72 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

We were all P-40 pilots in the Chinese-American Composite Wing of the 14th Air Force working out of Ehr Tong auxiliary at Kweilin. The gas supply was low and the weather bad lately, so we hadn't flown much and a mission was a welcome break in the monotony of daily alerts…

At seven-thirty we assembled in the S-2 (Squadron Intelligence) shack and Capt. Kebric stood at the large wall map and explained the coming mission. A suspected aircraft assembly plant on Kai-Tek ((sic. usually written "Kai-Tak")) airdrome near Kowloon, in the Hong Kong area. Japanese strength: about 20 Zeros on Kai-Tek, 150 at White Cloud near Canton. Flak guns on hills NW of the airfield and from gunboats in the harbor. Course 120°, bombing run at 270° after right turn. Twelve Chinese-American Composite Wing (CACW) B-25 bombers, 20 P-40s as escort…

At eleven, the call came to get ready…The B-25s are even now taking off and raising huge clouds of dust. Our 40s begin taxiing out by twos and taking off as soon as the dust from the preceding pair has blown away…

At one o'clock we turn due South. Approaching the coast now where we spread out into a more defensive grouping. A wide river slides under us – that means twelve minutes to go…

One twenty-five – and Kai-Tek Airfield just ahead of the leading bombers.

"Zero coming in at two o'clock!" – I picked out the jumble of excited confusion on the radio…

The Japanese sweeps past my tight-turning leader and there he is for me – a little out of range according to the size of the gunsight circle, but I begin firing. A long tangent of bright red sparks – tracers – curves out towards the enemy ship, which I notice is a "Tojo," [Nakajima Ki-44] one of their later models… I can feel the powerful hammering of my six guns vibrating through the ship as I concentrate furiously on holding the right deflection and lead. … just when he appears to spot my ship my stream of incendiary, armor piercing, and tracer bullets takes effect. Chunks of silvery metal tear off his fuselage as little points of light show where the incendiaries are hitting. His Plexiglas canopy blows off and a thick stream of dark smoke followed by bright flame comes from back of the engine.

I stop firing and sharply reverse my turn. I'm struck with the most uncomfortable feeling that I'm too alone and too far behind the other guys by now. There are two P-40s up ahead, not far, but since they're no doubt running all-out, it would take long minutes to catch up. Down below and ahead were the B-25s and other P-40s. I twisted in my seat for a quick survey behind – with a good idea of what I'd see. I was right, they were there…Zeros – three of them diving down and obviously at me!

I'd better get out of here quickly. A P-40 can out-dive a Zero, I know from experience...I jammed throttle and pushed over into a rather steep dive. A burst of smoky white tracers passed me and my confidence began to fade …The dive grew nearly vertical, the throttle handle shoved as never before as I slipped and skidded the plane to upset the aim of the pursuing Japanese. CRACK! A smoking bullet drilled through the side of my Plexiglas canopy and shattered some glass in the instrument panel. Ugh, that was close! It left a smell of chemical smoke. I looked over my left shoulder to see one Japanese pilot really gaining on me, his guns blinking like little red flashlights…

Bang! Oh, oh, a solid hit, 20 mm stuff. There was a hot blast on the back of my left leg and a new smell of smoke, a grey haze in the cockpit, a thicker smoke and suddenly a bright billowing gust of flame reaching everywhere…I have a clear recollection of seeing the skin on my wrist puff up and crackle in the fire as I frantically jerked at the emergency canopy release. I remember nothing more until I was tumbling over and over in the strangely silent air…

…Clear blue sky, a white chute canopy, a hot sun – all as peaceful as could be. No sensation of falling – just a mild wind that seemed to be blowing from below. Well, nothing amiss in the sky half of my world. I looked down. . . Great day!!! Directly underneath, absolutely between my two shoes was Kai-Tek Airdrome – the largest Japanese base in the Hong Kong area, and even now partly hidden by pillars of black smoke from our bombs…I resigned myself to the present position and predicament, and then had a sudden inspiration. These parachutes could be steered and that was the thing to do, NOW!

What direction? To the North, or Northeast, of course. There was a great brown mountain down there. I wonder if I can make it. I clawed up with my good right hand, put my weight on the cords on one side of the canopy. Whoosh! A vast segment of the parachute collapsed and I could feel the air rushing past more rapidly. After holding my grip a short time I looked down to check. I was no longer over the center of the airfield, I was past the edge of it. I'm still drifting…there's a wind from the Southwest.

…Looks as though I'd land near that road down there. Not good. It was a modern looking cement roadway, dotted with hurrying men. There were a lot of faces looking up. Jeez, I'm going to land in a company of Japanese soldiers – very convenient for them. Some little white buildings…

…The silk canopy of the parachute draped on the roof and side of one of the buildings and there I was, standing on a narrow cement path, trembling with excitement and misgivings, wildly looking around for a way of escape – or something. Look! The men on the road, they're all running away! Just Chinese laborers and frightened of me. Gosh, maybe I can get away from here!

…Even before I was free of the parachute, I began to run – a frantic scrambling run up the side of the rock-strewn mountain. After I had covered a hundred yards, I saw a path on my left – a wide path leading through a notch in the hill and appearing to go in the most promising direction. I dashed over to it, then stopped a moment to look around.

…I encountered … a fairly well dressed Chinese youth. When I showed him [the Chinese flag sewn inside my jacket], he seemed to understand and pointed in the direction I was heading and stammered out in fair English, "Village people help you."

I turned to run down the path to this promised haven but had hardly started when I felt a tugging at my sleeve. I looked down and found a very young Chinese boy excitedly trying to get my attention. This was Small Boy. He was to have a leading part in my forthcoming travels, though of course I didn't know it just then. All I saw was a boy of about ten or twelve looking up from under a man-sized and store-fresh felt hat. What showed of his face had a determined but alarmed expression. His clothes were the usual Chinese costume except for the addition of a pair of ragged Keds [tennis shoes], and of course, that Western World hat. Slung over one shoulder, knapsack-fashion, was a long nickel-plated flashlight that also seemed out of keeping with the Orient.

I showed him my flag. He only glanced at it, nodded vehemently and pointed to a small path which diverged from this main one and curved away around a patch of bushes. He…started out at a run, his shiny flashlight bouncing at his side and his large hat pulled down on his ears. I followed enthusiastically but at a necessarily slower gait.

After ten minutes at my top speed, I just had to stop. I was panting and exhausted, my legs were protesting violently and my hands were a fiery pain…

A house lay ahead in a small grove. Is this the hiding place? No, guess not, for the path which had been until now roughly following the contours of the hillside, turned abruptly up a steep slope over the ridge. Three wide-eyed Chinese children were standing near the house, and when Small Boy shouted at them, they came over to us. He pointed at me, pointed back in the direction we had come, strongly cautioning them about something. Not to tell the Japanese? I don't know, but perhaps. We tackled that steep path. Twenty steps and I could go no more. Small Boy again came to the rescue. He had one of the boys pull me by my less blistered hand and one get behind to push. We made it.

…Leaving the cover of the rock, we set out again over the bare hillsides. The mountain was furrowed with little ravines, and the path wound along about a third of the way down from the top of the mountain…

Crack! Wheeeeee! Crack! Wheeeeee! We were crossing one of the small ridges between the ravines when we heard them – rifles. I jerked around, and there two ridges behind us on the same path were four or five uniformed men. Two had raised rifles and were shooting; the others were racing toward us.

…The soldiers were still relatively distant, but they were rapidly approaching. Small Boy and I increased our speed…Once we had reached the sheltered side of the next little rise and the intermittent shots had ceased, I got my .45 out of the shoulder holster and had Small Boy hold it while I pulled at the slide. My left arm was hanging uselessly and we were both unsteady with excitement, but with his help, I got the gun ready to fire.

…We rushed the exposed top of the next crest with a fine burst of speed, to the accompaniment of a few more whizzing bullets. As soon as we had started down the lee side, I paused…and emptied my gun in a fine loud volley at the pursuing Japanese. I couldn't have hit them – it would have been a hard rifle shot – but it made my morale jump a few points to be something more than a target.

…I was heaving and gasping and reeling and stumbling but still covering ground. Small Boy was speeding along up in front, his incongruous hat bobbing as he kept looking for further troubles. He reached the top of a little rise, stopped and stared in alarm. He cast a terrified look toward me, motioned me back, and then bolted from the path and on down the mountain as though he had seen all the dragons in China.

This was too much. I flopped to the ground, scrambled and rolled to the only available cover – a half-buried boulder surrounded by a few scrawny weeds. Let them come, I just can't go another step. I lay in most acute anticipation for one or two minutes, hoarsely gasping for breath and unable to move a finger. Five minutes, and I was able to inch myself closer to the rock and pull a few of the scant vines and plants over my body. I also managed to insert a fresh clip into my gun and to regenerate a little hope, very little.

By degrees as I regained a little strength and courage, I commenced to plan what next. Should I make a fresh dash for it? …I propped up on an elbow, got to my knees and looked over the rock. …there on the path only a few yards up the hill stood a Japanese soldier…looking the other way.

For the next 3 hours, until the sun set, Lt Kerr remained motionless while the Japanese soldiers searched around him on the hillside

…SIX-FIFTEEN. The prowlers had finally reassembled and moved off half an hour before…I lay and watched the valleys fill up with shadow and thin clouds spread over the sky. Whew! Safe. Or am I? I dug into the map department of my mind for details of the countryside around Kowloon. It was a peninsula, of that I was sure, but how large? What is the shortest distance to safety? Northeast, I'm sure but how about all that water to cross. Could I walk out by land all the way?

By seven o'clock it was dark, that is, as dark as it was going to get that night because a most unwelcome moon was hanging around…I set out in a crablike crawl down the slope towards a little ravine…having reached the ravine, I crept along parallel to it until I heard a trickle of water. I slid down the slope and half seeing, half feeling, found a tiny rivulet and drank, drank, drank. I finally had enough and sat back for a long breath. The narrow gulley was filled with rocks of all shapes, and between one particularly large boulder and the bank was a space just my size; I crawled in.

At about ten o'clock I prodded myself out of my lethargy and resumed…down the inky ravine, stumbling, slipping and getting snagged by the sharp, saw-tooth edges of some sort of century plant. Eventually the stream bed widened out and the bank became sloping enough to climb, but before I got very far up it I realized how little strength I had left. A bare half mile was all I had covered but I couldn't face much more of this rock-strewn obstacle course, especially with the moon fast disappearing, so I poked around among the stony outcrops and occasional bushes for a sleeping spot…This particular mountain I had been crawling over had formerly been a part of the Hong Kong defense area … I came across a long-abandoned foxhole. I moved in…and wearily lowered my head on my arms and found no difficulty in coaxing sleep.

((The journal was copyrighted in 2009. The extracts are being made available to David Bellis for publication on Gwulo: Old Hong Kong (http://gwulo.com). Please do not republish without permission. A Chinese/English publication of the journal is being prepared and a film is being considered. Contact David Kerr (davykerr@gmail.com) for further information))

11 Feb 1944, Eric MacNider's wartime diary

Posted: 29 Jan 2016 07:39 PM PST

Book / Document:

Eric MacNider's wartime diary

Date(s) of events described:

Fri, 11 Feb 1944

Death – E.L. Starling (45)

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72 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

72 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

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