Arriving in Hong Kong

We didn't go to Hong Kong when we landed, we landed in Kowloon. We didn't go to Hong Kong until after the war had started. And I was a Bren Gun operator so we had to get to where our Bren Guns, we didn't have them in our quarters. All we had was our rifles in our quarters, them Lee Enfield Rifles. So we went to Hong Kong and they issued our Bren Guns and we got our ammunition. And we were all posted up in different areas on the Hong Kong side. I was up at one Wai Shun Gap just above the reservoir and then I stayed there for the whole duration of the... Interviewer: “ So you were there... ”I was there for two weeks. Interviewer: “Okay!”I was there. I was there right beside a, and I was on a side of the mountain in a pillbox and we were watching down, see if anything would move down below. And the aircraft was bombing us from the air thinking we had no aircraft at all. That must of went on for oh five or six days. Because we only fought 16 days altogether and they must have been shelling us all that time. They must have been shelling us from the air, from the sea and from the... because we had no boats, we had nothing.

Mr Lynch talks about arriving in Hong Kong and where he was located after the Japanese attacked.

Wilbert Lynch

Wilbert Lynch was born in Portage, Manitoba on April 6th 1923 and was raised on a farm with two brothers and three sisters. He left home when he was 13 years old and worked for five dollars a month plus room and board at a few local farms. Three days after turning seventeen he joined the army and trained on the Bren gun in Camp Shilo and became a member of the 18th Manitoba Reconnaissance Battalion.