William ROGERS (aka Bill) [c.1919-1941]

On this Remembrance Day, let me introduce my uncle Bill Rogers, whose wedding photograph I came across recently in a fading newspaper cutting. The picture shows a tall, good-looking man, dashing in uniform as a Sapper with the Royal Engineers in Hong Kong.

In 1940, while playing soccer, Bill noticed a pretty girl on the sidelines and, after the game, ran after her and asked her out.  After a rapid courtship, Bill and Dorothy “Dolly” Newman, my mother’s sister, were married on June 22, 1940. One week later, on June 29, the Hong Kong Government issued a surprise edict that British women and children were to be evacuated immediately to escape a possible Japanese invasion. On July 1, Dolly was among 3,500 women and children who set sail for Manila.  

On December 8, 1941, Japanese troops entered Hong Kong through the New Territories. Combat engineers like Bill would have tried to impede their progress by blowing up bridges, tunnels and roads.  On December 18, the Japanese crossed the water from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island. Historian Tony Banham says Bill might have been attached to one of the searchlights on the North Shore that were overrun during the invasion. On December 19, Bill was reported by his unit as a ‘casualty return,’ meaning missing, presumed dead.  He is among the many whose bodies were never found and are commemorated at Sai Wan War Cemetery.

Dolly went on to settle in Australia and I had three joyful reunions with her from the early 1990s in Sydney, where she had remarried and lived with her son Peter and his family.