Professor R. C. Robertson has been forced by the Japanese to stay outside Stanley and continue his work at the Bacteriological Institute. Today he uses a staff member who's escaping from Hong Kong to send out an account of conditions in the Captured Territory:
Food shortage increasing. Hot weather renders conditions camps very hard. Shortage medicines, unsuitable diet, overcrowding and defective sanitation chief difficulties. Stanley depends parcels of tinned goods sent in supplement rations. Need for international Red Cross representative. Selwyn {Selwyn-Clarke} is sole link Stanley and doing good work but needs are quite beyond his capacity. Beri-beri affecting about ten per cent. Press for agreement repatriation women and children, those over military age. HKU staff would appreciate if allowance can be made for dependants from sterling funds London…University staff are all alive in camp. Some very debilitated. Conditions telling most on over 50. Children also short of vitamin-containing food.
The message ends up in the hands of Lindsay Ride, a pre-war friend of Robertson's, now in the process of forming a resistance organisation, the British Army Aid Group. Ride will make it one of his first tasks to send agents into Hong Kong to help Robertson escape.
Source:
Edwin Ride, British Army Aid Group, 1981, 197-198