Heroes Remember Presents The Battle of Hong Kong

Joseph Duguay: I’m going to China, they are not at war so no problem there.

Lucien Brunet: Même dans le journal ils ont dit, ils ont même mentionné que l’arrivée de ces Canadiens là que le Japon peut-être penserait deux fois avant de déclarer la guerre. Ça c’était marqué dans le journal dans l’en-tête, ça c’est la vraie comédie ça.

Leo Murphy: We would do drill, okay, up and down but that wasn’t training for fighting the war.

Arly Enright: You see the Japs, they were trained for guerrilla warfare, we weren’t. They knew how to fight, we didn’t.

Renaud Côté: On les ont vu venir, nous autres on pensait que c’était nos gens à nous autres qui pratiquaient, mais c’était les Japonais qui venait nous jeter des «bonbons» sur la tête.

Samuel Disensi: The war started in Hong Kong and from the 7th to the 25th we were fighting.

George MacDonnell: First of all we could not be supplied. The Japanese controlled the air and the sea. We couldn’t be reinforced, additional troops couldn’t be sent to us.

Lucien Brunet: On avait aucun avion pour nous défendre, on n’avait pas de bateau de guerre, il n’y avait rien de ça.

Lloyd Doull: I’m looking out to sea there what was behind us on this side and I said to him, “Lance, this is one God awful trap.”

Wilbert Lester: So I just figured I guess we’ve had the biscuit. If we make it okay and if we don’t well what the hell, it was a one way trip.

George MacDonnell: We only had very limited amounts of mortar ammunition which in infantry fighting is very important.

Harold Atkinson: We had no artillery go over with us, no, no. We had to rely on what British artillery was there.

Renaud Côté: Les Japonais descendaient assez bas là que tu voyais les pilotes, il y avait rien, on n’avait rien à leur tirer, à moins de prendre un tas de roches.

Garfield Lowe: The rifles that we were issued with was old Enfield rifles and they had a red band painted around the muzzle. Some of them you couldn’t even open the bolt on them. The only thing any good on them was a bayonet.

Renaud Côté: Moi, j’avais un revolver, c’est tout ce qu’on avait.

Lucien Brunet: Il y en avait beaucoup comme moi qui se sont fait des grenades, que j’avais dans mes poches, que j’avais jamais vu de ma vie. J’avais, ils m’ont donné un Thompson machine gun que j’avais jamais vu de ma vie.

George MacDonnell: We were at a great disadvantage because of the difficulty of running out of ammunition and water.

Joseph Duguay: Finally we got to a reservoir, there was floating bodies and everything but we just pushed them aside and we just drank, holy gosh.

George MacDonnell: It was very difficult to hold any position with our limited man power.

Walter Billson: They put on forty thousand men against our six and they had another forty thousand waiting on the other side to take the ferries and come across.

Edward Grantham: And I could see the whole bay in there and I swear to God, you could have walked across that bay on dead Japs.

Hector Hunt: Had two Bren guns in that corner and two there and we were in the center with the rifles that would just go like that there and they were going down like a field of hay.

Walter Billson: When you’re firing and you know for sure if you killed a man, it’s hard to take.

George MacDonnell: Even though we were holding the front in some position or some peak given to us, the Japanese infiltrated behind us and suddenly the fire started to come from the rear and we were trapped.

Renaud Côté: Ben, on se battait partout. À Hong Kong, c’est pas une guerre… c’est pas un d’un bord et l’autre de ce bord ici, hein ? They were all over the place.

Howard Bembridge: We were in a bomb hole and this sniper must have been way up high because he sniped and he killed three guys on the one side of that hole.

Edward Grantham: He was laying alongside me when a Jap threw a hand grenade over, blew the top of his head off, and one minute we were talking, the next minute his head’s gone, you know, and things like that you don’t forget.

Aubrey Flegg: And we had a lot of fellows that had gotten into these pill boxes. They dropped a Molotov cocktail down through that ventilator and that was the end of those fellows inside them pill boxes.

Allan Whitman: They kept shelling this building and apparently it caught fire and you could hear them screaming but there was nothing you could do about it.

George MacDonnell: Totally exhausted in broad daylight without any artillery support or any heavy machine gun support, the Canadians attacked Stanley Village.

Leo Murphy: When they give you orders to attack in the army, you have to go.

Arly Enright: That was hand to hand fighting, bayonets and it wasn’t very nice.

Philip Doddridge: Major Parker turned around and started counting and he counted 45 of us left.

Leo Murphy: And the war ended on Christmas Day, they sounded the bugles and they said to go as prisoners of war to the Japanese Imperial Army.