The Battle for Hong Kong 1941-1945

by Oliver Lindsay

  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 Grenad
iers, 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 Capt
ain 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.