MICHAEL COUNSELL’S
DIARY 1955-1956
I kept carbon copies of my letters home
during my National Service. This consists of extracts from them during the period I was in Hong Kong, omitting trips to Macau
and Japan, walking in the New
Territories, and some of my church activities (I subsequently became
a vicar). I don’t particularly like the young prig who wrote them, but apart from shortening them I have left them more
or less as written.
Michael Counsell 2007.
[2 SEPTEMBER 1954. BASIC TRAINING, OSWESTRY
25 November WOOLWICH
3 December ALDERSHOT
31st March WOOLWICH
12–17 May CURRENCY ESCORT DUTY Woolwich to Lubbeke, Germany]
26 May
Embarked on the ‘Empire
Fowey’ troopship from Southampton to Hong Kong
HONG KONG
23nd June
We awoke at 6 and looked out
of the porthole. It was still pretty dark, but we could see the slumbering shapes of islands in the Hong
Kong group in the grey coverlet of the sea. But as we watched the coverlet acquired a golden fringe, and as the
sun rose in a mackerel sky the islands came to life, and we saw that the sea was dotted with junks and sampans. Chinese islands
have a dragon-like shape of their own, with a jagged back, due I suppose to monsoon erosion. But what a wonderful way to see
China for the first time! The waiters
at breakfast competed to serve us in the hope of being tipped. Disembarked at 9 am Kowloon
side. John Dutot and I, Ray Govier, Chris Jackman, John Cashmore and Mike Carr were all posted to 27 BAA Regt RA, and we were
met by a subaltern who organised transport and answered our questions. RHQ and one battery are at Stanley,
one battery on Stonecutters Island,
and a battery consisting of one troop only at Chai Wan. The postal address is British Army Post Office 1. A ferry took us
across the harbour, then we went by truck to Stanley Fort, quite a luxurious camp of 1937 vintage. Our top floor rooms overlook
a different bay on each side, since the mess is at the highest point of a peninsula. After lunch we hitched a lift into Victoria. The Star Ferry across to Kowloon
is a wonderful institution. Forces pay 10 cents (three ha’pence) and you jostle with the Chinese on the pier waiting
for it. The boats carry 100 first class and goodness knows how many below decks, and the crossing takes six minutes. Explored
Kowloon shops, prices usually half English prices. At the
Officers’ Shop (NAAFI run) we ordered three suits of properly tailored tropical kit and a monkey jacket. Returning to
Victoria we went to the Gloucester Lounge, a café which
was so air-conditioned that going in felt like plunging into a cold bath. We got a bus back to Stanley.
24th June
We were interviewed by the adjutant,
Major Brandon: ‘What school did you go to? What games do you play?’ It is part of the adjutant’s job to
be unpleasant to subalterns, and he did it well. I went to open an account at the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, known to the
Brits as the Honkers Shankers Bankers, a vast hall designed to impress, with a high mosaic ceiling, Sikh guards armed with
guns, and the cashier’s booth is marked ‘Shroff’ . Bought a white sharkskin shirt at the officers’
shop for $8 (10/-).
25th June
Interviewed by the CO, Lt Col Ian Graeme, DSO, RA. He told
us a little about the tactical situation; the army’s main task in Hong Kong seems to be to beat the local Chinese at
football so that the word goes back to Peking that we are tough. John Cashmore and I are
going to 23 Battery on Stonecutters Island.
26th June
The Padre met me at the door
of the church, and was so pleased that another communicant had joined the regiment that he nearly had my posting to Stonecutters
cancelled. We bathed at a pleasant little beach at the foot of the cliff from the local prison.
27th June
Posted to Stonecutters Island. A truck took us to a pier
in Victoria, where a native launch, or walla-walla boat,
on hire to the army, took us across. We met most of the officers when they came in to lunch. It is quite a small mess with
rooms no bigger than a private house, and there are only eight officers living in. The BC, Major Clapham, was at lunch and
interviewed us afterwards. He put John in C Troop, which has a gun position at Brick Hill on the south coast of Hong Kong Island,
and I am in D Troop, with guns on the top of Stonecutters. I am sharing a room in the mess with Bob Hyatt, another ordinand,
until he goes home for demob. Returning to the mess after an evening in Hong Kong I found a long form of personal details
to be filled in with what I thought were some rather silly questions; it was not till the following morning that I discovered
that that, and a major who drank pink gins one after another and talked about his experiences in India, were practical jokes
cooked up by the subalterns. The major was actually Lt Phil Green, wearing borrowed badges of rank; he said the pink gin made
him quite ill We have now been through our initiation and been accepted.
28th June
The TCOA of our battery, Sgt
Corr, was in Dave’s battery in Korea.
They use a static gun rotated by remote control, and an old type of predictor, which were both strange to me.
30th June
A man collapsed during marching
drill with all the signs of appendicitis. We threw the Battery Commander and Battery Captain out of their jeep, which was
passing, and sent him in it up to the MI room (medical room) which is on the bend of the road leading up to the gun site,
and eventually I went with him in a lorry to the hospital; it took three of us to hold him still on the ferry, and we crossed
all the traffic lights at red at 40 mph. It turns out that he had a kidney stone.
2nd July 1955
The sergeants’ mess invited
the new officers down for some drinks before lunch, and suspecting foul play I ordered orangeade. Not to be defeated they
doctored it with gin; ‘This Watson’s Orange tastes
as though it’s gone off,’ I said. ‘No, it’s perfectly all right, have another,’ they replied.
I finished off with beer, which was quite fatal, and I could hardly walk back to our mess; lunch was quite hilarious. In the
evening went to the cinema in Hong Kong and saw ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ with Chinese
subtitles.
7th July
Took a guard over to Brick Hill,
through rural Hong Kong with vegetable patches and men with a watering can hanging from each end of a yoke cultivating them
[later I discovered they use human sewage.] Passed through Aberdeen,
a big fishing village, its harbour crammed with hundreds of small sailing boats, on which whole families are born, live, eat,
sleep and die; its flavour is both romantic and fishy. At Brick Hill I had to mount the guard, and do a monthly check on the
condition of the truck working from an instruction book. They taught us nothing about trucks at Mons except how to disconcert
the driver by letting him think you know more than he does: if there is a little noise you say ‘Your little end has
gone’; if there’s a big noise you say ‘Your big end’s gone’; and if there is a tappety noise
you are to say ‘It must be the tappets!’ There is no breeze here like on the ridge at Stonecutters, so I had to
sleep with a sheet covering everything except my nose, and the mosquitoes bit that.
8th July
I was paying officer. We collect
the money from the bank in Victoria, have an ice-cream in the air-conditioned Gloucester Arcade, and visit the long-playing
record shop, if necessary go to Brick Hill and then to Stonecutters to pay 150 or so men, which takes till tea time, or longer
if the books don’t add up; several times I made up the discrepancy, which must have been my fault though nobody ever
complained about being over-paid, out of my own pocket. Today I bought a waterproof shower-proof antimagnetic luminous 17
jewel stainless steel Rolex Tudor Oyster watch for $170 (£10 odd); let’s hope it lasts a lifetime [It didn’t].
11th July
A shoeshine boy offered to clean
my shoes for 5 cents, so I gave it to him as it was all I had. But he hadn’t really meant it, and started an argument;
we had great fun with me using all the worst Chinese words I knew and him replying with some quite choice English words; we
parted the best of friends.
12th July
They have made me athletics officer,
water polo officer and photographic officer! The BC and his wife invited four subalterns to supper at their flat on the Peak
above Victoria, with a fine view though it is often shrouded
in mist.
20th July
Visited a couple of men in the
Military Hospital.
Then saw ‘A Soldier of Fortune’, a lot of it filmed in Hong Kong.
23rd July
Walking along a rarely used road
on Stonecutters Island
I disturbed a snake; it didn’t stop to tell me its name, and I haven’t heard of anyone being bitten. [Forty years
later I was told the Japanese used Stonecutters as a research station to extract serum from all the most poisonous snakes
in the Far East, and were so cross at losing the war that they set them all loose!]
27th July
I was a member of a Court of
Inquiry into damage to a gun part; quite fascinating learning how to collect and sift evidence. There is an Irish Bombardier
here who seems to have such a residual level of blood alcohol that he only needs topping up, which he can do successfully
in the NAAFI between finishing work and catching the ferry home. As he told the magistrate the next day, ‘Oi was jhust
swinging moi fist about and this stupid Chinese lorry driver simply ran his chin into it!’ The magistrate was so amused
he let him off with a caution.
30th July
Collected a tropical suit from
a tailor who had made it for me; blue-grey ‘palm beech’ material for $170 (£11). Clothes will never again be as
cheap as here.
1st August 1955
I went up the Peak on the Peak
Tram, which gives you a splendid view of the harbour. There is a little walk from the tram to the summit but the view from
there is well worth it. You can see for miles, dozens of little islands like the coils of a sea serpent in a glassy sea.
August 2nd
Our new Battery Captain is Frank
King, a married man who has come up from the ranks. Major Ken Lovell is going to be our new Battery Commander.
August 6th
A small rowing boat was washed
up on the beach in the storm, so we repainted it and named it Charlotte.
The troop from Brick Hill were over here for a photograph and stole it, so two of our officers went over there, spent two
hours in their camp undetected by their guard, and stole it back.
24th August
Called on my school friend John
Vernon in 15 Med Regt RA at Gun Club.
3rd August
I blew my month’s wages
on a Zeiss Super Ikonta camera for £18.15s.0d and an exposure meter for £5, a flash attachment, a timer, and a tripod. Altogether
£27.10s.0d – Phew! Never spent so much money in one lump before.
2nd September
I celebrated halfway through
my National Service; but I was orderly officer, and had a telephone call half way through the night to deal with a man who
was said to be hysterical, but in fact had only drunk too much. I was only half-conscious when I started to deal with this,
from the effects of my own celebration; perhaps I should have been called the disorderly officer!
5th September
We are normally not allowed to
fire the anti-aircraft guns on Stonecutters Island,
in case we actually hit an aircraft. But on one glorious day of the year, it seems that every aeroplane in the Far East must
be grounded so that Stonecutters can have what is called its ‘Check Fire Day’; ostensibly this is to check the
accuracy of the guns’ aiming and firing; in fact it is an excuse to use up our year’s supply of live ammunition
and spend the rest of the year scraping the paint off the guns and repainting them. This was today; we had to set up wireless
communication with Kai Tak airport and half a dozen other places, and send two launches filled with artillery officers and
Chinese policemen, clearing junks out of the area of sea we were firing over. Then observers stood with binoculars looking
for stray planes, and a whole team of safety officers were waving red flags and blowing whistles if the guns weren’t
pointing the right way. When we were eventually ready to start, the airfield said a Vampire was out of control and might fly
in front of the guns, so we had to wait forty minutes until it ran out of petrol and could make an emergency landing. Then
we fired off one round from one of my guns which immediately developed technical trouble, and was out of action for half an
hour. Meanwhile we fired the other gun with very good results by way of accuracy (the shell must burst on the cross-wires
of a telescope on the radar). When my guns were firing I stood behind the guns watching; otherwise I was TCOA (Tactical Control
Officer’s Assistant) which merely means shouting ‘Fire’ into a microphone when someone else reports he is
ready. I got the BSM to take some photographs with my new camera, one of which appeared in the local newspapers.
10th September
Saturday, after lunch I caught
the ferry from Stonecutters, which seemed like the original Slow Boat to China,
and only just made it in time to catch the twice weekly 2pm boat to Hay Lmg Chau leper colony, just east of Lan Tao Island.
There is a staff of seven and nearly 400 lepers; they only started there in 1951 and are still building. Dr Fraser, the superintendent,
showed a party of eight visitors around. There was a well-equipped hospital for bed patients. Some of them had shrunken limbs
and were horribly deformed, although I have seen worse about the streets of Hong Kong. But
all seemed quite cheerful and most were doing quite good needlework, in spite of having no sense of touch in their fmgers.
There was another building for patients with TB as well as leprosy. Many are cured, but it is hard to get rid of them, partly
because they are happy on the island, partly because family and employers cannot believe that they are no longer infectious.
There is no risk of infection to visitors, nor to the staff if they wash.
13th September
When I was orderly officer last
night the guard commander was missing and had left the island. I had a fair idea why, so phoned the Military Police to go
to his home to arrest him. When he was brought before the Battery Commander this morning he dismissed the charge; the man
had suspected his wife was up to something and had gone home to find her not there; there are rumours of a divorce. Roland
Dallas, John Warren and I have been ordered to act as judges at some motor cycle trials tomorrow at Sai Kung in the New Territories, so
we went today to inspect the course. It was a fascinating journey, my first sight of rural China: steep valleys, paddy fields; clear streams, tiny villages, pigs, oxen, smells
and views. Sai Kung village is hardly touched by western civilisation except that one street vendor was selling vests printed
with ‘Merry Christmas’. Narrow streets with dark shops-cum-houses on either side, thronged with the peasants from
the peninsula up to market, and those who sell to them. Even a town crier, an old man with a goatee beard (no European could
grow one so straggly) carrying a bell and a placard with a notice on.
14th September
I had to judge the motorcyclists
following a crooked course through trees; we were quite close to some stone jars containing somebody’s bones, I’m
sure the relatives would have been horrified if they knew that we disturbed the spirits with the noise. Some Chinese women
working nearby refused to be photographed: do they think the camera contains an evil spirit, or that it will capture their
soul?
15th September
The whole troop loaded into a
landing craft and went to Cheung Chau
Island. We are supposed to send four men to inspect some slit trenches
there every month, but for a change we all went, practised some infantry attacks in the morning, and while the troops swam
in the afternoon I explored the native quarter with my camera.
18th September
There is a lady radiologist who
attends the Cathedral, and she invited some of the young men to lunch at the YMCA then tea at the Queen Matilda’s hospital
where she works. As she drove us in her car away from the Cathedral I asked, ‘Isn’t this a one way street the
other way?’ ‘Yes, it is,’ she answered, ‘but I have an infallible instinct about when it’s safe
to ignore petty regulations like that.’ Then we met a bus coming the other way filling the whole width of the street.
24th September
Electrical storms are quite common
but last night’s was particularly spectacular. The whole sky seemed to pulsate as purple light tries to batter its way
from behind mountains of cloud, darting out jagged flames like a serpent’s tongue, then subsiding exhausted. This from
four or five different clouds every other second. Typhoon Kate may possibly visit us over the weekend, so the people who have
gone into the New Territories on mobile training are returning, and we spent the morning getting everything under cover that
might blow about, lashing down the guns and slapping thick green grease all over them (Ugh!) I was orderly officer and expected
to be called out, but next morning the wind was growing less, and in the evening it was safe to take the ferry to Hong Kong.
29th September
The whole mess decided to go
and see the premiere of Marilyn Monroe in ‘The Seven Year Itch,’ which was extremely funny in a Marilyn Monroe
sort of way. Then we had dinner at the Yacht Club, where the speciality is Baked Alaska, ice cream in a coating of hot meringue.
30th September
I was launch safety officer for
the Brick Hill guns to fire. This meant spending the morning buzzing about in a landing craft moving junks out of the firing
line. I dread to think what harm I did to relations with the Chinese by shouting ‘Fai-dee Ja-wa’ at all the skippers,
which is probably very rude in Cantonese. I got told off for not recognising that a government launch was flying the flags
which indicated that it had an emergency medical case on board. And on one occasion there were four loud bangs, followed by
a message on the radio: ‘We are about to start firing again, will you move out of the danger area?’ This evening
was Chinese Moon Festival, when all the houses are decorated with pine branches, giving a lovely fresh smell among the blend
of others which produce Hong Kong’s distinctive atmosphere, and very inflammable looking
paper lanterns. They also eat moon cakes to commemorate some ancient revolution when messages were passed on papers inserted
into buns, and get drunk on rice wine, ‘sam shui’.
1st October 1955
I was roped in to take the money
at the door of the room with the puppet show, at the Cathedral Michaelmas Fair. This provided an interesting study in maternal
instinct: ‘Could you just let me take a peep inside, to see if my Willy’s all right?’
9th October
I was met at Queen’s Pier
by Mr and Mrs D.B. Evans, who took me in their car to their house in Shek O for lunch. They are quite unlike the majority
of British civilians here, who are nouveau riche and colonial in their attitude to the Chinese. The Evanses are intelligent
and tolerant. Shek 0 is a lovely spot, like unspoilt Cornwall,
and from the verandah of their house you can watch the liners going in and out of Lye Mun Gap. Mr Evans is a solicitor, and
another solicitor from his firm came to lunch, together with the director of Cathay Pacific airways and his wife, and another
couple who had only just arrived in Hong Kong. We spent most of the time talking, then some
of us went for a very exhilarating bathe in the breakers on the beach.
10th October
An audit board of Maj. Clapham,
Lt Peter Postlethwaite and myself are to audit all the regimental accounts; we started with Stanley Officers’ Mess.
I had little to do except count bottles and play with the adding machine, but it is to train me how army double-entry book-keeping
works so that I can take over as mess secretary at Stonecutters.
13th October
Our Troop had a practice firing
camp at Brick Hill; all the equipment went wrong and everybody got discouraged; then one of our shells exploded very close
to the sleeve (towed by a light aircraft) that we were aiming at and brought it down, more by good luck than judgement. The
CO dislikes Stonecutters because we are so remote he has little control over us, so he seized the opportunity to tell us what
he thought of us.
16th October
I went hiking on Lan Tao, an
island larger than Hong Kong Island
to the west. At the top of the pass is a Buddhist Monastery, where I stayed the night. Because this is the Sunday before a
Public Holiday Monday, there are nearly a hundred walkers staying there, and only seven Europeans. Rae Govier who was on the
troopship with me, and Keith Buckroyd and Mike King, all Stanley
subalterns, and three middle-aged civilians. We got preferential treatment and ate indoors. The monks wear black nightshirts
and plus-fours, sky blue stockings and slippers. One spoke English, they were all very friendly. We had Chinese vegetarian
food with chopsticks, then went to bed on trestle tables with an inadequate mattress, earthenware pillows and mosquito nets.
I don’t think I shall become a Buddhist.
17th October
We got up at six to watch the
monks at their prayers. Then I went down to have a look at Tung Cheung with the Stanley
boys. They were going to walk back to Silvermine Bay, having come from Tai O yesterday, but my feet upped and told me that from their
point of view it was a bad idea to walk that distance, so I haggled with a sampan to row my feet and me to Tai O, and left
the others to it. Apart from a couple of fish ferries before dawn, there is only one boat from Tai O, and it was pretty crowded.
A three hour journey, observing the characters among the other passengers. A good weekend! Worth .every blister of it!
20th October
I audited Stonecutters accounts
practically on my own: Major Clapham got too drunk at lunchtime to direct me.
25th October
As Battery Boxing Officer (hollow
laughter) I had to go to Stanley to support our entrants in
the inter-troop boxing competition eliminators. All I have done as boxing officer is to say to gullible thick-heads ‘We
need you to volunteer – but I wouldn’t if were you.’ But I have to admit that at times I found myself getting
quite excited.
27th October
We held a photographic competition;
I would have got a prize in hadn’t been disqualified as Battery Photographic Officer. I was appointed Officers Mess
Secretary.
4th November
A new subaltern, Brian Parkinson,
arrived today. What we shall do with him I don’t know, there were too many of us already.
5th November
I tried my hand at enlarging
in the battery dark room.
6th November
Remembrance Sunday. The cathedral
choir assembled in the Supreme Court building among the bigwigs, and were passed by the entire diplomatic corps in full morning
dress – they must have baked, whereas you don’t need to wear anything much underneath choir robes. The Pakistan consul was in Nehru dress, Robert Ho Tung and other
Chinese were in mandarin garb, we saw formally robed generals, admirals, the lot. The army was drawn up round the cenotaph
and the service was as usual but hotter.
8th November
I went to see ‘Love is
a Many Splendoured Thing.’ There are some quite good shots of Hong Kong, and it conveys
something of the atmosphere here. But I have read the book, which I think is very well written, and in the true story you
may think the authoress was unwise but she did seem sincere and there was a certain depth of feeling, whereas the film was
just another romantic love story.
9th November
‘Exercise Diehard’
began; we are confined to camp and stand to in slit trenches at dawn and dusk. Four of us take it in turns to do duty officer,
sitting by a telephone in the control room; there is the occasional plane flying over to point the guns at, otherwise very
little happens. At times there is quite a warlike atmosphere with phones ringing and wireless crackling, and anyway it all
makes a change. When nothing is happening in the middle of the night the wireless operator tunes in to Indian music, and I’m
developing quite a taste for it. One of the officers, after being given a few drinks in the sergeants’ mess by sergeant
major Watkins, universally known as ‘Jungle Watty’, decided to use up a few rounds of.38 revolver ammunition which
he held illicitly. He decided to let them off into the sea. But one must have ricocheted off a rock over the head of Sergeant
Woods, who was dozing quietly in a slit trench during dusk stand to on the gun site. He, turning to Sergeant Finnemore, said
‘That was a bullet!’ The latter replied, ‘You’re right, it was,’ whereupon they both flattened
themselves at the bottom of their trenches and didn’t reappear for half an hour. This was reported to Captain Frank
King, who surmised someone had been playing around at Lai Chi Kok. The guilty officer rolled in, not realising what had happened,
mumbled that no, he hadn’t heard any rifle shots, and rolled off to bed. Frank informed the police who came over to
take statements the next morning, when the culprit at once explained. The result was an interview with the colonel and 28
days confined to Stonecutters.
18th November
I went out in a jeep to prepare
a map-reading exercise; the temperature must have been about 50, which compared with what we have been used to was a bitter
cold day. We explored a new part of the New Territories to me, up the Castle Peak Road, turned north up Twisk, to a ridge
north of Tai Mo Shan, the highest peak in the colony. There is a good view and you can look into China in the distance. A shame I shall never be able to enter China, it being communist and all. Then down to the Sek Kong Valley,
where I found a vantage point for my test.
24th November
We went into winter clothes today.
We had a cocktail party in the mess. When most of the guests had gone we tried unsuccessfully to persuade one of the girls
to go skinny dipping in the light of the searchlight which some Chinese troops, known as Hong Kong O.Rs., have mounted on
a promontory to shine on the boom which is stretched across the harbour. One of the orderly officer’s duties is to command
it to be lit at different times each night, but we thought illuminated night swimming was a better use for it, though it never
got beyond paddling.
SAI KUNG PATROL
30th November
I led out a Sai Kung Patrol.
Every week a different unit sends out a patrol into a part of the Sai Kung Peninsula to ensure that there is no communist
infiltration, note any map corrections, and put in an appearance of efficiency to make the villagers loyal: it’s called
‘showing the flag’. I took a sergeant, twelve gunners, a medical orderly and three Chinese policemen. Patrols
usually go by landing craft but there was none available, so a truck took us as far as possible and we walked the rest. By
the time we had done a mile carrying heavy kit, we decided that the village we had got to was much more suitable for a base
camp than that two miles further on that we had originally planned to use. So we camped at Ki Lung Ha Lo Wai, at the end of
the inlet due north of Sai Kung. There was a concrete threshing floor here which we decided to sleep on. It was hard, but
convenient and dry. I tried a softer patch and sustained minor flesh wounds in an encounter with a wasp. We had brought a
wireless set with us which worked perfectly, but didn’t get us through to anywhere we wanted to speak to. Also a petrol
cooker which didn’t work at all. We cooked on a wood fire and used more petrol than any previous patrol, by bartering
it with the natives. We were to patrol approximately a fifth of the peninsula, so we did a short trip to the first village
in the area that afternoon. There the police corporal found the house of the head man, and we inspected any arms or ammunition
he had and questioned him on the population and so forth, while all the village gathered round the medical orderly, who dressed
such wounds as he could, and put gentian violet on the rest to pacify them. Our trail was marked, not so much by mountains,
as purple-headed children. They were in a filthy condition, but mostly seemed happy and were very pleased to see us. It was
the same routine in every village, and certainly was an eye-opener to most of the soldiers, who had never seen Chinese rural
life before. We returned to camp, where a stew was waiting, made from the tinned food we had brought with us. That night,
and every other, was bitter, and several people didn’t sleep a wink during the whole patrol.
1st December 1955
After breakfast we set out at
8 and visited half the villages in the area. At one we were greeted by a small imp shouting ‘Alleluia.’ This was
explained when we found a small Chinese church in the village. At another there was a travelling tinker soldering their pots
and pans with a blow-lamp. In one, most of the paddy had been destroyed by a large grass fire, and there were no inhabitants
to be seen. And in another valley there were about six houses left from a pre-war population of 300. Yet in several places
new paddy had been dug since the map was made. Houses varied from straw lean-to’s to a very smart school room, and some
of the headmen were immaculately dressed in collar and tie. We split into two half-patrols at one place and I took one along
the coast where the path suddenly petered out, which meant a hard uphill slog over rough ground. But the next village had
some minerals to sell, and even offered us beer. The weather was hot but not unbearably so; it is probably the best time of
year for walking.
2nd December
We climbed a ridge to visit some
more villages. There were some more on the other side, but as it would have meant climbing back up afterwards, and the policeman
had visited them the previous week, we took his word for it that it was pacified. That evening the gunners made friends with
the villagers at our base camp as only soldiers can, jesting with the head woman although neither knew more than a few words
of the other’s language. Then all the gunners had a sing-song round the camp fire, in which I was allowed to take part.
You are accepted much more as a human being in spite of your pips on a patrol than in barracks, and consequently find out
a lot about the gunners.
3rd December
By means of leaving behind all
the uneaten food we persuaded the villagers to carry our heavy kit up to the truck. It was a colossal weight and most of them
were carrying up a nearly vertical slope more than we could have even lifted off the ground. You could see the muscles in
their calves. All except one whom we named ‘My son hungry.’ He said he was out of a job, and however many biscuits
you gave him he still said ‘My son hungry’. Eventually he produced a singularly well-nourished looking infant
to prove it. He carried less up the hill than anyone else, and was the last to get there, then asked for a tip in addition
to the food we had left. The last we heard from him was a distant wail of - you guessed it - ‘My son hungry.’
Of course one gunner had to disappear just as we were loading into the truck and chase us on foot all the way to Sai King,
but we got home eventually.
12th December
I went for a swim and sunbathed,
in mid-December!
24th December
During the last week Roland Dallas
has got himself a part-time job announcing for Rediffusion (a radio-programme-by-wire company). He does about three nights
a week, three hours a night, and gets £25 a month for it; it is terribly funny to come into a room and suddenly hear his voice
coo-ing: ‘Give yourself a treat, have a Maars Baar!’
25th December
Christmas Day
was bright and sunny with a fairly strong wind. The officers got up in uniform at 7 am to take tea laced with rum round to
the men in bed. This being China, everything
including Christmas is celebrated with firecrackers, and there has been a continuous volley of them since yesterday morning.
I returned from church in time to meet all the officers and sergeants being marched by the junior subaltern to the men’s
dining hall to serve them their Christmas dinner. The cooks had provided a really first rate Christmas dinner, it is a pity
some of the men weren’t in a fit state to appreciate it. It is the only time in the year when the men are allowed to
call the officers by their Christian names, and there was a lot of good natured banter. Foolishly I thought I would amuse
them by walking round with a chicken leg in my mouth, not realising that they had been carefully counted and one of the cooks
had to go without in consequence. Somebody got their revenge by breaking into the officers’ mess and stealing the cake
my mother had posted from England, most
of which finished up in fragments on the path. But when the circumstances were explained I was more penitent than angry.
26th December
Football officers v. sergeants
in fancy dress. Then we had our postponed Christmas lunch with all the accessories, and quite well cooked by the Chinese boys.
31st December
At midnight all the ships in
the harbour blew their hooters together for half an hour, a splendid sound. Some of them started shining searchlights, but
we outshone the lot with ours.
1956
