Roses in December

God gave us memory so that we might have Roses in December - James M. Barrie

Roses in December,  is about my family and how the fall of Hong Kong in 1941 affected all their lives.

The inspiration came from my grandmother, Alice McGowan, who wrote, what our family calls, a Journal. It was not a day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of events in her life, but more of a brief summary of events that she recalls from her life. She wrote it in 1984 when she was 76 years old in response to a request from my cousin. Like my cousin, I had always wondered what her life had been like. The Journal gave me a glimpse.

The Journal was written on one of those flip top reporters spiral note pads and was some 47 pages long. Some bits were missing, and in addition, it was sometimes very hard to read, so some guess work was involved.

The book covers the fall of Hong Kong in 1941, the Lisbon Maru and the USS Grouper,  The Royal Scots 2nd Bat and other participants, my grandfather Frederick Stanford, and step grandfather James Clarke. It also covers the notorious CO-OP Wars in Dagenham in 1938 (!), the family and the effect of evacuation when they travelled on various ships to and from Australia.

My Grandparents

Alice McGowan

My grandmother was born on 4th April 1908 in Largs, Scotland. She lived at No.2 Gateside Street. It is still there, a few roads and a brisk walk from the bracing sea front, marina and ferry point.

My Nan’s parents were Harry and Isobel McGowan. Harry was Isobel’s second marriage, having been married before to Sea Captain called Daniel Hamilton. She had, as a result of her mother’s two marriages, two-step sisters, one stepbrother, and she had three brothers from her mother’s second marriage, in which she was conceived and born. They were, in no particular order, Nan, Dan and Isobel Hamilton, and Harry, James and Stanley McGowan. Isobel was a ‘lady’ coming from a good background and was a regular churchgoer.

She was mother to Frederick Henry, John and David, and also to triplets born in India who all died after two weeks.

Never rich, she was however, never poor. Her hard work and tenacity saw her survive some incredibly difficult times. She was an astute lady, and business wise, clever. Although not perhaps the brightest in the pack when it came to general knowledge, she nonetheless defied all that was thrown at her in that she gave her boys a good start in life against the odds, and in the end, was rightly proud of all her family and what they did.

She had travelled to the four corners of the earth, had been on some of the most glorious ocean liners of their day, had travelled on planes when they were in their infancy. She had braved the hot and cold, mixed with peoples of all races, had servants, had lived in glorious surroundings. And in all that time, she never lost her broad Glaswegian accent! Scottish through and through, diminutive yet a giant, a mother matriarch and businesswoman, she faced the world and took it full on, and, in the end, she won.

CSM Frederick 'Sammy' Stanford

Warrant Officer Class ll, 6908613, 2ND BN., Royal Scots, Died Friday 2 October 1942

My paternal grandfather, Frederick Samuel Henry Stanford (Sammy Stanford), was born in September 1902 within the sound of Bow Bells (as they say) in the East End in Stepney Bow on the Mile End Road. His family moved and took up residence in Dagenham, which at that time was a new, and growing area. He was the son of a prosperous shopkeeper. Dagenham, in the time that he lived there, in the early 20th century, was a village, one through street – Crown Street - that was surrounded by farmland.

With a strong desire not to follow into the family business at such an early stage of his life, he enlisted for the Kings Shilling and found himself recruited by the Royal Scots. This was a rarity for the time as the regiment only ever took on Scotsmen. Here was a Sassenach, 5’ 7”, complete with ‘Estuary’ accent, joining a predominantly Scottish regiment. Although not tall, my father talks of him leading the troops where you would see rows of tall upright Scotsmen and at the front, where you had to look twice, was CSM Stanford, shorter, but seemingly taller, leading them on parade. He was a quiet, but firm man whose authority came from his confidence and bearing.

He married my grandmother on 28th December 1928.

He rose steadily through the ranks over the years to Company Sergeant Major and was posted to India with C Coy 2nd Bat Royal Scots in 1937, and to Hong Kong in 1938.

In September of 1942, he and Jim (see below) were two of the 1,816 prisoners who were to be transported to Japan in the unmarked Lisbon Maru.

Little is known by my family as to what happened to him  from that point on. What we do know is that another Royal Scots sergeant, James Clarke, was with him when the Grouper torpedoed the Lisbon Maru. They ended up in the water together. All that Jim Clarke ever said to us, as a family, was that he was with him one minute, and the next he had drifted away, never to be seen again.

James Clarke

Warrant Officer Class lll, 3047653, 2ND BN., Royal Scots

My eyes were always heavy. They always were when I slept on my grandmother’s settee at 1 Rosehatch Avenue, Chadwell Heath, Essex, a small two bedroomed semi-detached council property. I can remember the smell of the Brasso, and the hint of dying embers. One eye open I would see a man kneeling on one leg, arm resting on the angled knee whilst gently shuffling out the old coke from under the fire grate onto a stack of old newspaper resting on the hearth. Collarless shirt, braces loose by the side, Grandad Jim would be performing his usual daily chore of cleaning the fire and polishing up the fireside implements.

I would stir, trying to pull the blanket over me, just for a few more minutes, to delay the start of day. Hearing me, he would look over. A gentle nod would indicate for me to get up and go and get washed and dressed. Sometimes I would go over, have a cuddle and he would rub his rough unshaven skin against my face that would make me laugh and then cause me to run and dash upstairs to get ready. Never a word, but eyes full of love, Grandad Jim would get me started on my day, which with him, could mean anything.

Who was this man? Where did he come from? What life had he led? His life intertwined my grandfathers when he was in captivity with him at the fall of Hong Kong. He, too, was on the Lisbon Maru, and escaped from the holds, ending up in the water.

Unlike my grandfather, though, Jim was rescued, for want of a better description, and he went on to endure three years of hell in Japan as a prisoner working in the docks.

Evacuation

On the 19th June 1940, the War Office sent instructions to the General Officer Commanding Hong Kong to proceed in taking precautionary measures in preparation for the evacuation of women and children from Hong Kong. It was now recognised that such an evacuation would be most difficult to achieve, but also that it should be done, as if any family/person was captured, it would prove to be an embarrassment to the authorities. Anyone captured would also suffer immense hardship and suffering, and it would also be a propaganda coup for the Japanese.

On the 1st July 1940, instructions were received from London to begin evacuation. By the 3rd August all service and non service women and children had been evacuated to the Philippines, a total of nearly 3,500 in all. However, there was a great deal of critcism, most notably from the Chinese community,  against the authorities and the way the evacuation was handled, as there were accusations of discrimination as no non-European was amongst those evacuated.

Evacuation is such a simple word, very precise in its definition of ‘leaving a dangerous place’. How fearful must those families have been, to have to leave their husbands, fathers, and lovers, to a fate unknown. For women like my grandmother, thousands of miles from home, leaving a colony in danger, to leave her husband behind, pregnant, with two boisterous boys in tow, with their meagre belongings, she escaped to Australia. A stranger in a strange land, calling on support and giving support to a close knit batch of friends who helped each other in unwelcome territory. Through the whole world this was a regular occurrence, colonies were evacuated, homes abandoned, fleeing to who knows where. Little do we today realise how traumatic these events must have been, and not only to sent to a place you don’t know, but to have to live day to day with very little news, rumours and all sorts of horror stories, keeping body and soul together and still raise and feed a family.

These were trying times, and it a testimony to their resilience that these women came home, stronger, harder and full of fight after the terrible ordeals they had been subjected to.

Dec 1941 - Oct 1942

The Battle for Hong Kong and the Lisbon Maru

On the eve of the 8th December 1941, the Hong Kong garrison under the command of Major General Maltby was some 14,000 strong. Having been reinforced by the arrival of two Canadian Regiments in the November comprising of over 2,000 men of The Winnipeg Grenadiers and The Royal Rifles of Canada. The defenders were up against three divisions of Japanese totalling over 60,000 men.

In addition, the defenders were made up of men from The Royal Scots, The Middlesex Regiment, local volunteer reservists, two Indian Regiments, The 5/7 Raijputs and The 2/14 Punjab.

Churchill had deemed the garrison to be lost before the battle started, Maltby being under instructions to hold out and harass the enemy for as long as possible.

Man for man, the defenders held out longer, and performed better, than any other British Colony.

The book looks at the reputation of The Royal Scots, the attitude of The Middlesex towards them. I look at the way Major General Maltby reacted to the Canadian contingent and how he formed an incorrect opinion of their ability. I also look at the heroics of the little known gunboats, the MTB squadron that caused all sorts of mayhem during the battle. How The Royal Scots reputation changed from that of incompetents to that of heroes.

The battle lasted from the 8th December, the Japanese attacking just 6 hours after Pearl Harbor, to the 25th December 1941. The Japanese found that the defenders were resilient, and had to fight for every inch of ground. With no support available from home, Maltby relied on the defenders inflicting as much damage on the enemy as they could, in addition to overseeing demolition and destruction of supplies rather than see them fall into enemy hands.

I think it fair to say, and facts bear this out as I have stated in the book, that every unit, every regiment, that took part in the de fence of Hong Kong, had, by the end, given a good account of themselves and deserve every credit and praise for their action against incredible odds.

Eventually, after being prisoners for nearly a year, 1,816 men of The Royal Scots, The Middlesex, Royal Artillery, Royal Navy and other units, were put on board the Lisbon Maru moored at Stonecutters island, to be transported to Japan to work as POW’s in the docks and other industry as guests of His Imperial Majesty, Hirohito.

Leaving Hong Kong on 27th September 1942, she set sail for Japan. Being unmarked, with all prisoners battened down in disgusting holds, the USS Grouper, a Gato class submarine, spotted her. Three torpedoes were fired. All missed. The fourth did not. It holed the Lisbon Maru. Sinking slowly, the Japanese locked the prisoners in. Over a course of seven hours the prisoners fought to open the hatches to escape the slowly sinking ship. When they did get out they came under gunfire.

Men jumped into the oil soaked sea, still being fired upon. Some Chinese fishermen nearby started to rescue a few before the Japanese relented and reluctantly tried to rescue men in the water.

Over 840 died. My grandfather was one of them. My step grandfather did not, and was sent, along with over 900 others, onward to Japan.

For the families of those men who went aboard the Lisbon Maru on the 25th September 1942, no one will know exactly which men drowned and which managed to survive to die later, the Japanese did not keep records.

How many men of all Regiments survived to the end of the war is not known. At the end of the Battle of Hong Kong, The Royal Scots had 4 Officers and 98 men of other ranks left. This was from an original total of 35 officers and 734 men.