A bright, warm day:
The fine clear weather brought out the Japanese bombers. There were terrible air raids all over Victoria and casualties were numerous in the crowded Chinese districts. This caused many residents to take up permanent quarters in the air raid shelters built into the hillsides.
The artillery meanwhile, concentrates on observation posts and telephone junctions.
A curfew from 7.30 p.m. to 6.30 a.m is imposed.
Aileen Woods' diary:
We do feel that God heard our prayers and brought us safely through {the heavy shelling of December 14} but oh...the screeching of the shells passing over us...It is not the fear of being killed outright, but suppose we were wounded and left here alone to die.
Her diary for this day shows Aileen Woods in a rather gloomy mood, but it doesn't last long: she, Doris and their sister Mrs. Winfield offer their services to the War Memorial Hospital on the Peak. During their stint there they wash up, scrub floors, sweep wards and wait upon the wounded soldiers. They draw on their background in entertainment and lead the patients in singing. And they are full of admiration for the ANS nurses, who work both on the wards and in the kitchen, for the calm round-the-clock work of the housekeeper Mrs. Carruthers, and for Dr. Harry Talbot, who, they are told, works for twenty hours at a stretch in the operating theatre without relief.
The Daily Mirror carries Churchill's message to the defenders on page 1:
We are all watching day by day your stubborn defence of the port and fortress of Hong Kong. You guard a link long famous in world civilisation between the Far East and Europe.
We are sure that the defence against barbarous and unprovoked attack will add a glorious page to British annals.
All our hearts are with you in your ordeal. Every day your resistance brings closer our certain victory.
Sources:
Bombing and shelling: John Luff, The Hidden Years, 1967, 59
Curfew: G. B. Endacott and Alan Birch, Hong Kong Eclipse, 1978, 113
Woods: Luff, 137-8