War Office emphasising the need to destroy all oil installations. This was largely carried out on the following day by artillery fire.
By 22nd December “morale had been seriously affected by the feeling that it was futile to continue resistance with insufficient equipment, with insufficient mobile artillery support and without both air support and air observation,” wrote Maltby. The number of wounded increased; fighting continued for much of the day. “Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre,” wrote Churchill in The World Crisis. “The greater the General, the more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter.”
Shortly after midnight on the 23rd Colonel Rose, commanding West Brigade, was told that Mount Cameron had been lost and the troops were coming back in disorder but efforts were being made to rally them.
There was another serious blow: the Director of Public Works confirmed that “no water was coming from Tytam Reservoir; the Aberdeen supply was out of action for at least two days and only a trickle was coming from Pokfulam. The town of Victoria was now helpless.” The troops were also feeling the shortage of water.
On the 23rd D Company Winnipeg Grenadiers was finally overrun. Ammunition was completely exhausted and the remaining men, 12 at the most, were worn out. Thirty-seven wounded were in the position. Padre Laite, being the only unwounded officer, surrendered the position.
Fortunately the Royal Engineers and two companies of the Volunteers with 40 Royal Marines were holding Magazine Gap; the Royal Scots were fighting off the enemy at Wanchai Gap and two small ammunition convoys had got through to Little Hong Kong during darkness and returned successfully with much needed supplies. Brigadier Wallis at Stanley was being sent ammunition by motor torpedo boats.
Captain C M M Man’s Z Company of the Middlesex was holding on magnificently near Leighton Hill, although the Japanese were infiltrating into the houses and streets around them. He had only 40 men, drawn from the Band and others discarded by companies – the “odds and sods of the Battalion” as he put it. Six machine guns were helping to keep the enemy at bay. It proved impossible to evacuate the wounded, who had to remain in the Company position.
Captain Man’s thoughts strayed to Topsy, his wife of 13 months. She was in the Nursing Auxiliary Service in a makeshift hospital in the University Buildings of Victoria. “In the early days I used to telephone her, using the civilian telephone to let her know that I was still in one piece. She ran even bigger risks, because the Japanese had no inhibitions about bombing hospitals and butchering nurses. On one occasion as a shell passed overhead, I said to her, ‘Hang on a second, that was a near miss.’ Her reply was, ‘That wasn’t over you, it was over me.’”
Man’s next position, after being ordered to withdraw, was in the Wanchai in a Chinese VD clinic, “not the most salubrious of locations, especially as it had been hastily vacated.” There the resolute Middlesex soldiers, still accompanied by several Canadians and Indians, bitterly contested every inch of the ground and resisted to the end, adding fresh laurels to the Regiment’s proud history.3
* * * * *
By the morning of Christmas Eve, West Brigade’s line stretched from the slums of the Wanchai, through the west slopes of Mount Cameron and the Wanchai Gap held by the Royal Scots, down to Aberdeen reservoir and Bennets Hill held by C Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers. A second line was held by two companies of the Volunteers.
* * * * *
We should now return to Brigadier Wallis’s East Brigade which had moved from Tytam Gap to Stone Hill, north of Stanley, on the afternoon of the 19th. (Map on page 126 shows Repulse Bay and the Stanley Peninsula, while photograph No. 9 shows Colonel Tanaka above Repulse Bay.)
Wallis was determined to attack out of the Stanley area towards Repulse Bay and Wong Nei Chong Gap. At 10.00 p.m. on the19th, the Royal Rifles, to be supported by two platoons of the Middlesex and three Bren carriers of the Volunteers, received orders to capture the Gap and join up with West Brigade, taking Violet Hill en route. Wallis pressed Lieutenant Colonel W J Home, commanding the Royal Rifles, to start his attack at 5.00 a.m. on the 20th. Home insisted he could not start before 8.00 a.m. as Companies were scattered and communications incomplete. Home had a good point: the Battalion had no proper wireless sets although the Brigade reserve of signals equipment had already been issued to the Battalion to replace what they had lost earlier. Various static pill-boxes and defences had buried cables leading to them providing telephones which still worked, but, once moving across country away from them, relaying messages became a major problem.
Repulse Bay and Stanley Peninsula
* * * * *
The Japanese usually took no steps to cut the telephone cable system, even when they had captured the cable huts where terminations were made; they presumably preferred listening to the conversations. The same applied to the civilian telephone system. Nevertheless the heavy bombing and shelling cut the cables, necessitating Royal Signals personnel carrying out immediate repairs, largely during darkness so that they were not picked off by the snipers, as Boxer had been. The telephones were therefore in continuous use in Hong Kong until almost the very end.4
It is of interest that this was also the case when the Russians were encircling Berlin and Hitler’s Headquarters from mid-April 1945 onwards. The Führer’s bunker, despite all the efforts and expense that had gone into its construction, lacked proper signalling equipment. As a result his staff officers had to ring civilian apartments around the periphery of Berlin whose telephone numbers were listed in the Berlin directory. If the inhabitants answered, they asked if they had seen any sign of the advancing Russians. And if a Russian voice replied, usually with a string of exuberant swearwords, then the conclusion was self-evident.5 By this means Freytag von Loringhoven and others could establish the extent of the Red Army’s advance before Hitler’s situation conferences. Russian soldiers also used the telephones, but for fun rather than to gain information. While searching houses, they would ring numbers in Berlin at random. Whenever a German voice answered, they would announce their presence in unmistakable Russian tones or shout abuse as the mood took them.
* * * * *
Brigadier Wallis watched the Royal Rifles advance towards Violet Hill, seeing that it “was slow and overcautious. Men were taking cover every time a distant shot or burst of machine-gun was heard,” recorded the Brigade Diary.6 By 10.00 a.m. it was obvious that a strong party of Japanese had reached Violet Hill first. Attempts to push on to Middle Spur failed although the Japanese were cleared from Repulse Bay.
The hotel there was in an atmosphere of siege. A mixed force of Canadians, Volunteers, Middlesex Regiment, naval ratings and men of the Hong Kong Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve tried to defend the area. At one point a Gunner officer, Major C R Templer, was ordered to replace the local commander, who was drunk, but Templer’s tactless remarks necessitated his temporary removal. The women and children who had gathered in the hotel were experiencing the worst days of their lives.
D Company Royal Rifles attempted to reach the Gap by going across country. After an exceedingly stiff climb, the Canadians advanced almost 3,000 yards through two water catchments before coming under heavy artillery fire. The Company gave up the attempt and returned badly disorganised and without their 3-inch mortars to Stanley View at 9.00 p.m.
By nightfall on the 20th, Colonel Tanaka’s 3rd Battalion held Middle Spur and Violet Hill; more Japanese were moving to Stanley Mound. At 11.00 p.m. Colonel Newnham in Fortress HQ ordered Wallis to launch a major attack on a more easterly approach via Tytam Tuk and Gauge Basin. “Hold what you have, including Repulse Bay Hotel, and do what you can to get through. Boldness will pay especially if you get in the enemy’s rear. Use your carriers boldly in recce,” Wallis was told.
The following morning, two 3.7-inch howitzers were positioned near Stanley Prison and one 18-pounder from the beach defence role was manhandled forward to fire over open sights at the enemy. These three pieces were the only ones left. Major T G Macauley Royal Rifles commanded the advance guard with great energy. It consisted of one company each from the Volunteers and Royal Rifles; Macauley so impressed Wallis that he subsequently recommended him for an award. The remainder of the Brigade which followed consisted of two companies of the Royal Rifles and one of the Volunteers. In effect, therefore, it was a battalion battlegroup, rather than ‘a brigade’. The Volunteers’ carriers were slow in moving off, having failed to refuel overnight. In the meantime the enemy forestalled the column by occupying Red Hill and the Tytam Tuk crossroads. Brigadier Wallis wrote in the Brigade Diary that he went forward to the leading troops to find out what was happening, as Lieutenant Colonel Home was too far back. Wallis ordered Home to bring forward a second company to outflank the enemy. Home replied that he would send a runner back to call forward the company commander to give him orders. Wallis felt this would take too long and so “went himself, met the company commander and gave him orders direct”.
It is not unknown in war for a battalion commander to go forward to take command of the leading company in exceptional and vital circumstances, but here we have the Brigade Commander, Wallis, running the Battalion.
“The morning was hot and steamy after the rain and the going very hard over rocky ground with few and bad tracks. The Royal Rifles, heavily clad in thick battledress, moved terribly slowly and held up the machine guns of No. 2 Company of the Volunteers. In spite of their heavier loads, these Volunteers were first on top of Notting Hill,” continues the Brigade Diary. “The Brigade Commander went forward again to find Lieutenant Colonel Home sitting in a house and put him in the picture and then he went on to find Major Macauley, who had Major Templer with him, working hard. He was operating two 3-inch mortars.”
At 1.00 p.m. Wallis spoke to Maltby in Fortress HQ on the field telephone, saying that he could at last see men of Macauley’s D Company nearing the crest of Bridge Hill, where a hand-to-hand grenade fight was in progress. Wallis told Maltby that he was “very worried over the terrible slowness and lack of training of the Royal Rifles but that they were really doing their best that day at any rate and fighting gamely”. Maltby ordered that all available men were to be sent to Repulse Bay with all carriers in a further attempt to break through and connect with West Brigade.
By dusk that night, the 21st, Wallis’s only battalion was dispersed in three different directions. Fifty survivors of Major Young’s A Company were pinned down at Altamira House, as related earlier, close to the Ridge and just south of the Gap. Sixty more Royal Rifles were in the Repulse Bay Hotel, around which Japanese sniping was continuing. The rest were scattered about one mile northeast of Stone Hill. It is not surprising that they were making no progress because two Japanese battalions, on the commanding high ground facing them, were well supported by mobile howitzers and three light tanks. Major Macauley had been wounded and all the officers of No. 1 Volunteer Company lost. A further advance was impossible. There was a grave danger of Stanley Mound and Stone Hill being captured, in which case the enemy could cut off all troops to the east. Wallis therefore withdrew his forces to Stanley. This was his last serious attempt to recapture the Gap or break through to relieve Repulse Bay Hotel where Major Templer had taken command.
Japanese aircraft occasionally flew over the bay. John Harris at the Dairy Farm saw the anti aircraft Gunners nearby shoot down a Japanese aircraft. An abandoned Motor Torpedo Boat, disabled earlier, had been grounded on a small island; the Japanese bombed it regularly several times each day.
Templer received orders to remove his force from the hotel so that the women and children, if abandoned there, would not remain mixed up with the military and be killed in the ensuing battle. On the first floor, around a single screened candle, a few families sat in silence. Lights were suddenly seen flashing in one of the rooms in the north wing; an enemy patrol was going from room to room.
Templer took Bombardier Guy and a few others to investigate. He heard Japanese conversing at the other end of a corridor. “So I bowled several hand grenades down it, withdrawing into a doorway as they exploded,” he wrote later. “It was a grand scene in the pitch dark. The Japs left and I resumed my post at the front door waiting for the moon to set.”7 The military escaped via a drain tunnel which led to the beach, and then south along the road or across country to Stanley.
The small group of residents awaited the enemy’s arrival. Only the formidable snoring of Mr Hogdon broke the silence. He had been banished to sleep in a large clothes closet because he prevented anyone else sleeping. The tension grew. Jan Marsman, a Dutch engineer who had been due to fly to Manila the very moment the Japanese bombed Kai Tak, repeatedly called out into the eerie emptiness: “Come in… Come in… No soldiers here… No soldiers here!” At last a door opened. Two Japanese entered menacingly; hands were raised. A section with fixed bayonets approached a few badly wounded in their beds.
Four days earlier at the Silesian Mission at Sau Ki Wan the same men had overrun a non-combatants’ Advanced Dressing Station medical post; on a hillside they had bayoneted the “unsuspecting men from the rear amidst cheers from enemy onlookers. Some had been bayoneted three times before they would fall. All the while, the Japanese were talking and laughing,” recalled Captain Osler Thomas of the Volunteers who feigned death in a ditch, drenched in blood.
As the Japanese approached the helpless wounded in the Repulse Bay Hotel, the thin, elderly, white-haired figure of Miss Mosey in her white nurse’s uniform barred their path. She stared straight through the Japanese as though they did not exist. “You will have to kill me first before you kill them,” she said. They hesitated and then abruptly turned away.
The decision to abandon the families proved fully justified. The Japanese respected both her courage and the fortitude of the dejected and bedraggled families.
The successful defence of Repulse Bay for over 72 hours had interfered with the Japanese timetable and delayed their drive to the south against Stanley.
* * * * *
At 10.00 p.m. on 21st December Lieutenant Colonel Home told Brigadier Wallis he wished to speak to the Governor, Sir Mark Young. He said the Royal Rifles were “dead beat and he felt further resistance would only result in the wasting of valuable lives. He explained that, as the senior Canadian officer, now that Brigadier Lawson was reported killed in action, he felt a grave responsibility.” Wallis tried to dissuade him from such a course and said that he should first inform General Maltby. Home had already had a long conversation by telephone with Lieutenant Colonel Sutcliffe commanding the Winnipeg Grenadiers. Sutcliffe also felt that the situation was quite hopeless. Wallis told Home “he had always found it best to rest and have a sleep before acting on a big problem not of any urgency”. With much difficulty “Home was sent to rest. It was clear that he was physically and mentally exhausted,” concluded Wallis.
On the 22nd the enemy increased their activity against the defenders on Stone Hill and Stanley Mound, while accurate artillery and mortar fire started pounding Stanley Peninsula.
At 10.30 a.m. Wallis told Maltby that Home had woken up without changing his mind. Wallis added that he hoped to keep the Royal Rifles “going somehow but it was impossible to make them operate offensively”. They agreed that ‘Stanley Force’, as the Brigade was now called, would fight on so long as ammunition, food and water were obtainable. The water supply from the Tytam Pumping Station to Stanley had already stopped, making it necessary to start using reserves.
During the afternoon the enemy attacked Stanley Mound and Stone Hill, which the Royal Rifles were holding with difficulty. With no 3-inch or 2-inch mortars left, the Canadians could give no effective reply. A lack of signals resources prevented the forward artillery observation post being effective. Home was still “anxious to withdraw and was reiterating that further fighting was merely causing useless casualties which could not stave off final defeat,” recorded the Brigade War Diary. Home was presumably unaware that Churchill had signalled the Governor telling him to fight on.
Wallis gave orders “for a strong counter-attack, supported by all the fire available, to recapture all Stone Hill and Stanley Mound”. It took place at dawn on the 23rd and was successful, with the Royal Rifles reoccupying their forward positions but in smaller numbers. Captain Weedon’s Middlesex machine guns’ support was most effective, as was the artillery fire.
Almost two hours later, Wallis told Maltby that the Royal Rifles had been driven off the position and that Home had stated that his Battalion had lost by now 18 officers killed, wounded or missing and he had only 350 men left (less A Company, believed to be at Repulse Bay). Home insisted that his unit must fall back as the men were exhausted and would fight better on the flatter ground around Stanley village. Orders were accordingly issued to move back after dark.
After the withdrawal, Wallis spent considerable time that night trying to encourage Home to keep going.
The following morning, Christmas Eve, Wallis attended a conference at the Royal Rifles’ HQ. He found the senior officers gathered there. Home announced that “it was the considered opinion of the Battalion as a whole that fighting should cease”. Wallis rejected this “and told the Canadians they must either fight or march out under a white flag to Repulse Bay. The Royal Rifles refused to surrender alone,” continues the Brigade War Diary. Wallis decided “to temporarily withdraw the Canadians to Stanley Fort on the southern tip of the Peninsula so that they could rest and reorganise leaving the defence of the Peninsula to more reliable troops.”
Was Lieutenant Colonel Home right to seek to surrender? Wasn’t the situation quite hopeless? Was Home acting in the best interests of his Canadians, endeavouring to save their lives thereby? Should Wallis have removed him and appointed the Second in Command with categorical orders to hold the front line, instead of the equally exhausted, over-extended, composite, ad hoc group of Middlesex, Volunteers, Gunners and others? Are there precedents in the British Army in war for the sacking of senior officers who refused to attack? Then, a crucial point, can the Brigade War Diary quoted above be trusted? It was largely compiled by Brigadier Wallis himself.
These questions will be briefly addressed in the next two chapters. Certainly none of those in Stanley on Christmas Eve could anticipate the catastrophic events which were about to occur there.
Notes
1. Letter from Brig. A Peffers to Brig. W H S Macklin, 22.9.45 (NDHQ).
2. Guest, Freddie, Escape from the Bloodied Sun, Norwich: Jarrolds, 1956, p. 13.
3. Letter Man to author.
4. War Diary of Chief Signal Officer China Command, Hong Kong, 1941, and POW diary of Chief Signal Officer.
5. Beevor, Antony, Berlin, London: Viking, 2002, p. 299.
6. War Diary and Narrative of East Infantry Brigade and advanced troops, pp. 123–4.
7. Letter Templer to author.
CHAPTER 14
The Surrender of Hong Kong:
Christmas Day 1941
“Christmas greetings to you all,” signalled Churchill. “Let this day be historical in the proud annals of our Empire. The order of the day is hold fast.”
Sir Mark Young’s message read: “In pride and admiration I send my greetings this Christmas Day to all who are fighting and all who are working so nobly and so well to sustain Hong Kong against the assault of the enemy. Fight on. Hold fast for King and Empire.”
The Governor was remarkable in at least one respect: during the campaign, quite regardless of the enemy snipers, the shelling and bombing, he was invariably ‘out and about’ encouraging people, whether it be in an Advanced Dressing Station, a distant unit or a Headquarters. Captain Iain MacGregor, the General’s ADC, had just emerged from Fortress HQ on Christmas Day and was waiting for a temporary lull in the heavy bombardment before making a dash for Flagstaff House. He suddenly saw Sir Mark strolling towards him in a beautifully cut, lightweight suit, grey Homburg hat and highly polished shoes. “He was unconcernedly swinging a Malacca walking stick, as if he was playing truant from the Colonial Office and taking a quiet walk in the sunshine of St James’s Park,” recalls Captain MacGregor. “I called out, ‘It’s getting a bit hot along there, sir; better take cover.’ He smiled and said, ‘Hullo MacGregor! Lovely day, isn’t it?’ and strolled on, neither slackening nor quickening his pace, completely composed and apparently without a care in the world. He walked straight through the shelling, leaving a very red-faced ADC in his wake.”1
Behind the facade, Sir Mark Young was acutely conscious of what the people in Hong Kong were suffering. Four days earlier he had forewarned London and Ottawa of the extreme gravity of the situation: “Enemy hold key position on hills, and GOC advised that we are rapidly approaching the point at which only remaining resistance open to us will be to hold for a short time only a small pocket of City, leaving bulk of population to be overrun. I feel it will be my duty to ask for terms before this position is reached…”
As the Governor’s signal was being transmitted to the Colonial Office, the Director of Military Operations, Major General J N Kennedy, was briefing the CGS. (He had earlier disagreed with Grassett that Hong Kong should be reinforced.) “Resistance could probably not be counted on for more than a few days and it would be on a small scale,” Kennedy told Alanbrooke. “Therefore it would have practically no direct influence on operations in the Far East in the way of tying up Japanese forces which might be released for operations elsewhere, but if we fought to the last round and the last man at Hong Kong, we should gain an indirect military advantage in that the Japanese would judge our resistance in Malaya and elsewhere by the same standard… ”2
The Christmas Day issue of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post was as optimistic and irrelevant as usual. “Day of Good Cheer” read the headline. “Hong Kong is observing the strangest and most sober Christmas in its century-old history… All are cheerful in the knowledge that, for all the hardships, they would not go either hungry or thirsty this Christmas… ”
Greetings came from an unexpected quarter: the Japanese were keeping up their propaganda broadcasts from Kowloon. “A merry Christmas to the gallant British soldiers,” many heard. “You have fought a good fight, but you are outnumbered. Now is the time to surrender. If you don’t, within 24 hours we will give you all that we’ve got. A merry Christmas to the gallant British soldiers… ”
The Japanese were certainly giving all that they had to the troops defending the Island. The Royal Scots were in the area of Mount Cameron and to the north. On Christmas Eve D Company had suffered particularly heavy casualties. The effective strength of the Battalion was down to 175 all ranks, although there were a number of missing sub-units which had been cut off but were still fighting with others. Very early on Christmas Day the enemy attacked the Royal Scots again but failed to penetrate any of the positions.
At 7.00 a.m. anti-tank mines were laid on the main Japanese approaches to Wanchai. The defenders were still holding the eastern approaches to Bennetts Hill.
Two hours later two British civilians came through the Japanese lines carrying a white flag. They were A L Shields, a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, and Major C M Manners, Manager of the Kowloon Dockyard. Both had been captured at Repulse Bay and persuaded to ask Sir Mark Young to surrender. Not much persuasion was necessary as they had seen the terrible suffering of the seriously wounded abandoned on the hillsides, and the abundance of Japanese troops, artillery and equipment. A bullying Lieutenant had started pushing Shields around. So Shields made a formal protest to the Japanese Commanding Officer, who was so anxious that the fighting be stopped he gave Shields some tea, after ordering the Lieutenant to take off his shoes and stand in his stocking feet as a humiliating punishment.
Shields and Manners told Maltby all they had seen and emphasised the uselessness of continuing the unequal struggle.
“A special defence meeting was immediately called, where it was decided that there could be no talk of surrender,” recorded Maltby. “The Japanese sent one message – that their forces would not initiate active hostilities for three hours. I conformed… This impromptu ‘truce’ was difficult to stage for Japanese planes, operating from Canton, did not conform and bombed Stanley, Aberdeen and Mount Gough… At midday Japanese artillery opened up punctually on a large scale and later hand-to-hand fighting was reported by 5/7 Rajputs on Mount Parish… which fell into enemy hands and an advance along Kennedy Road was threatened. This put Fortress HQ area, which had a garrison of only one Punjabi platoon, in jeopardy… Communications were increasingly difficult to maintain… There were at noon only six guns of the mobile artillery left in action… very heavy dive-bombing attacks were made in the Wanchai Gap… which was reported lost… Captain C M M Man, commanding the Middlesex Z Company, had telephoned ‘the line is breaking’. This advance by the enemy along the line of Gaps, the isolation of the forces at Stanley, the deployment by the enemy of such superior forces and armament, the exhaustion after 16 days of continuous battle with no relief for any individual, our vulnerability to unlimited air attack, the impossibility of obtaining more ammunition for the few mobile guns I had remaining, the serious water famine immediately impending – these were the factors which led to the inevitable conclusion, namely, that further fighting meant the useless slaughter of the remainder of the garrison, risked severe retaliation on the large civilian population and could not affect the final outcome. The enemy drive along the north shore was decisive,” continued Maltby. “I asked Lieutenant Colonel H W M Stewart OBE MC commanding the Middlesex how much longer the men could hold the line. He replied ‘one hour’. The Commodore agreed with my conclusion. At 15.15 hours I advised HE the Governor and C-in-C that no further useful military resistance was possible and I then ordered all Commanding Officers to break off the fighting and to capitulate to the nearest Japanese Commander, as and when the enemy advanced and opportunity offered.” That concluded Maltby’s despatch.
A Japanese newsreel unit subsequently filmed Maltby and his principal staff meeting the senior Japanese officers outside Fortress HQ. The film shows that there were smiles, salutes and handshakes all round.
* * * * *
A Bloodless Mutiny
There were certainly no smiles at Stanley where Brigadier Wallis, out of touch with events elsewhere, seemed determined to fight on to ‘the last man and last round’.
As we have seen, Wallis had decided to withdraw the Royal Rifles to Stanley Fort because he felt it “imperative to clear the battlefield of disaffected troops liable to jeopardise the defence,” continues the Brigadier. Then, referring to himself in the third person, he writes, “The Brigade Commander stated he had also considered arresting or shooting Lt Col. Home and placing Maj. Price (2nd in C) in command. He had however refrained from doing so as he had come to the conclusion that many officers would require shooting – that it was in fact a bloodless mutiny.”3
Wallis wrote the above within nine months of the events. It seems apparent from his reference to shooting Canadian officers that he must have become seriously mentally unbalanced. Worse was to follow.
* * * * *
There are few, if any, examples in regimental histories of senior officers being suddenly removed from their commands. Letters found in Scotland, published recently in The Guards Magazine, the Journal of the Household Division, reveal one such case, although the official history of the Grenadier Guards does not refer to it. Brigadier R B R Colvin, commanding 24th Guards Brigade, was a highly experienced and capable Grenadier Guards officer who had been wounded at Dunkirk. In April 1943 his Divisional Commander, believing a German position at the Bou in North Africa to be lightly held, ordered him to advance his Brigade at once, although there was no tank support. Colvin protested and was told his attack must take place in daylight the next day. He reluctantly agreed, stipulating that they must start at 6.30 p.m., close to dusk, because there was so much open ground to cover. At noon on the appointed day the Divisional Commander said the attack must be brought forward to 4.00 p.m., which meant there would be no time for a reconnaissance or for briefing the Guardsmen; the attack would have to be carried out in the heat of an African afternoon although the men were still in their heavy battledress (as were the Canadians at Stanley); and at no stage of the attack would they have the advantage of surprise or the cover of darkness (again, like the Canadians at Stanley on Christmas Day).
Colvin refused to carry out these orders on the grounds that there would be unnecessary casualties. He was absolutely right. Yet he was immediately sacked and reduced in rank. The daylight attack, without him, proved extremely costly. In 1987 a Guards battlefield tour visited the Bou at exactly the same hour and date of the attack; the light was incredibly clear and it was obvious that the very strong German position of 1943 would have started killing the advancing Guardsmen at 1,000 yards.4
After some unhappy months commanding a reinforcement camp, Colvin was appointed Brigade Commander in Italy, was wounded at Monte Cassino and won the DSO.
* * * * *
Home refused to obey certain orders in Hong Kong, having no confidence in the judgement of his senior officer – Wallis. Colvin did the same, quite rightly, in North Africa. They had one other matter in common: Home was also eventually promoted to Brigadier.
* * * * *
In the absence of the Canadians at Stanley Fort, Wallis reorganised his defences in three zones. The first line consisted of the Middlesex, Royal Artillery Gunners fighting as infantry, Volunteers, and staff from Stanley prison. Wallis had nothing but praise for them, being particularly impressed by the Middlesex and No. 2 (Scottish) Company of the Volunteers which was commanded by Major H R Forsyth. He had been a Gunner in the First World War and a peacetime chartered accountant. Wallis greatly admired his “fine leadership, courage and devotion to duty. This brave officer though mortally wounded refused to leave his post in Stanley. He stayed with his men to the last.”
Another whose gallantry was remarkable was a disgraced regular officer who had been imprisoned at Stanley just before the invasion. Sir Mark Young approved his release and Wallis wrote that the Captain was invariably where the fighting was thickest and that “he did the best any man can do to make up for his former shortcomings by his conduct in the face of the enemy”.
At 6.00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, the enemy opened a one-hour intense artillery and mortar bombardment on the forward and support positions before launching a major assault with strong bodies of infantry. The enemy were using light tanks, light machine guns, mortars and grenades. Even so, their attempts to filter forward were largely unsuccessful. That night Brigadier Wallis learned with astonishment that some European nurses were at St Stephen’s College, a few hundred yards northeast of the police station, in Japanese hands. He thought the hospital had been evacuated; an ambulance was sent to try to rescue them. At 7.00 a.m. Captain Weedon led a well-planned counter-attack and the enemy was beaten back, but not for long.
Brigadier Wallis explained the situation to Lieutenant Colonel Home and said the Royal Rifles must attack. “Home demurred and said his unit had not had enough rest. The Brigade Commander replied that nobody else had had any rest at all. That we could not sit inactive and watch the Middlesex, Gunners and Volunteers fight a battle as infantry, when much of the Royal Rifles, probably still the largest unit intact on the Island, was available,” reported the Brigade War Diary. “The Brigade Commander insisted and Major Parker was detailed by Lt Col. Home to collect and launch a strong attack.” Orders were issued to him at 8.30 a.m. No artillery support was available due to the configuration of the ground.
Fortress HQ told Wallis that “there would be a stand-fast for three hours from 10.00 hours while a white flag party of women and children were being moved from Repulse Bay Hotel”. Despite this ‘truce’, Wallis ensured that Major Parker’s attack continued. His D company left the fort at 11.30 a.m. and then departed for the assembly area for the attack between 1.30 and 2.00 p.m. Wallis watched them, recording that “the men were in bunches about shoulder to shoulder as if they found greater courage by this method. They were shouting and yelling as they advanced. On reaching the northwest of the cemetery [which lay just to the northwest of the prison] they were met by heavy fire from St Stephen’s and its bungalows and suffered numerous casualties. After some 15 minutes the disorganised Company withdrew right back to Stanley Fort in a broken manner and suffered more casualties in once more crossing the open ground near the prison.”5
Sergeant G S MacDonell commanded one of the Royal Rifle platoons; he saw it differently: “Since the enemy had a much superior position on higher ground above us and had good cover, I decided we must close quickly or suffer… Accordingly I ordered the men to fix bayonets and charge which they did with fearful war-whoops. Within seconds we were upon the enemy – which led to a confused mêlée of hand to hand fighting which lasted no more than three or four minutes – We then carried on and, driving the remnants of the enemy before us, entered into the houses on the high ground. Another close scrap took place as the Japanese stubbornly refused to be evicted… We continued on until we ran into a platoon of Japanese… we fired first and literally wiped out the enemy platoon as it stood… Heavy fire was now directed at us and casualties began to mount; we therefore returned to the houses to regroup… and began to repel the Japanese counter-attack which now developed in some strength. Shells began to explode through the roof and walls. With ammunition running low and the houses literally being shot to pieces around us, I received an order to pull back as we were in danger of being cut off.”6
Another British officer also saw the charge. (He was possibly 2nd Lieutenant R H Challoner of the Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artillery.) He recalled “the last glorious charge of the Canadians, up through the graveyard and into the windows of the bungalows up at the top. We saw the Japanese escaping through the back of the houses, and then return with grenades which they lobbed among the Canadians in occupation. Very few of the Canadians survived that gallant charge.”
Twenty-six Canadians were killed and 75 wounded in that attack; fewer than a dozen came back unharmed. The company had been virtually wiped out in an attack that was doomed to fail, states their Regimental and other histories.
“Meanwhile, Wallis – who really seems to have lost his senses by this point and entered into some kind of maniacal frenzy – had ordered Home to send yet another company on yet another counter-attack up through the main road through Stanley village… ” states a Canadian historian.7 They advanced through a heavy artillery barrage which quickly cut down 18 men, six of whom were killed. By now the rest of the garrison in the north had surrendered but Wallis was unaware of this. At this point he was “considering blowing up the fort by detonating the magazine should the enemy penetrate into the whole fort area. Survivors would, if time permitted, join the wounded elsewhere. This matter was a last resort and kept secret,” states the War Diary.
The end of the slaughter then occurred. At about 8.00 p.m. a car arrived at Stanley Fort carrying a white flag. It contained Lieutenant Colonel R G Lamb from the Royal Engineers Fortress HQ staff. He was accompanied by Lieutenant J T Prior, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, from the operations branch. Wallis knew Lamb and had spoken on the telephone to him over the last three days.
Lamb and Prior informed Wallis that General Maltby had told the Governor that further resistance was impossible, “that H.E. the Governor, the GOC and several senior officers had gone to Japanese HQs to negotiate. They said my orders were to surrender and hand over all arms and equipment without destruction.”
This surely was the moment for Wallis to do just that. He knew that hundreds of men were scattered over the countryside dying of their wounds and thirst. He knew that women and children had been abandoned at the Repulse Bay Hotel and were unaccounted for. He knew that nurses and medical staff were close by at St Stephen’s College and were extremely vulnerable. (In fact, four Chinese nurses and three British had already been raped and murdered there early that morning; many wounded soldiers in bed had been bayoneted and the British doctors shot and “bayoneted dozens of times as they lay on the ground”.)
Those defending Stanley Fort, Wallis knew, were short of ammunition and had been on short rations of food for several days; water was minimal and everyone was exhausted.
Yet what was Wallis’s reaction to General Maltby’s categorical order, relayed verbally by Lamb, to surrender? “After careful consideration, I decided I could not surrender when this action seemed to me to be locally unwarranted, without written confirmation,” wrote Wallis, who sent his Brigade Major, H Harland, to obtain the orders to surrender in writing. The Japanese resumed shelling the fort at point blank range and fired machine guns at the defences.
At last, at 2.30 a.m. on 26th December, Major Harland returned with the orders in writing. Wallis at last ordered the white flag to be hoisted and the cease-fire. For many of the wounded, amidst the hills and gulleys, it was too late. The ‘missing in action’ columns in the military cemeteries testify to that.
* * * * *
In 1977, 36 years after the above events, I asked Brigadier Wallis why he did not surrender earlier. He replied that waiting for reliable orders “delayed the enemy an extra day and delayed the departure for Malaya of quite a number of enemy troops”.
We can see how ludicrous this explanation is. As Major General J N Kennedy, the Director of Military Operations in the War Office, had pointed out to Alanbrooke, resistance in Hong Kong would not prevent concurrent Japanese advances elsewhere. (Moreover the Japanese involved were destined for the south and not for Malaya.)
The crucial point is that the slaughter of many fine Canadian soldiers could not possibly be justified in such circumstances. Dying to capture a few bungalows at Stanley, in the final moments of the fall of Hong Kong, is the ultimate disaster of the short campaign.
Notes
1. Letter MacGregor to author.
2. File 106/2420 A (PRO).
3. War Diary, p. 68.
4. Montagu-Douglas-Scott, C A, ‘Tunisia 1943: A Battalion Commander’s Viewpoint’ in The Guards Magazine, Winter 2004/5, p. 237.
5. War Diary, p. 84.
6. The Royal Rifles of Canada in Hong Kong, Quebec: Hong Kong Veterans’ Association of Canada, 1980, p. 85.
7. Greenhous, B, “C” Force to Hong Kong: A Canadian Catastrophe 1941–1945, Canadian War Museum Historical Publication No. 30, 1997, p. 96.
CHAPTER 15
Truth is the First
Casualty in War
To anticipate events, on 18th April 1942, almost five months after the surrender, most British officers were moved into the Argyle Street prisoner of war camp on the Mainland.
Compiling an official account of the units’ performance in the war became all important. Bill Wiseman, the Royal Army Service Corps Captain who had lost his leg when a schoolboy, wrote: “When I arrived, there seemed to be a tremendous amount of scribbling and typing going on. It appeared that the General wanted to write his dispatch and had called for War Diaries. Before long I even got involved, having to write an account of the Island Vehicle Collecting Centre, and then to re-write it to comply with Commander RASC’s ideas on how it ought to have been operated! All this near history bred so much ill will and bad blood that General Maltby decided to clear the air by expounding his views on the fighting in the Commodore’s ‘garden’.
“I went with Charles Boxer who had recently been transferred from Bowen Road Hospital. The place was overflowing and the crowd had attracted quite a few Nips including several NCOs. Charles nearly had a fit when the General started ‘At 4.45 a.m. on 8th December when Major Boxer had decoded…’”
* * * * *
Three questions were posed at the beginning of Chapter 8 – first, was it appropriate that the Canadians should be so severely criticised in the first draft of the Official History? Montgomery had to intervene to remove much of the criticism. Secondly, can credible new evidence be produced, 64 years after the battle, to convince the reader of this book, however sceptical, that grave injustices on soldiers’ reputations have been committed? And thirdly, was it fair that one of the two British Regiments should be denied the coveted Battle Honour ‘Hong Kong’?
* * * * *
A retired officer, who was the editor of a distinguished Corps’ regimental journal, told a meeting of other Service editors in London in the early 1990s that “discretion and sensitivity is the order of the day; nothing derogatory should be published; our job is to be the guardians of our units’ reputations…” I told him that such a view is rubbish. Just as truth is the first casualty in war, so most Service editors prefer to see their role as being to present facts, not tactful fiction.
How is a Regimental History, written in recent years, best tackled? Regimental Trustees may start by appointing an elderly military historian who never served in the Regiment. He laboriously copies out bits and pieces, seldom having the energy to tour the country to interview sufficient people. The Trustees may well reject his manuscript as an expensive failure and appoint a serving or recently retired regimental officer instead – to be overseen by a group of senior, elderly retired officers. They meet infrequently over gin and tonics; each in turn may demand in all perhaps 50 cuts. “Oh, of course it’s true, yes,” they will agree, “but we can’t have the press knowing about that, can we?” In Britain, a serving or retired serviceman or woman signs a certificate, on retiring from the Forces, stating that he or she will first clear with the MOD anything written on Service matters. The MOD may end up by asking for another 50 changes (some, but certainly not all, with good reason).
By now the author is beside himself with frustration. One was so angry with the cuts that he refused to have his name associated with his work, because a ‘squeaky-clean, second to none’ type regimental history is extraordinarily boring; it will not catch the eye of reviewers; few outside the regimental circle will know or care that the book exists. The Regimental Trustees may decide instead on an admirable, flashy, coffee-table type history with lots of photographs, a few good captions and very little else because 300 years have to be squeezed into 200 pages.
There are, of course, exceptions. To give two examples, the Regimental History of the Royal Scots, published in 2001, is certainly a much welcomed ‘warts and all’ type history. It is of interest that A Muir, writing the 1961 version, did not include embarrassing detail – for example the account of Private Wyllie locking three of his officers in the observation post at the climax of the battle at the Shingmun Redoubt.
Another exception is the post-war 1945–1995 history of the Grenadier Guards. Detail is included on 40 reservists who marched on the Officers’ Mess in Malta in 1956 to protest; and a few years earlier in North Africa three other reservists purposely dropped their rifles on a parade, also as a form of protest – all because they wanted to go home! I am conscious of making quite a few references to the Grenadier Guards: I do so because I am familiar with the facts, having served with them for 35 years. (Moreover, the Winnipeg Grenadiers before the war had some things in common with the Regiment.)
* * * * *
Newly released files show how Whitehall vetoed former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s proposed memoirs, the April 2005 edition of History Magazine reveals. The passage, written in 1970, which most disturbed the Ministry of Defence was the negotiation of an Anglo-American agreement jointly to defend Hong Kong in the event of a Chinese attack. Macmillan reluctantly ‘modified’ his memoirs, omitting this and other important passages.
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