The Battle for Hong Kong 1941-1945

by Oliver Lindsay

  We were in touch with the world!

  Colonel Newnham told me later of the significance of this event. He decided to bring in another Royal Engineer officer – also an architect and a very good friend of mine – Captain Godfrey V Bird from Hut No. 10. He was one of the Colonel’s staff officers from the battlebox. Godfrey had been badly wounded, like others, when he had left the Headquarters to fight the Japanese.

  Newnham told the two of us to maintain this contact. And so started an extraordinary chain of events, the key parts of which can be told in full for the first time here. The Colonel stressed the acute dangers involved – not only for us, but also for the Chinese agents who were “an unknown quantity”. Both Godfrey and I assured him we would help in any way we could. Newnham had probably chosen Godfrey because they had worked together during the fighting. I appreciated the great danger that I was running into.

  I was asked if I would recognise the Chinese driver if he came in again. I said I could not be certain but on the next visit I would try to deliver an outgoing message. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds because the vehicle was watched by the Japanese sentry, the guard house 40 feet away and the Japs in the tall watchtowers around the camp. Newnham insisted that my delivery of the note was of secondary importance; security must be the guiding factor at all times, he said.

  The next time the lorry came in I waited for the Japanese guard, who sat alongside the Chinese driver, to get out. Then I dropped in the reply note behind the driver under a piece of bark. A few days later I picked up another note which had been delivered in the same way as the first. That was the very beginning of the two-way traffic in messages. I was the first to be involved in this activity in Argyle Street, but I didn’t know where it would all lead to, nor what was in the messages. This was kept from me by Newnham in case I was caught. (The actual vehicle delivering the supplies varied somewhat as time went on.)

  People were beginning to get suspicious of both Godfrey Bird and me; men in each hut had previously taken it in turns to unload the trucks. There was a roster on who was assigned to this task. Yet Godfrey and I were now always there as well. Others guessed that something strange was happening; a few seemed afraid that they might be implicated. “Why is Harris here again?” people asked. “There’s something funny going on.”

  This disturbing development was overcome by an officer in each hut’s working party being made responsible for calling out their men on the arrival of the ration lorry. It was also their job to ensure that outgoing messages were planted and the driver’s attention attracted to them. Newnham therefore selected seven others in addition to Godfrey and me. He explained the procedure, emphasised the danger, gave them an opportunity to think it over and to withdraw their names if they thought the risks too great. No one did pull out and the work proceeded with the newcomers. They were Captain J A Lomax RA, Lieutenant G P Ferguson HKVDC, J Redman HKVDC, J C McDouall HKRNVR, R B Goodwin RNZNVR, Sub-Lieutenant J R Haddock HKRNVR and Flight Lieutenant D S Hill RAF.

  In addition, Chris D’Almada and Lieutenant Ian Tamworth HKVDC watched the drivers to receive any messages offered by them by hand and to pass messages when direct hand-to-hand delivery seemed safest.

  A vital go-between was now chosen by Newnham – Captain (later Major) J R Flynn. He was one of the seven British regular officers serving with the 2/14 Punjabis and had been commissioned from the Royal Military College Sandhurst in the 1930s.

  Beyond the Argyle Street officers’ camp and the road which ran between Kai Tak airport and Kowloon was a large vegetable garden which contained in one corner a chicken farm. To the east of it was the cemetery. Beyond lay the Indian POW camp of Mau Tau Chung (spelt Matauchung in some accounts).

  Newnham asked Flynn to obtain military intelligence from the Rajput and Punjabi POWs, many of whom were ‘employed’ over much of Hong Kong and adjacent ports including Swatow, Canton and Hainan, providing escorts, manning police and sentry posts on roads, railways and the airfield, usually under Japanese command. Some Indians also worked in Japanese offices as clerks. In his reminiscences of 153 pages1 Flynn wrote, “The POWs were in a position to observe and get information from Chinese, Koreans, Formosans and third nationals (e.g. Portuguese, and Indians serving in the Hong Kong police).” Newnham wanted information “on enemy strengths, guns, and number of ships in the harbour etc. He told me he was passing it on. I alone made daily contact (verbal, thrown messages, signals, hidden messages, messages passed by Korean guards and Chinese civilians). I alone, except for Maj. G E Grey 2/14, Capt. Hamta Prasad 2/14, Maj. Browne 5/7, was completely bilingual in Hindustani and Punjabi (and some Pushtu). These others were never in contact with the Indians. No Indian ever betrayed me even though I and many of them were interrogated (brutally at times). I suffered a lot of criticism for talking to guards.”

  Flynn attended classes learning French with General Maltby, who arranged for Flynn to have regular appointments with Newnham to pass on the information, after Flynn had translated the messages when necessary.

  Flynn remembers “one particular incident. I got a very long and detailed report from Subedar Major Haider Rehinan Khan 2/14 who was a most honourable, dignified, intelligent and much loved officer, the finest example of the Senior Viceroy Commissioned Officer upon whom the honour of a battalion depends – a tower of strength to the prisoners. He subsequently spent much time in solitary imprisonment for his adamant loyalty to the Crown.

  “His report covered accurate (later proven) news of Allied progress in Europe, names of traitors in the Indian camp and Jap enquiries about an Allied ‘listening post’ some great distance from HK. I discussed it with my CO (Grey) and we agreed only Maltby was to see it because of the danger Newnham might be in. Grey came with me. Brigadier Wallis was there. I objected. (I and my contacts were at risk too.) Wallis maintained he was my Brigade Commander. (2/14 and 5/7 were only brigaded under Wallis’s command on the Mainland on the Canadians’ arrival; actually Wallis was the senior Indian Army officer as distinct from a British Army Brigade appointment.) I was adamant that Wallis should not be present. Maltby supported me and asked Wallis to withdraw. He did. Livid.”

  The above report is important for it indicates that Maltby knew precisely what was going on in the smuggling of top secret information on Japanese activities to the British in China. His life was at risk, just as were the rest of us who were most intimately involved. (Flynn had no respect for Wallis, describing him as “plausible, self-inflated; he exercised no brigade control and direction and training; he only ordered withdrawals; he was despised by 2/14…”) Flynn, like others, had his prejudices.

  Flynn accompanied officer ‘working parties’ which tended the vegetable garden. “Messages and parcels would be left for me in holes in the ground, marked in various ways (e.g. potato peel, eggshell, stick, dead flower) or thrown over the Indian fences when guards distracted, and, remarkably, at Muslim call to prayer five times daily. A group of Muslims would be near the garden fence and their ‘prayers’ would be in Hindustani and Pushtu. I had four main contacts, men like Haider Rehinan. They in turn chose suitable Indians to help.”

  * * * * *

  I had no idea of Captain Flynn’s involvement because he dealt only with Maltby, Newnham and Grey. Everything was on a very strict ‘need to know’ basis, nobody being given a single scrap of information on the intelligence set up unless they were vital go-betweens.

  Nor did I know to whom in China the messages were being passed, or that Captain Douglas Ford, the former Royal Scots Signals Officer in Shamshuipo Camp, had been gathering information, like Flynn. In October 1942, six months earlier, Chinese POWs from the Volunteers had surreptitiously been given messages while working at Kai Tak airport. Knowledge of this link was initially confined to Captain Ford, Dr R K Valentine HKVDC, D L Prophet, Flight Lieutenant H B Gray RAF and two NCOs – Sergeant R J Hardy and Corporal Bond.

  The former Canadian Second in Command of the Royal Rifles was transferred from Argyle Street to Shamshui
po in February 1943. He was John N Price who had now become a Lieutenant Colonel. He was briefed on the secret operations.

  Under Newnham’s driving force, the smuggling of secret messages rapidly increased to both Shamshuipo and Argyle Street. Drugs, maps, compasses and news items were smuggled in. It all seemed rather too easy. Work proceeded smoothly and patients in the camp hospitals soon felt the benefit of increased supplies of drugs. But passing the messages through the drivers had its dangers. Moreover, the Japanese were becoming more inquisitive; their searches became more frequent. Understandably, Newnham seemed to feel the pressure more than any of us; he lived in a state of nervous tension.

  In May 1943 it became apparent that a Japanese officer was watching us through binoculars from a hilltop half a mile to the north. All operations were cancelled. Lieutenant R B Goodwin RNZNVR thought up a new system of passing messages; a note was sent to the outside contacts telling them to fix three nails in a precise position in a dark corner under the floor of the truck, between which messages could be held by rubber bands. He made a small wooden model on which we practised despatching and receiving messages until we were all confident. It took only seconds to move the message between the nails. Goodwin also made a hollow bolt out of wood and this was fitted in the supply lorry. Messages and drugs could be hidden inside the false bolt.

  The information being passed, I learnt after the war, was very important to the war effort. To give but one example, operational intelligence was passed to the United States Air Force’s 68th Composite Wing Headquarters at Kweilin, which had no intelligence sources of its own at that time.

  * * * * *

  What would have happened, one might speculate, if a similar intelligence organisation had been working in a German POW camp in, say, the Portsmouth area where the POWs could gather intelligence from outside working parties – perhaps through Italian POWs who were employed on farms in the countryside? As in Hong Kong, there could easily have been hidden wireless sets in the POW camps. It might also have been possible to construct them so they could transmit to the Germans in France.

  The Germans parachuted spies into Britain with wireless sets. Most were ‘turned’ to work for the Allies, while others were executed. But had one spy established himself or herself in a ‘safe house’ in the Portsmouth neighbourhood, he or she could have assembled intelligence, just as we in Hong Kong were doing, on ships, aircraft, weapons, troop movements or whatever. The repercussions resulting from such spying activity, particularly in the dark days of 1940 or before the D Day landings in Normandy in June 1944, could have been horrendous.

  Fortunately neither the Germans nor the Italians achieved anything similar to what we were up to, but the above scenario serves to emphasise the value the British, American, Chinese and other Allies attached to our intelligence reports.

  * * * * *

  News began to filter down to a few of us that, with Maltby’s blessing, an extraordinarily ambitious plan was being considered for a mass breakout from the POW camps.

  “In all three camps the general standard of health had reached a very low level, and any escape would have caused severe and immediate repercussions and further privations that would have been fatal to many,” wrote Maltby in 1956. “Therefore our aim, which unfortunately was never to materialise, was that a collection of food, arms and ammunition should be established in the nearby hills, a large diversion should be made by the guerrillas accompanied perhaps by an air raid, and under cover of these there should be simultaneous break-outs from all three camps. One-third of our numbers, owing to their physical state, would have had to be abandoned. Another third we reckon would probably have fallen in the subsequent fighting, but the remainder, we hoped, would be able to make their way to freedom and so continue to participate in the war. Ambitious, perhaps, but that was our aim.”2

  I found it difficult to take such a plan seriously. The guerrillas to whom Maltby refers had helped a few escapers in early 1942, but there seems no chance that they could have set up arms caches near the POW camps. To lose one third of our number – several thousand men – is clearly a price absurdly high. Japan, in 1943, still controlled the land, air and sea in and around Hong Kong and the neighbourhood. Above all, as he says, our health had so deteriorated, we would never have made it over the mountains to the north, and the vast distances thereafter, on foot. Such a plan might look good on paper but, unlike Maltby, I am glad that it did not materialise.

  This should not be regarded as criticism of him. Wars are not won by endless defensive measures. He always stood up for us most bravely against the Japanese. As Captain Flynn, who saw him so closely involved in the passing of the most secret intelligence, put it: “Maltby was in a class of his own in dealing with the Japanese and keeping the camps orderly and controlled.”

  * * * * *

  Suddenly disaster struck. In mid June 1943 an SOS came from Lee Hung Hoi. He was one of the very courageous Chinese truck drivers. Naturally we closed the operations down immediately, but it was too late.

  On 1st July the lorry drove into the camp as usual, but the driver was now acting under Japanese orders. He suddenly tossed out a piece of paper. I count my blessings that it was not my turn to be on duty that morning. I was there at the beginning. I didn’t want to be there at the end! Sub-Lieutenant J R Haddock, by chance, happened to be on duty. He picked up the paper when he felt it was safe to do so and hid it on top of a lavatory cistern before strolling nonchalantly to his hut. Ten minutes later he was sent for by the guards and arrested. Captain Bird retrieved the paper and applied iodine to reveal the secret writing: it was blank. “This made me suspicious that it was a plant,” he wrote later. “But I could not connect the plant with Haddock’s arrest because I was told that no Japanese had seen him pick it up. I put the paper back on the cistern, and on checking later it had mysteriously been removed.”

  In Shamshuipo that same morning “during a softball game between the Canadians and the Portuguese prisoners in camp, I noticed Matsuda and two sentries coming in through the main gate,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel J N Price, who now commanded the Royal Rifles following Home adopting the rank of Colonel. “I saw them re-emerge with Sergeant R J Ruttledge Royal Canadian Corps of Signals. Realising that our key man had been caught, I remained helplessly watching the game. An hour later Matsuda took away Flight Lieutenant Gray and Sergeant Hardy. This made it certain that our work had been discovered.

  “Ford had gone at once to his room and removed as much incriminating evidence as he could. He then went to Gray’s room where the old football hung on the wall; it contained maps, war bulletins, and compasses. He was too late! The guards were already searching there. By this time we were well schooled in nonchalance and in a sort of fatalism which helped us to control all emotional expressions. The guards continued searching the room and went out eventually without even glancing at the football. For some days Ford, I and others lived under a terrible strain and anxiety. On 10th July Captain Ford was taken out. I made disposition of my effects as it seemed certain that I would be the next victim,” concluded Price.3

  On that same day “I saw Colonel Newnham being taken away,” remembers Captain Bird, “and I went to the underground hiding place outside the window in which a precis of all messages was kept. General Maltby decided to burn them together with the maps. I kept only six front collar studs; they concealed compasses which had been sent to us”.4

  The last few messages sent from Argyle Street could not have been more incriminating if intercepted by the Japanese, as they probably were. They had dealt with the possibility of a guerrilla raid on the perimeter fence to free the POWs.

  About two weeks after Colonel Newnham had been arrested, Major Charles Boxer summoned those of us who were left. He told me and the other ‘operators’ nothing about what was happening but said it was just possible the messages would start again using the ration lorry. He wanted only volunteers as the work would be extremely dangerous. We agreed to continue as before, but, on re
suming unloading the vehicles, nothing was ever passed to us.

  Boxer had ended the meeting with us by saying: “If any of you get through alive, I will see your name is put forward at the end of the war.” This never happened, certainly in my case. I was sad the others and I never received any recognition. I am now the only one still alive!

  Although they were constantly in my thoughts, I did not learn of the fate of Colonel Newnham and some of the others until the Japanese surrender. We knew that they would be tortured most dreadfully, going through the most appalling experiences. For 25 months I had to live with the possibility that I might be arrested. General Maltby, too, must have had a very stressful time waiting to see if he would be incriminated. He had protested strongly at the arrests, but, as usual, the Japanese refused to tell him anything. Instead, Maltby, Wallis and 13 other senior British officers were put in a special inner perimeter within Argyle Street; on 4th August they were sent to Formosa.

  Prior to the mass arrests, Lieutenant H C Dixon, a young New Zealander in the RNZNVR, had found pieces of a wireless set in a bombed house while on a working party. He was a radio technician and when in July 1943 some valves were stolen from a Japanese set, key POWs were able to listen to broadcasts for about four days a week from London, San Francisco, New Delhi, Sydney and Chungking. The wireless also picked up a considerable amount of operational transmissions from American China-based aircraft, thereby enabling those listening to become familiar with their wave-lengths and methods of operating.

  The four most involved were Dixon, Commander R S Young RN, formerly head of the Stonecutter Island Radio Intercept Station, Commander D H S Craven RN, a survivor of the ill-fated Norwegian operation at Narvik, and Major Boxer who mixed the wireless news items with local newspaper reports for the Camp’s daily war bulletins.