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As General Maltby ordered his men to hand in their weapons, the various members of the escape party were still gathering in the centre of town. Chan Chak had received a call at about three o’clock to inform him that the Governor and the General would go to surrender in person to the Japanese in about an hour’s time. The Admiral and his three colleagues—Henry, SK and Yeung the bodyguard—made their way across the road to the Gloucester Building, where Bill Robinson was anxiously waiting to accompany them to Aberdeen. Max Oxford had been up to the Peak to evacuate some women and children from one of the many houses now on fire there. He returned to the Battle Box and when it became clear that it was all over, he, Guest and Macmillan had a final meeting with Maltby. The General said they were free to escape if they could and wished them luck. Goring stayed behind, engrossed in directing the final throes of the battle, but the three other officers hurried down to join the rest of the party at the Gloucester. According to Guest, Japanese soldiers were by now pouring down Garden Road into the city centre, with more arriving by boat from Kowloon, and he and Macmillan had to take cover in the cathedral grounds before dodging enemy patrols on Queen’s Road. Others merely spoke of gunfire from the east sounding ever louder in their ears. Chan Chak said plain-clothed Japanese agents had arrived ahead of the main body of troops and, by the time he left his office, were approaching the British military headquarters, just a few hundred yards away. MacDougall and Ross were still in their third-floor office in the Gloucester, impatiently waiting for the Colonial Secretary to come and give them the all clear to leave. ‘Christ, I wish we could go,’ Ross had been saying, as they weighed up the chances of the MTBs ignoring the order to depart and staying on to pick up the Admiral. He calculated that the enemy had by this time reached the cricket ground, just the other side of Statue Square. Finally, at 3.30 p.m., after a 12 Getaway Cars 25 December, 3.15 p.m. 90 Escape from Hong Kong ten-minute walk down from Government House, NL Smith’s successor , Franklin Gimson, arrived at the Gloucester to confirm that hostilities had ended. MacDougall asked if this meant it was every man for himself. ‘Of course,’ said Gimson. ‘You can do what you want now.’ He declined to go with them, saying he would have to stay to take charge in the absence of the Governor, who was about to make his formal surrender. They joined the others in a private office on the fourth floor. Now there were ten of them. It was time to go. They picked up their things and made for the door. Chan and his staff, who were in ordinary civilian clothes, were each carrying a small hold-all; the two Ministry of Information men had their well-stocked knapsacks; the British military officers, still in their uniforms, had the few items they had been able to lay their hands on before leaving the Battle Box. All ten of them carried revolvers, although MacDougall later admitted he hadn’t the faintest idea how to fire one. They hurried downstairs. The lifts, like the phones, were out of order. It turned out that Goring had worried needlessly about Chan managing the stairs with his wooden leg. Since his operation two years before, the Admiral had put in lots of practice on the staircase at his home in Kowloon, with the help of Yeung and his two other bodyguards. They darted out of the hotel’s side entrance on Pedder Street and dashed around the corner on to Queen’s Road, where Ross had parked the Buick in front of the King’s Theatre. The heavy, arcaded buildings clustered in the heart of the city provided good protection from the shelling. SK Yee had foreseen that they would be too many for one car and had organized a second—an old four-seater Austin with a canvas roof. Henry Hsu fetched it from the compound at the rear. According to a Chinese biography of Chan Chak, the Admiral now started to take charge as the ‘Sino-British commander-in-chief’, ordering everyone to get into the two cars. Freddie Guest recalled Chan’s...

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