70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

For the last month or six weeks an epidemic of a mild kind of chicken-pox has been doing its rounds. Yesterday Yvonne succumbed! She had been feeling a little shivery the day before and when, next morning, she went to the bathroom to wash, she found her chest covered with spots. Dr Smalley soon confirmed our amateur diagnosis. There is nothing we can do about it: I still continue to sleep in the same double bed and the other four, of course, still continue to live in the same room. Dr S has told Y that she can get up and about as soon as she feels like it, for he says, everyone in the camp must have come into contact with the germs by now in one way or another and as there is no chance of isolation here and as the nature of this particular brand of germ is very mild there is no point in sticking in one room all day – the rest of us are carrying the germs all over the place anyway!

Last night, which was a bit finer than most nights of late, I was awakened by heavy machine gun or small canon fire from a plane that was buzzing about. Harold, who is sleeping on the balcony, gave a running commentary and said the plane was firing at something on the small island of Po Toi for it was using tracer shells or bullets which he could see quite clearly. This firing went on and on – I thought for about 20 minutes, but I must have gone to sleep again in the middle of it for Elsie said it continued for about an hour. At all events, I was quite amazed that one plane carried so much ammunition as that. It dropped no bombs, which seemed strange and there appeared to be no retaliatory fire from the small island.