Diary pages from this date

11th Nov - but no official silence.

To choir practice. Edith Batley came.

Peggy Sharpe and Robert Minnitt are engaged. ((Robert a Cadet Officer in HK Govt, worked with Mr Gimson in camp)).

Dr Tomlinson's wife suddenly had to have appendix operation. Mabel's bed has been moved again as Mrs. T needed the corner bed.    

The Woods twins Aileen and Doris who had been famous singers in their younger days, were visiting a patient in Mabel's ward when they suddenly saw her ((Mabel)) and whooped 'Oh Bette!'  and came over to tell her that she looked so like the film star Bette Davis whom they had met in Hollywood during their singing career. ((Ever after they called Mabel "Bette". Aileen and Doris had stopped singing after their mother (their accompanist I think) had died, but I heard they had sung to patients during the Hong Kong battle.  Now in their sixties, very tall and dignified.))

Men don't have to go in the gaol again - suddenly stopped.

I went to St Stephens, heard choir, A.T. Lay playing piano.

News is good, even in Japanese newspaper.  Americans have landed in North Africa.  Fighting in Libya said to be over.

The men who have been sent to sleep in Stanley Prison (see November 6, 1942)  hold a service in memory of the dead of both wars. It's conducted by a medical missionary called Dr. Laurie.

The solemn atmosphere built up by the service is soon dispelled; at 8 p.m. a Chinese electrician who'd been mending lights discovered he'd been accidentally locked in, and for the next hour and a half he can be heard screaming and banging on the gates, while the internees jeer at him.

Source:

George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 118

Note:

This seems to contradict Barbara Anslow's and R. E. Jones''s diaries which both state that the men didn't have to sleep in the Prison on November 11. It's possible that Wright-Nooth misdated a ceremony he assumed would have taken place on that date. 

Tea at Steve’s, Mary’s birthday.

Clocks wrong.

Broke out & went to look for revolver, got back 1A.M. 12th.

Men to gaol cancelled.

Much comment re I.R.C. bulk.

((G.))