11 Aug 1942, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp
Primary tabs
Death of Col. Walter Roy Dockrill, aged 65. Dockrill was a Canadian who worked his way up in the lumber business. In 1915 he went off to the war:
Col. Dockrill’s return to civilian life was marred by his exclusion from the board of directors of the company,and after a year or two in Vancouver, he sold his remaining control to Captain Crawford and moved to Shanghai.
It's not known how he found himself in Hong Kong.
Chester Bennett, the American Council Chairman, and three Britishers are 'guaranteed out' and leave camp - we know from Eric MacNider's diary that one of the others was Mrs. Owens. Bennett was asked by Franklin Gimson to decline repatriation to continue to help the internees (he's the person who organised the food parcels from Habade) and he soon adds illegal money raising and smuggling into camp to his legitimate activities. Eventually he becomes an agent for the British Army Aid Group, working with Charles Hyde and Marcus da Silva.
R. E. Stott, a land bailiff, puts his carefully prepared escape plan into operation.
He takes advantage of a gardener's shed to get over the rear wall of the French Hospital - 'just as dusk fell when people's eyes had not got used to the dark'.
Although he sprains both heels landing, after a short rest he crawls along the nullah running past the hospital and finds some rope hidden there by friends. He crawls through some barbed wire and loops the rope round a support so that he can reach the bottom of the nullah:
With feet so painful I had to sit and drag myself inch by inch along the slimy slippery bottom towards the typhoon shelter into which the nullah emptied...The tide was low and I had to hobble as best I could to the waiting sampan...
which takes him to a shrimp boat in which he lies until 4 a.m. before setting off. Passing between Shampshuipo and Stonecutters Island, they anchor for the night at a point opposite Castle Peak. The next morning they set off at dawn for Macao.
Enid Foy, wife of the uninterned banker Hugo, gives birth to a daughter. The birth is announced in the (London) Times of August 31. It seems the news reached Britain with surprising speed - I know of no case in which the Red Cross postcards were delivered in under three weeks. Messages went from the French Hospital (where I would guess the birth took place) to John Reeves, the Consul in Macao, and the British Army Aid Group were in touch with boith the Hospital and the bankers at the Sun Wah - perhaps a message was smuggled through one of these routes.
Kowloon's St Teresa's Hospital is closed to British patients, who are sent to Bowen Road Military Hospital, where they are the last people suffering from war wounds to be admitted.
The Gripsholm arrives in Rio de Janeiro - 'We had twenty-four hours in Rio, and it was all too short'. Although for two men who show up at 4.05, five minutes after it's pulled away from shore, the stop-over comes close to being greatly extended. In the end, to the accompaniment of much mockery, they get onboard via a tug and the pilot boat.
Sources:
Dockrill: Geoffrey Emerson, Hong Kong Internment, 1973, 271
Stott: Tony Banham, We Shall Suffer There, 2009, entry for Friday, August 14
Hospitals: D. C. Bowie, Captive Surgeon in Hong Kong, 268
Gripsholm: Carol Brigg Waites, Taken in Hong Kong, 2006, Kindle Edition, Location 3850
See also:
Chronology, February 20, 1942
Anslow Diary, August 14, 1942
