Battle of Hong Kong Details

The colonel said we could leave and go up in the hills and we crossed and we blew the bridge that they couldn't cross and went up. Went up in the hills and we was there about 18 days, we never slept or nothing, we couldn't get nothing to eat. The colonel had given me a place, placed me up in the mountain and there was a fellow there, an officer and he didn't like me and I didn't like him. And he was firing at our fellows and they were hollering , "Hold your fire!" And I was standing over him and I cocked my rifle and I put in ten bullets, and I said, "Look, hold your fire or I'm blowing your brains out!" And oh he got mad, he said, "If you don't get killed myself, I'll kill you." And you know there was three of us and the colonel said, "You done wrong, you should have shot him!" For he said he was threatening three lives.

We was right out on the point then and I was digging trenches when the truck came up with the flag on. And it wasn't us that surrendered, it was the town and it wasn't our town so we had to quit. One of our officers said we'll have to surrender, I said, "No, go to the last man." And him, he was scared. They surrendered so we had to stop.

Interviewer: What do you remember was your reaction when you realized that you were going to be surrendering to the Japanese?

Well, we didn't like it very well but we had nothing to fight with, it was only rifles and the big gun up on the hill, she run out of bullets. So it was left, they lost thirty some thousand with us and there was only two thousand Canadians.

When we come to dig graves, we said, "Will we dig a grave for the Canadians or the Japs? " "Throw them all in,” he said, “the fellow up there will sort them all out!" The colonel...