Mary Ann Lockerbie DAVIES (née CURRIE) [1905-????]

• Queen Alexander's Imperial Nursing Service (QAIMNS)

On 22 December one of the casualties brought in was a Japanese officer (possibly Lt. Tanaka 田中茂夫) . He had a very serious buttock wound and two hours before the Japanese stormed the hospital, he died. As staff were dressing the body for burial they found the Japanese flag in his pack. Mary Currie remembered a story from her childhood about the burial of a Japanese warrior and the way his comrades wrapped the body in the Rising Sun. She instructed her staff (VAD: Ann Muir  and Edith Hills) to do the same. The officer was laid out, his body wrapped in the flag, his rank insignia and medals were pinned to his chest and he was taken to the mortuary to await burial.

Mary and her staff lay helpless on the ground while the Japanese swarmed through the hospital grounds searching for concealed Allied troops. A Japanese soldier cuffed her viciously with his rifle butt as he tripped over her long legs. Instead of being cowed she was furious, accusing the enemy of failing to honour the Geneva Convention, a failing made all the more shameful, she pointed out, as the British had shown respect for their sick. The soldier did not understand Mary's tirade, but a Japanese officer who spoke English and claimed to have studied at Oxford overheard the conversation.

'After a good deal of questioning he released me to show him the body of the Japanese officer. After inspecting the body he ordered the soldiers to remove it... and made me stand at its head.' said Mary. Eyewitnesses noted what an odd pair they made, emerging from the mortuary, Mary towering at least six inches over the diminutive Japanese.

At about 4 o'clock the staff, still tied together, were marched into a room on the ground floor of the hospital. Mary was sent in last and a machine gun was placed ominously in front of them. But she was not done yet. As soon as the English-speaking officer returned she asked that the staff be untied and allowed to care for the patients.

'He answered that I would take him round the wounded men. We did a complete tour of the hospital and he told the patients that Hong Kong would belong to the Japanese in two days but they respected International Law and would not hurt wounded men.'

Later the officer told Mary that his Commanding Officer (possibly Maj. Wakamatsu 若松滿則) wanted to see her. When she came face to face with him he thanked her, through an interpreter, for looking after the dead officer. He said the dead man had been a close friend and he wept as he spoke. 'You have been very good to this man. You may ask a favour in return.' Mary again asked to be released to look after the patients, but this was declined. Her second request was that the interpreter remain in the hospital and accompany her until his troops were withdrawn. This thoughtful request was granted - and the nurses at St Albert's had Mary Currie's quick thinking to thank for being spared the ordeal others were at that very moment undergoing.

At the end of the interview the interpreter told Mary Currie that the women of her staff had behaved with great bravery and calm: 'Do English women never cry?' he asked. To which Mary gave her immortal reply: 'Not when they have work to do.'

The Japanese nodded. "That is very praiseworthy. We Japanese admire fortitude.' He bowed again and walked away.

The Japanese were not the only people to have found Mary Currie's bulldog resolve inspirational. After the war a group of nurses from the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps who were with her at St Albert's that Christmas wrote to the Secretary of State for War and the Matron-in-Chief, urging that Mary Currie's courage be recognised. That letter, signed in fading ink by thirty-six names, survives in a file at the Army Medical Services Museum, and more than sixty years later still makes moving reading......

Anne ((Muir)) told of her experiences during the war where she had been a V.A.D. nurse at St Albert’s - normally a monastery run by Italian Fathers. They, according to Anne, proved to be most unsympathetic and in fact quite objectionable: it seems a pity they were not turned out of the Colony with the other Italian fathers when Italy entered the war in her stab - in – the - back manner. Anne had had news of Gordon’s death some days before the surrender and shortly after a seriously wounded Japanese officer was brought in and she had to help nurse him. She said it was difficult for her not to feel very bitter against the man, though of course she knew he was not personally responsible for Gordon’s death. Poor Anne, what an ordeal for her. She said that though he was seriously wounded he kept up his part of pretending to know no English. When he was thirsty he pointed to his lips and said, “Makee leetie wet please,” and yet a day or two later when he was almost dying he said in good English, “May I have a drink of water please?”  He seemed to trust those who were trying to save his life.  

When he died, they laid him out and covered him with a Japanese flag - apparently all Japanese soldiers wear their rolled up flag about their person......

The officer in charge of the regiment asked almost at once about the wounded Japanese officer and when he was shown him, laid out under his national flag he seemed satisfied at the treatment the dead man had received, and the hospital staff think it was chiefly due to this that they escaped the horrible experiences suffered by some of the V.A.D.’s in other hospitals.