Lieutenant Alexander Kennedy drove eastwards along the coast of Hong Kong Island till he had left the city behind. Just before the beacon at Lyemun Pass, he parked his car—a sporty little Standard 9 saloon with sliding sunroof—and stood on the headland, gazing down at the entrance to one of the finest harbours in the world. Across the narrow blue strait, 500 yards away, Devil’s Peak reared up from the mainland. Beyond it, a range of higher mountains—the ‘nine dragons’ that gave the Kowloon peninsula its Chinese name—rose dreamily in a grey-blue mist above the scattered...

Hong Kong’s natural shape—almost like that of a theatre, with the harbour as its stage—ensured that almost everyone could catch at least a glimpse of the war’s spectacular opening act. As ever, those in the Mid-Levels and on the Peak had the best seats in the house, gazing over their balcony rails at a sky speckled with swooping warplanes. Many thought it must be a training exercise, till they looked again and saw the coils of smoke rising from the airport. Even then, they couldn’t quite believe it was real. Everything else seemed so normal. As one expatriate...

Now there were no more flights out: the gates had closed. No more boats out either, the boom firmly locked. But the Japanese didn’t need to come in by sea. On land, the lightly equipped soldiers in their rubber-soled, split-toed canvas shoes crossed the New Territories faster than anyone had thought possible. Moving by night on mountain paths, they took the Shingmun Redoubt—the key point in the Gin Drinkers’ Line—by catching its few Royal Scots defenders napping inside their pillboxes and dropping hand grenades down the air shafts. Only three days after crossing the border, they were now...

Hong Kong’s defenders never really recovered from the shock of losing the mainland so soon. The days that followed were days of reorganization and battening down of hatches; of artillery duels across the water, aerial blitzes to which they had no reply and invitations to surrender indignantly refused. There was a certain stiffening of resolve as they waited for the Japanese to land. But that early feeling of being pushed back, of withdrawing until there was nowhere left to go—that never went away.

The lucky few who were to find themselves on Christmas Day suddenly breaking out across enemy...

After a week of war, Hong Kong’s once-teeming harbour had a desolate air. Junks and other native craft had been herded off into typhoon shelters; freighters and other ships had been bombed or scuttled, and lay keeled over at grotesque angles. The Royal Navy’s huge old depot ship, HMS Tamar, proved most reluctant of all to sink, even when an MTB fired a torpedo to help. But finally, after forty-four years as home of the Far Eastern Fleet, it too succumbed, settling slowly down into the mud.

At night, where before there had been neon splashes of reds, blues and...

The Japanese finally made their move on the island on the night of 18 December, crossing the harbour in the same area where the three men from Z Force had blown up the observation ship. There had been several days of increasingly heavy bombardment of the defences around Lyemun and along the island’s adjacent northeast coast. The oil and petrol storage tanks at North Point were set on fire and then shelled continuously. The resulting thick black smoke combined with a moonless night, a heavy ground mist and an unusually high tide to provide perfect conditions for a landing.

An...

People were sleeping in the Gloucester Hotel a dozen to a room and all along the corridors of the lower floors. The top two storeys, including the eighth-floor restaurant, had been evacuated as the bombing and shelling got worse. The staircases, tea lounge and arcade shops were piled high with sandbags and all the glass was broken. One day, a ten-inch shell crashed through the outer stone wall on the third floor, where David MacDougall and Ted Ross had their office. It penetrated into a couple of rooms but failed to explode. As Ross later recalled, the British Ministry of...

Next morning, a severely wounded Charles Boxer was brought into Queen Mary Hospital. He had found the road east of Aberdeen blocked by abandoned vehicles below Shouson Hill, and had continued on foot. He was crossing some open ground with Lieutenant TJ Price and Sub-Lieutenant JJ Forster of the HKRNVR when they came under fire from a collection of huts. A bullet entered Boxer’s chest close to the lung and came out near the middle of his back. As the shooting intensified and grenades were thrown, the two naval officers carried him to safety, and he was taken to the...

The arrival of Gilbert Thums in the flotilla coincided with that of Kendall, McEwan and Talan—or Mike, Mac and John*—as they soon came to be known. The three SOE men heaved their boxes of Bren guns, grenades, guncotton and various ‘toys’ onto MTB 10, where, as McEwan noted in his diary, they were treated to a lively firsthand account of the final attack on Cicala:

The story of how five bombs hit her in line, without completely sinking her, and causing only one death (The Gunner’s Mate) changed my idea of the effectiveness of bombs, and told as...

As Christmas Day dawned, some noted ominously that it was another Thursday—the third of the eighteen-day battle. The first had seen the retreat from the mainland; the second the invasion of the island; all that was left was capitulation.

Sir Mark Young had been spending his evenings playing Chopin on the Government House piano, as he wrestled with the agonizing choice of when to admit defeat. No British possession had surrendered itself to the enemy since the American War of Independence some 170 years before.

Churchill’s latest message ruled out surrender, calling for vigorous fighting from house to house....

The motor torpedo boats were having their quietest day of the war. Lying in two secluded bays, they were sheltered by hills from both the wind and the enemy’s guns, and as they waited for further orders there was nothing to do but sit tight. Hong Kong’s weather had been at its winter best for much of the past few weeks, but on Christmas Day it was clearer and crisper than ever, the azure sea and green hillsides bathed in brilliant sunshine.

Three of the MTBs—10, 11 and 27—lay just outside Aberdeen Harbour, to the west of Aplichau....

As General Maltby ordered his men to hand in their weapons, the various members of the escape party were still gathering in the centre of town. Chan Chak had received a call at about three o’clock to inform him that the Governor and the General would go to surrender in person to the Japanese in about an hour’s time. The Admiral and his three colleagues—Henry, SK and Yeung the bodyguard—made their way across the road to the Gloucester Building, where Bill Robinson was anxiously waiting to accompany them to Aberdeen.

Max Oxford had been up to the Peak...

As they scoured the Aberdeen waterfront for their promised boats, the escape party spotted some European seamen working on a small launch tied up to a wooden pier. Ross pulled up and ran down to ask if they had seen any MTBs. There had been at least one there late last night, he was told, but they had all taken off again by the morning.

It was now decided that a group of the escapees, led by the Admiral himself (and including David MacDougall, Ted Ross and Henry Hsu), should go and enquire at the Industrial School. This they discovered...

After throwing himself into the sea amid a hail of bullets, the Admiral paused, holding on with his right hand to the side of the boat and using it as cover from the gunfire. Henry joined him, half in and half out of the water, and asked how he was doing. ‘It’s just a small wound,’ Chan Chak replied, laughing. ‘For me it’s nothing.’ But as blood ‘poured like water’ from his left wrist, he had to admit to himself the grimness of his situation. ‘Although I was an experienced swimmer, struggling in the cold water under enemy fire, with...

As MTB 10 turned round after taking 11 halfway to Telegraph Bay and darted back through another barrage of shellfire, Gandy and Kendall were delighted to receive the message that the party they had been waiting for had finally shown up. But when they rejoined 27 at Aplichau and greeted the bedraggled survivors, they were shocked to find that both Admiral Chan Chak and Colonel SK Yee were missing.

Chan’s ADC—‘call me Henry,’ he told Gandy—explained that Colonel Yee was believed to have been killed when their boat was fired on and apparently sunk. Admiral Chan had regrettably...

At 9.30 p.m. on that clear, moonlit Christmas night, the five remaining boats of the 2nd Motor Torpedo Boat Flotilla were ready to leave. With a heart-stopping roar, the centre of the three Napier-Lion aircraft engines that powered each boat broke into life and settled into a steady drone. The passengers who had swum to the MTBs from the Cornflower’s launch did their best to keep out of the way (some more successfully than others) as the sailors went to their various stations to secure for sea and prepare for action. Just what sort of action nobody knew.

‘Hoist battle...

By degrees it darkened, and in the peculiar half-light, it was difficult to discern the boat ahead apart from its phosphorescent light. As the waters got deeper and blacker, the heavy iron chests containing the flotilla’s secret signal books were locked and thrown overboard. The five MTBs passed just to the south of the Potoi island group and continued eastwards past Waglan Lighthouse, on the remote, southeastern fringe of Hong Kong territory. Ten miles on, they turned north and headed towards the wide mouth of Mirs Bay.

Suddenly, out to sea on the starboard bow, the beam of a powerful...

For local boats, the trip across to Nanao was the easiest of sailings. It was little more than half a mile away, after all. But the night was black and the bay was shallow and rocky, so the village headman volunteered two of the island’s fishermen as pilots. One of them came on board Gandy’s boat and took up position next to him on the bridge. He evidently stood too close for the naval commander’s liking, for Gandy later wrote bluntly in his notebook: ‘He smelt.’

About ten of the local youths on the island took the chance to go...

It was just as well that good cover lay only two or three miles from the beach, for they had all misjudged the amount of gear they could carry. The pace was slow and grinding, as they followed the path in single file around narrow rice terraces and small orchards and began to climb ever more steeply into the hills. It was a fine, fresh morning, and as it grew lighter, they paused for a moment to look back past the low, dark shape of Ping Chau across the splendid sweep of Mirs Bay, where a white ribbon of surf...

Reveille was called with a shiny, curved ship’s whistle, or ‘bosun’s pipe’, that Les Barker wore on a lanyard around his neck next to his .455 Webley revolver. Small and slight as he was, the cheery young leading seaman was taking turns with David Legge in carrying their section’s heavy and cumbersome Bren gun, complete with bipod mounting and ammunition. The march facing them today was a challenge for anyone, even without any extra load. The plan was to get over the mountains by dusk in order to get past the main Japanese-held town of Danshui under cover of darkness...

When the signal to move came at dawn, they were only too glad to get going. Kendall led off at a cracking pace, saying they could have breakfast at their first stop in unoccupied China: a village called Xinxu, where the Nationalist Army had a small forward post. But that was still almost ten miles away. By the time the sun came up and the warmth began to seep into their bones, many of them were already beginning to fall behind again. Henry went on ahead with an advance party of guerrillas to make arrangements for the promised meal and...

Their goal today was Waichow, now only 14 miles away. Here they were told they would find a British military representative and an American mission, as well as a medical post, shops and other amenities. On a beautiful, sunny morning they were washed and ready to leave by eight o’clock. About forty ‘bicycle-taxis’ had been sent from Waichow to meet them, in case the older or more footsore members of the group weren’t up to any more walking. This seemed a splendid idea, they thought—until they saw the bicycles and learned that this particular form of travel could be...

Orders came to assemble at 8 a.m. for an official photograph, but most made as much as they could of their unaccustomed beds by having as long a lie-in as possible. While the officers were sleeping two to a room, the ratings—or ‘troops’ as they were known—were packed into dormitories, just like in the old days in Hong Kong. From now on, ranks were being re-established in strict Royal Navy tradition. On the march through dangerous territory over the past four days and nights, the captain and first lieutenant of each boat had lived and travelled together with...

Next day, the early morning sounds of soldiers’ bugles and peddlers’ street cries were once again interrupted by the thudding gongs of the air raid alarm, as the Japanese bomber returned for another look at the mission. The airbase was so close that there was never time for adequate warning. But if the pilots saw people scattering they were apparently satisfied, and no bombs were dropped. Even so, the Admiral was anxious to save the people of Waichow from reprisals, and it was clear that today’s planned departure was not before time.

Colonel Hector Chauvin, the man supervising the handing...

Next morning, the passengers had to make their own way on foot along the riverbank, while their lightened boats were poled and even bodily lifted over the biggest sandbanks yet. By 1 p.m., the men from MTBs 07, 09, 11 and 27 were at least an hour ahead of everyone else, since their boat had found the best route through the shallows. As the leading group walked round the final bend in the river before Longchuan, they were hailed by a small party that had come out from the town to meet them.

Towering over the Chinese officials around him...

The lorries halted near the customs gate on the edge of the city. A large crowd had gathered there and banners prepared by the army’s political department had been hung across the road. ‘Hearty welcome to General Chen Chak and the Hong Kong defenders,’ read one in English. ‘Welcome to heroic, outstanding Chan Chak,’ said another in Chinese.

No sooner had he been helped from his car than Chan was besieged by a throng of admirers, who surged forward to give him his most rapturous reception yet. A large bouquet of flowers was thrust towards him as excited townspeople pressed...

Among the many visitors to the one-legged admiral’s bedside at the mission was the guerrilla leader, Leung Wingyuen, who came to bid an emotional farewell to his former marine commander. As promised, Chan had put in a good word for him with the Chinese Army, recommending him to no less a figure than Yu Hanmou as a ‘bold and patriotic’ fighter. General Yu responded by formally appointing the exbandit as a guerrilla captain under the Waichow area army command. As well as giving his whole group and its various activities the official seal of approval, this meant Leung was entitled,...

Two days after the departure of Montague and the rest of the Chungking group, the main naval party under Gandy began their long overland journey from Kukong to Burma. They rose at 3.30 a.m. on Friday 16 January and marched across town to the railway station, where friends from the YMCA and the mission had gathered in the predawn darkness to see them off. As an expression of gratitude for looking after them so well, the sailors presented the mission members with the White Ensign they had carried from Hong Kong, covered with their signatures.*

Gandy’s party that morning numbered...

Burma was to prove a shock. It was even more poorly prepared to deal with a Japanese attack than Hong Kong had been. Where Hong Kong had at least put up a good fight against the odds, Burma’s defending forces were disorganized and demoralized before the battle had even begun.

Many of them were only half-trained, since the best troops available for the region had been sent to Malaya in a last-ditch effort to save Singapore. The British faced the additional disadvantage of an almost total lack of cooperation—and often active opposition—from the main indigenous group, the Burmans....

The column of smoke above Rangoon was still clearly visible 40 miles out at sea. But there was no sign of the expected enemy aircraft: the RAF and the Flying Tigers had taken a heavy toll of the Japanese air squadrons. As the Jessen headed northwest across the Bay of Bengal, tension slowly subsided and thoughts turned increasingly to the possibility that they might now, finally, be on their way home.

Those on board the Danish ship included most but not all of the surviving members of the MTB flotilla. Alick Kennedy had been sent in a Burmese minesweeper, the...