Brereton Greenhous

“C” Force to Hong Kong

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This is the story of a “no military risk” campaign that slowly turned into a nightmare. The book provides new answers to a number of difficult questions beginning with a discussion of why Canadian troops were sent to Hong Kong at the request of the British War Office. Were the British duplicitous in making this request? Was Canadian Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General Harry Crerar, guilty of putting his own interests above those of his men in telling the minister of National Defence that there was “no military risk” in sending the “C” Force?

The book recounts the formation of the “C” Force and its departure to Hong Kong where it arrived just three weeks before the Japanese attack. It outlines the course of the battle from December 8, 1941, until the inevitable surrender of the garrison on Christmas Day. It places appropriate emphasis on the Canadian contribution, refuting 1947 allegations by the British General-Officer-Commanding — allegations which were only made public in 1993 — that the Canadians did not fight well. Greenhous attacks these charges with solid evidence from participants and eye-witnesses.

Finally, the book tells the story of life and death in the prison camps of Hong Kong and Japan.
This book is currently unavailable
259 printed pages
Original publication
2016
Publication year
2016
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Quotes

  • Lenny Deernovahas quoted7 years ago
    Defence Force, and since November 1938 they had been under the command of Major-General A.E. Grasett, DSO, MC. Grasett was a Canadian, a 1909 graduate of the Royal Military College, who had won the Sword of Honour for his year and then been granted a British commission in the Royal Engineers
  • Lenny Deernovahas quoted7 years ago
    Over the following year, three options for Hong Kong were considered in Whitehall. Firstly, all work on physical defences could be stopped forthwith, and the garrison reduced to a purely nominal strength, in effect proclaiming the whole colony an “open city.” Secondly, the existing policy could be overtly continued, with a covert addendum calling for the destruction of all strategic resources (primarily the dockyards, oil farms and wireless station—at that time the airfield facilities were quite limited) in the face of an imminent threat, together with the evacuation of the garrison and those non-Asian civilians who might wish to leave and, finally, relinquishment of the colony upon the onset of war. Or, thirdly, the existing intention of holding the island until the arrival of a relief force, while stopping all further work on the mainland defences with the intention of merely fighting a delaying action there, could be maintained.
  • Lenny Deernovahas quoted7 years ago
    would be better, concluded the British chiefs of staff, to look upon the colony as no more than an outpost of the empire, not to be taken too seriously, and withdraw to a slightly more defensible line that ran from Junk Bay to Gin Drinkers Bay—a line that lay only some 6 km from Kowloon at its closest point and was no shorter than the border defences, but one which embraced a much shorter coastline.

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