Our guests Jo and Adam sadly left yesterday, and the fun
they brought with them will be missed. Months ago, I had been looking forward very
much to their visit because I knew that, in Adam, I would finally have a
hopeless history geek companion.
Shortly before we left the UK, the four of us had a
ridiculous weekend away to Luxembourg – 500+ miles driven all by Adam – to go
look at the Maginot Line. So enthused
had we been by this trip, I was very excited to learn when reading up on HK
history that buried in the New Territories there lurked a “Maginot line like structure”.
What on earth is the Maginot line, the majority of normal
people cry? It was a line of formidable concrete semi-underground forts built
by the French before World War Two to keep the Germans out. One of the largest
such systems ever built, it failed totally – the Germans simply went around the
side. Oops.
The structure in HK was, rather wonderfully for a British
colony where the drink it was named after was quaffed almost as a national duty,
called the Gin Drinker’s Line and
designed to keep out the marauding Japanese. And I’d heard for a history boffin
it was a treat.
A hard-earned treat, mind. We travelled for almost an hour
and a half by taxi, train and taxi again to reach a trail that wound up into
the mountains to find it. After a couple of thousand foot climb, we were
rewarded with signs of what we’d come to look for. Helpful signs pointed out
corners of pillboxes and bunkers poking out of the thick undergrowth, entrances
to tiny long abandoned tunnels and the odd gaping jagged hole leading into
concreted blackness. We explored with boyish enthusiasm.
Our 15k wander saved the best till last. Perfectly preserved
tunnels of the Shing Mun redoubt, the lynchpin of the line. The tunnels snaked
and burrowed under this hulking hill, linking pillboxes, protecting its
defenders and dominating the surrounding countryside. And most charmingly, all
were named after London streets, and still accessible on foot.
Here’s the actual history bit, for those who are interested
(you’ve been warned!). So what became of the line? Records showed the Japanese
were very worried about attacking it, expecting to suffer heavy losses and take
weeks to break through. The British hoped it would last 6 months, or more, with
little resources.
It lasted one day. Why?
Certainly not a lack of valour. The day after it fell, the
numerically superior Japanese were almost thrown off the hill by a bayonet
charge. Imperialist drum-banging, but harrowing, stories abound on the island
of bloody last stands where Canadians, marines and local volunteers fought
desperate battles to the last bullet. So why did that happen? Depressingly, it
seems, the answer is incompetence…from what I read it was because:
a)
Lots of armed men garrisoned HK, but the forts
weren’t manned properly. Shing Mun was meant to hold 120, but had 30 men in it.
b)
The soldiers in HK had never been trained to man
fortifications at all.
c)
Prejudices. The Brits appeared simply not to
quite believe the Japanese would be up to the task. Myths existed like the idea
that the Japanese did not fight at night because they couldn’t see at all when
it was dark. The fatal attack came at night.
d)
And on trail, we were astounded to find big
concrete blocks set into the path on the hill itself that gave directions to where the bunkers were.
For us though, we didn't have the most redoubtable of days either. We were scared out of our skin by the
packs of monkeys 30-40 strong that lined the road just shy of Shing Mun, and
had to resist the urge to run away screaming…and later we failed to resist that
urge. When traversing a pitch black tunnel with a phone to light the way,
feeling intrepid, we shouted aloud and bounded back to the daylight bouncing
off the dark walls when we convinced ourselves there were snakes in the puddles
on the floor. Turns out we had no fight in the dark either.
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