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Sleeping Too Near the Enemy

Somewhere along the road I met Bob Boudreau who was also in "D" Company and had been a runner. Night was descending so we decided that we had better find some place to wait. There was a pill box nearby, just below the road. Bob wanted to go in, but something told me that it would be dangerous to do, so we lay down on the flat roof of the pill box. In the morning we heard unfamiliar voices, and sure enough, there was a detachement of Japs milling around on the ground below us. We didn't breath. After they moved off, probably to join forces with the attackers at Repulse Bay Hotel, we got down. We were hungry and thirsty, not having had anything to eat or drink since God knows when. In the pill box we found a can of condensed milk. We punched a couple of holes in it with a bayonet and drank it. Pretty strong stuff on an empty stomach. Now, every time I see a can of condensed milk I think of Bob Boudreau and the close call we had that night on top of that pill box. In our position we had no way of reporting the incident, or any way of informing Army Intelligence, of the presence of the enemy.

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There's 15 Japs in Stanley Village

Page 7

By December 24, we had been pushed back to Stanley Fort, a British installation on the top of a high promotory. accessible from the rest of the island through a narrow isthmus, and Stanley Village, located on a broader part of the isthmus. We were billeted on the bottom floor of a four or five story building, and if I recall correctly, even though mortar shells kept landing on the top of the building, we had some rest on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning Major Parker came in and told us we were assigned to clear out a small party of Japs in Stanley Village, located on the isthmus below the fort. We understood that there were on 15 Japs there, so the task would be quite easy. How naive of us to swallow that story. The whole Japanese invading force was massed behind whatever detachment was holded up in the bungalows at the graveyard, and could have, and did, reinforce them as soon as the action started.

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Photo courtesy of Tony Banham

The object of our attack was Bungalow C where only 15 Japanese soldiers were supposed to be holed up. It sounded like an easy enough chore, but it turned deadly in very short order, and a lot of men died.

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We girded our loins and began the trek to the village through the main gate, and across the open space to the right, to the edge of the cliff, and down the cliff to Stanley Village. All the way across that open space we were followed by Japanese artillery fire. They must have had an observation post overlooking our line of progress, but we couldn't spot it.

One of Mother's Gospel songs kept going through my mind, "Will the circle be unbroken?" I couldn't help thinking of my family back home, but no doubt concerned for my own safety. I was scared.

The only casualty on that trip across open space was Lorne, Molly, McIntyre, a Rifleman in 18 Platoon. He got a shard of shrapnel in the buttock, and when he sat down, he sat in a mess where someone had previously had a bowel movement. Lorne's reaction,with blood pouring from his wound was, "Some dirty bastard shit in the grass."

Seventeen Platoon spearheaded the attack on the graveyard where the Japanese had positioned themselves. They soon found out that the numbers of invading Japanese had swelled to several hundreds, and the resistence was unsurmountable. Many of my close friends died that day, among them, Bert Irvine, Jack Lyons.

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