Bill Oxley was my Great Uncle, the brother of my paternal Grandmother.  He joined the Middlesex Regiment as a regular soldier during the depression of the early 1930's as it was the only work he could get..  In 1934 he was posted to Egypt and then onward to Singapore where he enjoyed life as company clerk, worked in the officers mess, tended to the regimental silver and immersed himself in all the sport available.  In 1937 when the Japanese invaded China the battalion were ordered to Shanghai.  They had only reached Hong Kong before being ordered to 'stay put' after the news reached them that the Japanese were already entering Shanghai.   The battalion were ordered into the trenches in the New Territories to face the expected invasion which never came.  Thousands of Chinese trying to cross the border had to be disarmed and turned back.  Life slowly quitened down again and some of the old routine returned to the activities of the Officers Mess and the sportsfield.  The battalion was now a machine gun battalion and over 50 Vickers machine guns were arranged to cover the borders.  Two battalions of Canadian troops also arrived as reinforcements..  As the world war developed and Japan entered with the bombing of Pearl Harbour the Middlesex Regiment busied themselves filling machine gun belts with ammunition.

By the time of the Japanese invasion Bill was a bandsman, a drummer and was supposed to form a party of stretcher bearers.  The bandsmen joined Hong Kong volunteers and Bill lead a group armed with a Lewis Gun.   They were positioned on the race course in Happy Valley with a tripod mounting to take up an anti aircraft role.  They spent four days fending off low flying Japanese aircraft claiming at least one 'kill' before Bill was hit in the shoulder.  Bill was in hospital at St Stephens college when it was overun by Japanese and he witnessed some atrocities at first hand.  He was taken prisoner and suffered deprivations of periods without food and water and of forced labour building airstrips for the Japanese.  He also witnessed a full parade of prisoners who were threatened at the point of machine guns to sign agreements not to attempt escape.  These were refused but the stand off bought repurcussions, beatings and executions.  Perversely it was allied bombing raids that so nearly caused their own deaths that helped to lift the prisoners morale as they felt it showed that they were not forgotten and their captors were being hit back.   After suffering from dysentry and watching many die from diptheria Bill was eventually loaded aboard the ship the Assama Maru, a coal carrier, and transported to mainland Japan

Here the treatment was little better and the prisoners were used as forced labour in the coal mines until they were abandoned underground shortly after the dropping of the atomic bomb.  They dared not leave their alloted work place for fear of beatings, but at the same time they feraed thay had been buried and abandoned by their guards.  They waited 18 hours below ground before daring to venture out to investigate where all the guards had gone.  Unbelievable as it may seem, abandoned in the camp they threw their lot in with the local civilian population and shared what little food they had between them.  The Japanese women laboured to recover the crates of food dropped by allied bombers once the prison camp had been identified by large P.O.W. signs painted across the roof.  The crates sunk in the paddy fields and required large teams of women to recover them as the prisoners themselves were too weak.    Bill eventually reached Britain again following a long slow journey via Hawai and Canada.  Perhaps the time taken on this slow route was not only for the benefit of the POW's, but also, in their fattened and healthier state, leesened the shock of the British public as to what had really happened to their prisoners in the East.

Under the circumstances Bills letter home to his father, shown right, and presumably delivered via the red cross seems unbelievably optimistic judging by what we now know about the conditions for Japanese POWs.  It must have been heavily censored, or else, more probably, Bill was putting on an extremely brave face to spare his family from the truth.

Bill never really settled down and spent his time always on the move, from house to house and twice emigrated to Australia.  He returned to Hong Kong 53 years later to put some ghosts to rest.  It was around 1992 that I met him properley for the first time. A sprightly man in his late 70's who looked an ex army type simply from his neatness.  He wanted to visit some old pals at the Middlesex Regiment Alms houses in Enfield Middlesex, so I drove him over there and arranged to collect him a few hours later.  On my return to collect him I was welcomed in and plied with whisky on the basis that I was related to 'Bill'.  There were several old men in their seventies talking as if the war was yesterday and they had never been apart.  They also talked about those who didn't come back and those who had been beaten or murdered over things as trivial as a stolen cigarette.  There were some long pauses.  It was only later that I realised the significance of those people I met that day.

For further information take a look at Tony Banhams excellent web site about the Battle of Hong Kong and for information on his book on the subject "Not the slightest chance".  The site contains a full listing of all the Hong Kong defenders, British, Canadian and Native.

www.hongkongwardiary.com

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