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4 Battle Box 12 December Hong Kong’s defenders never really recovered from the shock of losing the mainland so soon. The days that followed were days of reorganization and battening down of hatches; of artillery duels across the water, aerial blitzes to which they had no reply and invitations to surrender indignantly refused. There was a certain stiffening of resolve as they waited for the Japanese to land. But that early feeling of being pushed back, of withdrawing until there was nowhere left to go—that never went away. The lucky few who were to find themselves on Christmas Day suddenly breaking out across enemy lines, over blue sea and green hills into Free China, would feel a surge of exhilaration all the more intense for what it was they were escaping from. Not just the grim and uncertain prospect of a prisoner-of-war camp, but even more, the hopeless reality of being under constant siege and of knowing that defeat was just a matter of time. Yet none could have felt a greater sense of release than those who had spent the past seventeen days cooped up inside the Battle Box. As the bombs and shells began to fall, many people envied those senior or lucky enough to be based inside the thick walls of Fortress HQ. The subterranean nerve centre of China Command, with its own power supply, telephone exchange and ventilation system, had been built to withstand the heaviest of bombardments. Its sunken entrance lay among the sleepy colonnades and sprawling banyans of the colony ’s original military encampment. Down thirteen flights of steps, steel doors opened onto a catacomb of pipelined passageways, with a series of right-angled turns and small offices leading off on either side. ‘It felt so safe and secure down there,’ said one of those who dropped by during the battle. They had perhaps gone to report how many of their men they had just seen mown down by machine guns on some bare hillside. But as they saluted and stood awaiting further orders, in a dungeon-like chamber where the air was close and a flickering yellow light cast a lurid glare on pale, harassed faces, many decided they would rather be back on the front line. 28 Escape from Hong Kong Not that those who were based in the Battle Box weren’t glad to see them—any news from the real world outside was welcome. One member of the public who called up wanting urgent instructions as to what to do about an approaching enemy soldier got the frank if not very helpful response: ‘We’re a bit in the dark down here—how many Japs on the island?’ If and when they had time to snatch a few hours’ sleep, most of the staff officers preferred, like the General himself, to walk over to Flagstaff House rather than stay below ground. The Battle Box was a ‘psychological tomb’, said one. ‘One could hear and feel the heavy vibrations as shells and bombs landed on top without making any noticeable impression. . . . I felt an unwilling sense of guilty security under all that reinforced concrete.’ Squadron Leader Max Oxford, an intelligence officer attached to the Royal Air Force, found the Battle Box both depressing and demoralizing. He thought the staff remained there for too long: ‘One rapidly became a defeatist,’ he wrote a few weeks later to his sister in South Africa. ‘I preferred the sunlight and perfect winter weather above ground.’ But as their entire fleet of planes had been put out of action before the fighting began, neither Oxford nor any of his Air Force colleagues had been able to get as far above ground as they would have liked. Ever since that initial raid on Kai Tak, the RAF’s one hundred or so airmen had been serving as infantry, while he himself had been based along with other intelligence officers in Command HQ. He went out when he could, mainly helping with transport. He and Charles Boxer had visited the Kowloon front just before it collapsed. There was little air intelligence work to do other than keep an eye on the air raid warning system: it was working well in its ‘most beautiful dug-out’. The Air Force were still seething over the fact that the chiefs of staff had refused their request for a fighter squadron. Also that Maltby hadn’t let them do anything with the few planes they did have except...

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