Rubber Duckies
Some 85 years ago, a bit of calm before the storm.
Official period caption: “British and Chinese troops on exercise in rubber boats, Hong Kong, 1941.” Note the M1928 Thompson SMG on the bow of the leading boat and SMLEs at the ready.
IWM (KF 141)
The British first garrisoned Hong Kong on 26 January 1841 when a landing force from the 10-gun Hecla-class bomb vessel HMS Sulphur rowed ashore and set up shop.
Fast forward a century, and, as a result of the build-up to the Pacific War in 1941, the Hong Kong garrison held two battalions sent from Europe (2nd Royal Scots, 1st Middlesex) along with two from India (5th 7th Rajput, 2nd 14th Punjab), and would soon receive two from Canada as reinforcement (Royal Rifles, Winnipeg Grenadiers). This was in addition to units from the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers, et. al.
Plus, as witnessed above, there were some locally raised outfits drawn from the colony’s 1.6 million residents: the Hong Kong Chinese Regiment and the much larger and senior Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps.
Two members of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defense Force on Queen’s Road Central in Hong Kong, 1941, UWM Libraries collection
The HKCR, led by a major, was only established in November 1941 and authorized as a single machine-gun battalion. Still in training as the Japanese closed in the next month, only a platoon-sized unit of the HKCR was able to take the field.
Meanwhile, the HKVDF was nearly brigade-sized, containing 2,200 men in seven infantry companies, five artillery batteries, five machine gun companies equipped with Vickers guns, a service company, an engineer company, an armored car platoon (with four Bedford chassis armored locally by the Kowloon-Canton Railway), a field ambulance unit, and signals. Led by Col. Henry B. Rose, it was formed in 1854.
Newly trained officers and NCOs of the Chinese Battalion, Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. The Corps was the largest military unit of the Hong Kong Garrison at the time of the Japanese invasion. Photographer Frederick E. Palmer. IWM (KF 114)
Decimated in the desperate fight for Hong Kong in December 1941, both “local” units had their men largely paroled by the Japanese rather than tossed into POW camps.
Many of these men duly made their way into mainland China and either joined KMT forces ashore or later joined the 126-man Hong Kong Volunteer Company in Burma, where they were attached to the 77 Chindits Force under General Orde Wingate.
They were later deployed to Japanese-occupied Malaya, conducting special reconnaissance behind enemy lines.
Reformed after WWII once the colony was liberated, the Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers) remained in the colors until 1995, manning British Ferret armored cars under association with the Royal Armoured Corps.