70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

The list ((of people to be repatriated)) is published and Maudie is going!! It was so unexpected. Last Friday week, Nov 12th, I had gone to the garden to do some watering and Yvonne had arranged to join me after she had been to the BCC, for we heard the list was to be published at about 2.30 p.m. Some time elapsed and there was no sign of Y and it just crossed my mind that perhaps she had seen Maudie’s name on the list and had gone off to tell her about it. Sure enough, when she did arrive, she came full of excitement to say that, “Auntie is on the list and I’ve just been to tell her”.

Poor Maudie, for days past she had resigned herself to being left behind and she had been the most wonderfully cheerful and (one can say) plucky about it, for she disliked Hong Kong at the best of times and in this beastly camp, away from Capt. Minn, she has simply lived for the day of her departure and repatriation. When it was made known 700 people were to go by selection, both she and Vera Murrel, with whom she shares a room, were quite convinced they would be left behind and latterly Maudie had given up hope of ever getting out before the end of the war and that she believed this is going to be the one and only exchange of British prisoners and not, as many of us fervently hope it is, only the first part of the complete repatriation of internees from this camp.

Later, Maudie told me that when Yvonne burst in on them, first with the news (she was playing bridge with Elma) she was so dumbfounded that the news gave her quite a shock and though it was quite warm, her hands and feet went quite cold and it took her the rest of the afternoon to get her blood circulating again. She said her hand simply shook, holding the cards.

Y and I went to Danny Wilson’s concert in the evening and on the way we called on Maudie so that I could congratulate her and I found her most surprisingly subdued. In fact she had really had quite a severe shock and it was about two days before she felt it was really true. Even now, poor thing, she dare not let herself dwell on it too much and she has not so much as started to think of getting her things ready because she feels it would be tempting Providence and that for some reason or another, she may be struck off the list. Yvonne said there was such a crowd of people trying to see the list that men took turns to read through the names, over and over again.

Since the original categories were formulated, the selection committee has added others to the list, most of them coming under the ‘women’ category. These include HK war widows (a very good thing – Anne Muir, Sheila Mackinlay, Mrs Black, amongst those of our closest acquaintances); the Queen Alexander (Army) and the Naval sisters; the age of girl repatriates has been raised from 15 and under to 18 and under, though mothers of girls over 15 cannot accompany their daughters unless they themselves are being repatriated for some other reason. This has helped several families where some children were under 15 and some over, and where the father was a Prisoner of War in another camp. Also wives of sick men are being repatriated with their husbands.