雲加馬德里
2021-11-16 09:30:38
//THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE
西灣國殤紀念墳場位於柴灣以南,為安葬二戰時在戰場上犧牲或被俘後死亡人士的主要墳場,共有1578個墳墓,當中包括59個海軍,1406個陸軍,67個空軍,18個商船隊隊員,20個本地抗戰軍人和8個平民,屬英聯邦戰爭公墓委員會(Commonwealth War Graves Commission)所管理。墳場的入口是間白石小屋,屋外刻上墳場名字,還有一把長劍分開「1939」年和「1945」年兩個年份,進去後抬頭細看,牆上刻滿了密密麻麻的名字,遠看像小蛇,是2071名戰時殉難卻無法尋回屍體的士兵名字,當中1319人來自英國軍隊、228人來自加拿大軍隊、287人來自印度軍隊、237人為本地士兵,深刻得如同刻住歷史。另有兩塊石碑,一塊記下144位遺體被火葬的印度軍人與錫克教軍人的姓名,其中9位隸屬香港及新加坡皇家炮兵團,118位隸屬印度軍,17人隸屬香港警隊;另一塊石碑則記下72位二戰時在中國各戰場殉難的英聯邦軍人。
We will remember them.
註:網上資料普遍指援軍人數約 2,500 人,但該資料無列明出處;英媒 BBC 報道指援軍人數有 1,975 人。 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mPLyGYhbedE
加拿大史館(Historica Canada)曾拍攝紀綠片講述軍士長奧斯本的英勇事跡。
Canadian Prisoners of War
Canadian Prisoners of War captured during the battle of Hong Kong, 25 December 1941. Individuals shown here were part of a group sent from Hong Kong to Japan on 19 January 1943.
(courtesy Larry Stebbe/The Memory Project)
Why Canadian Troops Went to Hong Kong Canada entered the Second World War against Germany in 1939, but the Canadian Army saw little action in the early years of the conflict. For one thing, Canada’s military was small and unprepared for war. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was also cautious about committing the country to battle. After the heavy bloodletting and the domestic divisions of the First World War, King was wary of sending large numbers of soldiers to fight overseas — something that might require conscription and re-ignite conflict between French- and English-speaking Canadians. Instead, King sought other ways for Canada to help the war effort, such as making armaments, growing food and training air crews under the new British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. (See Mackenzie King and the War Effort.)
The Royal Canadian Navy had been involved in the Battle of the Atlantic since 1939, and Canadian airmen had made a small contribution to the Battle of Britain, but the Army was not actively engaged in the war — despite growing pressure among English Canadians for a greater role. So in 1941, when Britain made a request for Canadian troops to help bolster its remote Asian colony of Hong Kong, the King government agreed to send two battalions overseas, for what it assumed would merely be garrison duty.
Hong Kong in November 1941
Japan had been waging war in China since 1937, but it had avoided open hostilities against the West. By 1940, the British were fighting for survival against Germany. They realized that defending Hong Kong would be virtually impossible if the colony, and other Asian possessions, were attacked by Japan. Even so, Britain decided that a show of force might deter any possible Japanese aggression, and it sought troops to reinforce the British and Indian units already garrisoned in Hong Kong.
The King government agreed to dispatch two battalions. Harry Crerar, chief of the general staff, assigned the task to the Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada (from Quebec City). Both units had some experience serving on garrison duty; however, neither was at full strength in 1941, or adequately trained for the modern warfare of the time. Neither regiment had even participated in battalion-level training exercises. No matter — a Japanese attack against British territories in the Pacific seemed unlikely. Even if one came, the prevailing racial attitudes of the time convinced many Canadian and British military leaders that superior White troops would teach the Japanese a lesson.
The two undermanned Canadian battalions were quickly filled out with additions of new, inexperienced troops and shipped across the Pacific, under the command of Brigadier J.K. Lawson. The force included 1,973 officers and men plus two nursing sisters. It arrived in Hong Kong on 16 November, joining a military garrison that now totalled about 14,000.//
//On Christmas Day, with ammunition in short supply and the defending soldiers in desperate shape, “D” company of the Royal Rifles was ordered to make what appeared to be a suicidal attack to retake lost ground at the south end of the island. According to an account from Sergeant George MacDonnell, the men received the orders in stunned silence. “Not one of them could believe such a preposterous order.” Attacking with bayonets, the Royal Rifles succeeded in taking the position — at a cost of 26 men killed and 75 wounded. Hours later, the exhausted survivors learned that the colony had surrendered. The Battle of Hong Kong was over.//
雲加馬德里
2021-11-16 11:27:56
//
:^(
Canadian Prisoners of War
Canadian Prisoners of War captured during the battle of Hong Kong, 25 December 1941. Individuals shown here were part of a group sent from Hong Kong to Japan on 19 January 1943.
(courtesy Larry Stebbe/The Memory Project)
Why Canadian Troops Went to Hong Kong Canada entered the Second World War against Germany in 1939, but the Canadian Army saw little action in the early years of the conflict. For one thing, Canada’s military was small and unprepared for war. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was also cautious about committing the country to battle. After the heavy bloodletting and the domestic divisions of the First World War, King was wary of sending large numbers of soldiers to fight overseas — something that might require conscription and re-ignite conflict between French- and English-speaking Canadians. Instead, King sought other ways for Canada to help the war effort, such as making armaments, growing food and training air crews under the new British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. (See Mackenzie King and the War Effort.)
The Royal Canadian Navy had been involved in the Battle of the Atlantic since 1939, and Canadian airmen had made a small contribution to the Battle of Britain, but the Army was not actively engaged in the war — despite growing pressure among English Canadians for a greater role. So in 1941, when Britain made a request for Canadian troops to help bolster its remote Asian colony of Hong Kong, the King government agreed to send two battalions overseas, for what it assumed would merely be garrison duty.
Hong Kong in November 1941
Japan had been waging war in China since 1937, but it had avoided open hostilities against the West. By 1940, the British were fighting for survival against Germany. They realized that defending Hong Kong would be virtually impossible if the colony, and other Asian possessions, were attacked by Japan. Even so, Britain decided that a show of force might deter any possible Japanese aggression, and it sought troops to reinforce the British and Indian units already garrisoned in Hong Kong.
The King government agreed to dispatch two battalions. Harry Crerar, chief of the general staff, assigned the task to the Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada (from Quebec City). Both units had some experience serving on garrison duty; however, neither was at full strength in 1941, or adequately trained for the modern warfare of the time. Neither regiment had even participated in battalion-level training exercises. No matter — a Japanese attack against British territories in the Pacific seemed unlikely. Even if one came, the prevailing racial attitudes of the time convinced many Canadian and British military leaders that superior White troops would teach the Japanese a lesson.
The two undermanned Canadian battalions were quickly filled out with additions of new, inexperienced troops and shipped across the Pacific, under the command of Brigadier J.K. Lawson. The force included 1,973 officers and men plus two nursing sisters. It arrived in Hong Kong on 16 November, joining a military garrison that now totalled about 14,000.//
//On Christmas Day, with ammunition in short supply and the defending soldiers in desperate shape, “D” company of the Royal Rifles was ordered to make what appeared to be a suicidal attack to retake lost ground at the south end of the island. According to an account from Sergeant George MacDonnell, the men received the orders in stunned silence. “Not one of them could believe such a preposterous order.” Attacking with bayonets, the Royal Rifles succeeded in taking the position — at a cost of 26 men killed and 75 wounded. Hours later, the exhausted survivors learned that the colony had surrendered. The Battle of Hong Kong was over.//
雲加馬德里
2021-11-16 11:31:49
//Memory
Of the 1,975 Canadians sent to Hong Kong, 290 were killed and 493 wounded during the battle and its immediate aftermath — proof, said veterans decades later, that they had resisted fiercely and courageously before surrendering to the enemy. Another 264 Canadians died as prisoners of war, while 1,418 survivors returned to Canada — many of them deeply bitter at the cruelty of their Japanese captors.
At home, political pressure forced the government in Ottawa to appoint a royal commission to investigate the circumstances of Canada’s involvement in Hong Kong. The sole commissioner, Chief Justice Lyman Duff, misinterpreted or ignored evidence and exonerated the Cabinet, the Department of National Defence and senior members of the military’s general staff. In 1948, a confidential analysis by General Charles Foulkes, chief of the general staff, found many errors in Duff’s assessment, but concluded that proper training, staffing and equipment would have made little difference, given the overwhelming odds facing the defenders.
The 554 Canadians who died in Hong Kong and in prisoner camps afterwards are remembered today by a memorial to all of Hong Kong’s defenders at the Sai Wan Bay War Cemetery there. This and the Stanley Military Cemetery in Hong Kong also hold the individual graves of 303 Canadian soldiers, 108 of whom are unidentified. Another 137 Canadians, most of whom died as prisoners of war, are buried at the British Commonwealth War Cemetery in Yokohama, Japan.// https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/battle-of-hong-kong