In the very early hours of Boxing Day, 1941, a few hundred exhausted Canadian and British soldiers pulled themselves up from their position amongst the scrub and rocks of Stanley Peninsula on the island of Hong Kong, and stumbled back into that tiny segment of land that was the only part of the Crown Colony not yet in Japanese hands to await their captors.
These Canadians were all that was left of the 1st Battalion, Royal Rifles of Canada. The previous afternoon the remnants of the 1st Battalion, Winnipeg Grenadiers had become captives of the Japanese when the rest of the garrison had capitulated. Despite the hopelessness of the situation, however, the British Brigadier commanding the forces on Stanley had demanded a copy of the surrender order in writing before he would agree to give in. One company of the Royal Rifles had celebrated their Christmas Day by suffering 70% casualties in the counter-attack that, for idiotic futility, ranks with the Charge of the Light Brigade.
By the time the last Royal Rifleman had passed into Japanese hands, 290 Canadians had already died in Hong Kong. A further 267 were to die in the course of an incredibly brutal captivity. Of the 1418 remaining members of the force who lived to return to Canada there were few who had not suffered physically and mentally from their ordeal. The survivors still bear the scars.
What were these soldiers doing there? Why were almost two thousand men, most of them either from Quebec City and the towns and farms of Eastern Quebec or from the city and suburbs of Winnipeg, fighting and dying thousands of miles from home in the hopeless and unsung defence of an unfamiliar island off the Chinese coast?
On the surface the story is simple. The British government, in the face of a possible war with Japan, wished to strengthen the garrison of the colony of Hong Kong and asked Canada to send two battalions. Canada agreed and these troops arrived shortly before the Japanese attack. With the rest of the garrison they participated in a gallant but hopeless defence until Hong Kong surrendered on 25 December 1941. Their despatch to Hong Kong had attracted little attention, and the fall of the colony was just one more disaster in the black month after Japan entered the war.
The survivors had not endured their captivity long, however before the first rumbling occurred on the home front. Led by the prominent Ontario Progressive Conservative George Drew, accusations began to be levelled at the government that the men who fought Hong Kong had been poorly trained and equipped. This was the kindling spark, and as the prisoners of war started to drop like flies in the Japanese camps, the politicians back in Canada commenced to jockey for position, the Opposition seeking to make political capital out of the government's presumed negligence and the government attempting to deny or belittle the charges. The only positive reaction by the government to these accusations was the appointment of Royal Commission in February 1942 to investigate the matter. The Commissioner was the Chief Justice of Canada, Sir Lyman Duff. An enormous quantity of evidence was heard by the Royal Commission between 2 March and 31 March 1942. Duff's findings, tabled in June 1942, did not censure the government to any degree and hence pleased nobody but the Liberals. There was a minor furore but the government simply stood fast and allowed the commotion to die down. The question was raised again in 1948 after the British report on Hong Kong operations had been released but interest soon dissipated.
The controversy has flared up periodically, particularly when the surviving veterans have made attempts to have their compensation increased as a result of the excessive hardships to which they had been subjected. In addition to domestic aspersions cast at their training and fighting ability, the men of the Canadian Hong Kong Force have suffered at the hands of British official reports of the fighting and British "popular” historians, some of whom either directly state that the Canadians' poor training and low morale rendered them worse than useless on the battlefield and a hindrance rather than an asset to the defence.
There has never been an attempt to create a detailed and coherent account of the Canadian involvement with the defence of Hong Kong. It was as a reaction to the melange of myth, rumour, unfounded accusations, one-sided accounts, and official whitewash that currently exists that I was impelled to write this book. The number of questions it seeks to answer is legion. Did Britain and/or Canada realize that the defence of Hong Kong was hopeless? Why did Canada agree to send troops? Was there any deceit involved? Why were these particular battalions chosen? Were they as badly trained as has been insinuated? How did the Canadians really do in battle? Have they simply been used as scapegoats by the British? Have they been given all that rough a deal since the war? The questions multiply.
This book is based to a great extent on primary sources. I believe that in this particular case the large numbers of contemporary documents provide a better basis for a complete and accurate narrative than any recollection of events that took place forty years ago. I have made the account as logical, consecutive, and clear as I could and have indicated my sources as fully as possible.
In preparing this book it has been impossible to avoid becoming emotionally involved with the narrative, and if, on occasion, I have let my feelings show, I can only crave the reader's indulgence.