ADVENT Sandbach
Carol service (7 lessons)
Pages tagged:
Cold, overcast, NE wind.
Cleared up Pengelly’s store.
Saw Steve noon with wood.
No lorry, no paper.
Rumours persist re parcels & repatriation.
Black market cigs getting scarce.
Due to internees buying Chinese wine through the wire around Bung. E & F the authorities ordered them closed. Camp authorities have appealed so the decision of the Col. is awaited.
Plane over 11pm.
Block night lecture scheme introduced
Ian Heath
Cold, overcast, NE wind. Cleared up & sun came out forenoon.
Water on.
Cleaned bricks, woodchopping.
“Normandie” being converted to A/C carrier & will then serve in Pacific. ((There had been plans to convert the liner Normandie to an aircraft carrier but they were dropped. In 1942 the ship had caught fire and capsized. It was never restored to operation, and was scrapped soon after WW2. Source: Wikipedia))
J. Channing (Police) arrested, but afterwards released, for alleged selling of rice outside barbed wire.
Overcast. NE wind.
Brick cleaning.
Lorry with veg. 1.30pm.
Some gains made on Western Front, Japs claim all manner of successes in Leyte.
Played crib with Browns & Gandy.
Showery S wind.
Planes over before midn’t. Bombs dropped?
Mrs & Mary Selwyn-Clarke left Camp for Kowloon
Overcast, NE wind.
Brick cleaning.
Dr.Selwyn-Clark released from Gaol & he, his wife & child went in to HK.
Lorry with wood 3pm.
Worlds biggest battleship to be launched in Britain shortly & she may appear in the Pacific. No European news. Usual claims re Leyte area. Germans report proposed use of Y3s against New York.
Played crib with Mrs Brown aft. ((MW Brown?))
Colder, drizzly & miserable all day.
Worked in Pengelly’s shop.
Coffee with Steve, noon.
Lorry with nothing 5pm.
No E ((European)) news in paper.
Making crib board for Mrs Brown. ((MW Brown?))
Mr A. G. Dann, an RC, died.
Death of Achilles George Dann, a 56 year old commercial traveller.
Before being sent to Stanley he was held in room 305 of the Stag Hotel.
Sources:
Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 2008, 188
http://www.hongkongwardiary.com/searchgarrison/nonuniformedcivilians.html#_Toc43367487
Note:
The CWGC site wrongly records his death as 25/11/44:
39 today & cold & miserable it is. Temp 50’. ((10 degrees C))
Air-raid by low-flying dive bombers at 9.30am & another one at 4pm. The am raid no doubt messed up the Jap Rescript reading & the crowd that attended the Sports ground to hear it.
Tiffin with Mrs Brown & she gave me a rice bowl. ((MW Brown?))
Lorry very late with veg 7pm. No wood or paper.
Temp 50’.
Went to Mr Dann's funeral during which there was an air raid alarm. ((As soon as the funeral was over, we mourners flew from the cemetry to Block 10 - the nearest building; we were pursued by a Formosan or Jap soldier, who objected because we had been out during a raid. He caught us up outside Block 10, and hit Father Donald Hessler across the back with the wooden end of his rifle, and slapped his face. I was next to Father, and expected to get it too, and trembled for my glasses, but he just glared at me.))
Dr. Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke and former Hong Kong Daily Press journalist Neil Esmond Hunter are released from prison in an amnesty to celebrate the start of the Pacific War.
Selwyn-Clarke is sent to Ma Tau-wai Camp to join his wife Hilda and his daughter Mary who had already been sent there from Stanley.
Sources:
Russell S. Clark, An End to Tears, 1946, 146
Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, Footprints, 1975, 93
1 oz suk yin Y7. 1 box matches 18 sen
Yesterday we completed the third year of the Japanese war, and within another six weeks we shall have finished our third year of internment in this camp! However, American planes came over three times yesterday to show us we were not forgotten! I lay down in our garden when, suddenly eleven fighter planes zoomed over the fort at the end of our peninsula and simply shot across the channel between us and Po Toi Island. The weather and visibility was bad and they were very low.
Cold but fine.
Cleaned bricks.
Lorry with wood 6.30pm. Papers arrived but nothing in them except Jap tripe.
Played crib with Mrs Brown aft. ((MW Brown?))
Cigs are from 2/4 to 2/8 each.
To bed early.
Now into the fourth year of the war and on Friday the 8th the anniversary the lads came over and gave us a good demonstration and gave the Japs here a jolly fright. It is a grand sight to see our lads doing their stuff and gives us courage.