3 May 1941, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Submitted by brian edgar on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 17:17

Walter, a member of the Hong Kong police force, goes shooting with Ernest Hemingway:

This Kowloon is a fine city and you would like it very much. It is clean and well laid-out and the forest comes to the edge of the city and there is very fine wood pigeon shoooting just outside the compound of the women's prison. We used to shoot the pigeons, which were large and handsome, with lovely purple shading feathers on their necks, and a strong swift way of flying, when they would come in to roost just at twilight in a huge laurel tree that grew just outside the whitewashed wall of the prison compound. Sometimes I would take a high incomer, coming very fast with the wind behind him, directly overhead and the pigeon would fall inside the compound of the prison and you would hear the women shouting and squealing with delight as they fought over the bird and then squealing and shrieking as the Sikh guard drove them off and retrieved the bird which he then brought dutifully out to us through the sentry's gate of the prison.

Sources:

'Walter' and date: Peter Moreira, Hemingway on the China Front, 2007, 167

Quotation: Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream, 1970 (posthumous), 280

Note:

Islands in the Stream is a novel, but the Hong Kong section is generally acknowledged to be based on Hemingway's visit. The name of the officer and the date are given in a letter to Martha Gellhorn drawn on by Moreira.

'Walter' might be the Assistant Commissioner Walter Scott: the guard's helpfulness suggests high rank, and Scott is known to have hunted - see http://gwulo.com/node/10658. Further, he was an associate - probably through intelligence work -  of David MacDougall, who befriended Hemingway in hong Kong.

Date(s) of events described