Yangtze Showdown Page 12
Once again, points raised previously were discussed without progress being made. Kang was asked what evidence he had to support his claim that Amethyst fired first. He stressed that he was in command of the battery at San Chiang Ying and witnessed the incident. He had ordered his troops to fire if attacked and there was no doubt the ship fired first. Kerans told the colonel it was an extremely weak answer and Kang dropped the subject – never to raise it again. Kang was asked to give clearance for a Sunderland flying boat to bring a senior officer so that high-level negotiations could start, but he said General Yuan would have to consider the request after an application in writing. When Kerans mentioned the difficult conditions his crew were experiencing, Kang blamed the policy adopted by their senior officers. He took exception to a warning in Brind’s signal that a continuing refusal to allow Amethyst to sail would cause ‘most unfortunate complications between the PLA and the British people’. Kerans noted: ‘It did appear that they were showing concern over outside reaction and the propaganda line to follow … I did feel that the time was now opportune for worldwide broadcast of the true facts of the case pointing out Communist vacillation and intransigence during negotiations. It was also clear that the political machinery of the PLA was the deciding factor and that it was hard to break in order to make a normal approach possible. It was also obvious that Kang and his interpreters were dealing in political matters above their heads.’ After the meeting it dawned on Kerans that Colonel Kang and ‘Major Kung’, whom Hett had dealt with earlier, were the same person.8
After nearly six weeks on the Yangtze conditions in Amethyst were continuing to deteriorate. Flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches were a problem, and the after part of the ship was uninhabitable because of rats. Disinfectant had run out and it was only by ‘scrupulous cleanliness’ that disease could be kept in check.
‘Life on board generally was work,’ said Ernest Munson, an ordinary seaman. ‘We used to make our own enjoyment, games of uckers [a game similar to ludo], crib. It was hot, temperatures up in the hundreds, and when the ship was shut down most of the chaps stayed on the upper deck. There were silly games of catching fireflies. When the Chinese [Communists] crossed the river we had a macabre way of passing the time. When on watch we would count the bodies of the Chinese soldiers, how many would pass one side of the ship, how many would pass the other side. It used to relieve the boredom. They were bloated.’
On one occasion a live pig was spotted floating down the river and sailors tried to lasso it in the hope of getting some fresh meat. They failed and the pig floated on. ‘Sometimes we slept below decks because of the weather,’ said Munson. ‘A rat would run past my camp bed every night on his usual run. The other chaps used to try to hit it with boots and things. I was tucked away in my camp bed trying to dodge the boots and the rat. We did catch some of the rats in different ways but we were getting fed up with them. I can remember this chap waking up one morning and finding a rat swinging about six inches from his face. Someone had put up a fuse-wire snare on the pipes above.’9
The best rat catcher was a cat called Simon. A previous member of Amethyst’s crew, 17-year-old George Hickinbottom, had found the black and white cat wandering in the naval dockyard on Stonecutters Island, Hong Kong, in November 1948 and smuggled him on board. The then captain, Lieutenant Commander Ian Griffiths, discovered he had an extra crew member. However, Griffiths liked cats and agreed he could stay because rats were always trying to get at the food supplies. It was not long before Simon took up quarters in the captain’s cabin, where he sometimes brought his trophies. Griffiths once found a dead rat on his bunk. The captain only had to whistle and Simon would accompany him on his rounds. When Griffiths was given a new command, the cat remained on board Amethyst. Griffiths’s successor, Lieutenant Commander Skinner, also liked cats and kept Simon. The cat was asleep in the captain’s cabin when Amethyst was attacked on 20 April.10
Lieutenant Hett explained:
Simon was hit in the captain’s cabin. He suffered shock and blast and goodness knows what. He just went to earth. We don’t know quite where he went and, of course, at this stage we were very much more concerned with saving the ship rather than looking after animals [a dog called Peggy was also on board]. About a week afterwards Simon crept out from wherever he was and he then went around with the ship’s company. Simon had a scar on his ear and his forehead and his whiskers were a bit singed because a shell had burst in the cabin. But he settled down and killed rats. I had my foot bitten by a rat when I was in my bunk one night. The rats came through the ventilation trunking.11
The badly injured Simon had been found by Petty Officer George Griffiths and was treated by Fearnley the RAF doctor. He was not expected to survive but he made a good recovery. Simon resumed his duties, catching rats everywhere – the stokers’ mess deck, the petty officers’ pantry and ‘spud locker’, the portside galley, the bridge, the forward mess deck, the after mess deck, and the chief petty officers’ mess. His greatest success was a rat nicknamed Mao Tse-tung, a particularly vicious creature that kept eluding the crew’s traps. Simon cornered the rat and killed it quickly, delighting the sailors and earning promotion to Able Seacat. But Simon did experience one setback – Kerans was not a cat lover and turfed him out of the captain’s cabin. As well as dealing with vermin, the cat also proved a tonic for some of the younger sailors who had been traumatised by the attack. At one point Kerans went down with a virus and was confined to bed for a few days. Simon sneaked into the cabin, jumped on the bunk and purred away, winning over Kerans, who allowed him to stay. On another occasion the cat was able to cement the relationship by presenting the captain with a dead rat. When Simon was not looking, Kerans threw it overboard.12
14
The Threat to Hong Kong
THE PLIGHT OF AMETHYST WAS not the only China-related problem occupying the thoughts of the British government and military chiefs. There was continuing concern about the fate of the British community in Shanghai. There were around 4,000 British nationals and by 13 May Prime Minister Attlee was worried that so few had taken up the offer of evacuation. And the significant progress of Communist forces also cast a shadow over Hong Kong. Would Mao, emboldened by the success of the PLA, be tempted to invade the colony?
As Communist troops headed towards Shanghai, the city was still busy as a commercial centre, despite problems that included crippling inflation. One line of argument among wavering Nationalist supporters was that the Communists would need Shanghai to carry on trading. The bourgeoisie had been so keen to save their city that they sent delegations to Peking in the February and March to discuss plans for a Communist takeover. Even a leading gangster, Du Yuesheng, who had helped to massacre thousands of Communists some two decades earlier, offered his ‘sincere’ co-operation to avoid major fighting.1
Those seeking a peaceful solution were stunned at the end of April when the former Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek suddenly turned up in the city and announced that there would be a fight to the end. Chiang, still an influential figure, had already secured his bolthole, Formosa [now Taiwan], where he diverted much of China’s wealth, gold and cash reserves, as well as art treasures. Prominent citizens – and gangster Du – fled the city as Chiang ordered a crackdown on ‘defeatists’. Hundreds were arrested and suspected Communist supporters were executed, sometimes in the street. The local economy was badly hit and those who remained saw a rising tax burden. Many people were forced to dig ditches and build a wooden stockade as part of the city’s defences. But on 8 May Chiang, who had arrived in a cruiser, sailed away, destination Formosa, with more than a suspicion that the real purpose of his visit was to extract as much wealth as possible for his island fortress under the guise of helping the war effort.2
The main Communist army approached Shanghai from the north and fought a battle with a force trying to flee. Despite Chiang’s departure, the crackdown on Nationalist opponents increased, with frequent executions. Western journalists were also threatened. Britain�
�s consul, Robert Urquhart, and other foreign diplomats were instructed to appeal to Nationalist generals to ‘spare the city from the consequences which would follow from its continued defence’. Attlee was concerned that a large number of British nationals would end up as hostages in Communist hands, and thought renewed efforts should be made to persuade them to leave. But he was told it would take 96 hours for merchant ships to reach Shanghai and 14 days to evacuate the entire British community. One reassurance was that Communist treatment of British communities in the captured cities of Peking, Tientsin and Nanking had been reasonably good.3
Urquhart did not share Attlee’s concern about hostages, and he had sent a different message to British residents. ‘Most of the fears which have been conjured up are founded on rumour and pure imagination,’ he told them.
We will stand by Shanghai if we possibly can. It will take the extreme of human folly, of military disaster, to dislodge us. Shanghai is home to us as a community, not merely a trading post, and we are not going to up and leave our community at the first signs of an approaching storm. Does anyone suggest that if there is a change of government here, the new one will be so unreasonable that they will make civilised life and normal trading impossible? I have great confidence that the government of China will not fall into the hands of any but responsible men, who will have the interests of their country at heart.4
On 24 May, four days after Communist troops surrounded Shanghai’s two airports, the Nationalists, bizarrely, staged a victory parade. That night advance units of the PLA entered the city, finding little resistance. City Hall and the central police station were soon occupied.
Wing Commander Peter Howard-Williams, the assistant air attaché, who had helped to organise the Sunderland flights to Amethyst the previous month, was in Shanghai during the Communist advance. ‘One morning I heard shooting and lay under the bed as bullets hit the outside walls of my flat,’ he recalled.
After a while I crawled out from under the bed and all seemed quiet. I went out into the street and found that I was now in Communist territory. I rang the consulate and found that my office was still in Nationalist territory. They asked me if I had any information as to where the fighting was, so in the afternoon a very frightened Chen [a servant] and an equally frightened assistant air attaché, ventured forth in my car. It turned out to be quite exciting when we found ourselves in no man’s land and had a lot of problems getting back to the flat.
It was noticeable that most of the senior Nationalist officers had been too busy arranging for their private possessions, even pianos and tables, to be flown to Formosa, to think of their men. After burning an enormous amount of their equipment a large part of the army embarked at Woosung in landing craft and sailed to Formosa, just before the arrival of the Communist army. The behaviour of the Communist soldiers was better than the Nationalists and they immediately created a good impression with many of the inhabitants. As soon as they had set up a headquarters I visited it with a request to drive a van to Amethyst with three sacks of mail. After several further attempts the request was refused. The real purpose of the request was to take some radio valves, which I intended to hide in the mail bags.5
There were anxious moments for Urquhart when Nationalist soldiers made a stand opposite his consulate on the Bund. But the Communists quickly consolidated their hold on the city and only a few areas witnessed significant clashes, including part of the waterfront. As soon as the fighting stopped, the Communists withdrew their frontline forces and propaganda units took over.
Howard-Williams, who had sent his wife and daughter to the safety of Hong Kong before the fighting, added: ‘Life under the Communists was very different. There were no ships and the great port of Shanghai was at a standstill. No mail or papers were received from outside and we were forbidden to leave the city. The only letter I received was one from my bank about my overdraft, and to this day I do not know how it got through.’
Foreign residents were not targeted, and the only Western casualty appears to have been US Vice Consul William Olive, who may have been the architect of his own fate. Olive apparently drove his car at a parade, intent on knocking down marchers and ignoring police instructions. He was arrested. At a police station he allegedly attacked officers and in turn was badly beaten up. Olive subsequently returned to America, along with Ambassador Stuart.6 Fighting between the Nationalists and the Communists continued in north west and south China but by the end of the summer the civil war was effectively over, with Mao the victor and more opposed to Western powers than ever.
On Hong Kong, the British government had been well aware in April that it needed to take decisive action to protect the colony. The Commissioner General for South East Asia, Malcolm MacDonald, warned:
Further victories in China in general and our naval reverse on the Yangtze in particular have gravely weakened our prestige recently. I fear that the effect of the Amethyst incident in particular is bad in Hong Kong as it is bound to be throughout South East Asia. It is universally regarded by the Chinese here [in Hong Kong] as a sign of our impotence to resist Chinese Communists, and as an indication that we shall not have the strength to defend Hong Kong if Communists wish to press for rendition or capture of the colony. Memory of 1941 is only too fresh in their minds and the Yangtze incident is painfully reminiscent of the loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse locally. This melancholy event has disturbed the unofficial European leaders almost as badly as the Chinese.
MacDonald stressed the urgency of dealing with a further loss of confidence in the colony, and suggested that a statement committing Britain to the defence of Hong Kong should be made in the House of Commons.7
It should be recalled that the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, lacking air cover and involved in a dubious reconnaissance mission after failing to intercept the Japanese invasion fleet, were sunk by torpedo planes off the east coast of Malaya on 10 December 1941. Two days earlier Japanese troops had launched an assault on Hong Kong, which was defended by British, Canadian and Indian forces. The Japanese stormed through the New Territories and Kowloon, reaching Hong Kong Island. The defenders were heavily outnumbered and surrender came on 25 December 1941, known locally as Black Christmas.
Until April 1949 British military planners had thought that an attack on Hong Kong by the Chinese Communists was a remote possibility. The colony was valuable as ‘a liaison centre and clearing house’ for the Chinese Communist Party, and as a base for the co-ordination of Communist activities generally throughout South East Asia. However, the ease with which Communist forces crossed the Yangtze altered the picture significantly. The Communists had three army groups in the Yangtze area totalling around one million men. In addition, there were 400,000 troops in north China and 80,000 in the south east. The military planners identified four possible approaches to Hong Kong from central China: by sea; the coast road from Shanghai or Hangchow; the railway between Nankow and Canton; and the inland road from Hangchow. The Communists lacked shipping and the easiest route appeared to be the railway between Hankow and Canton. A briefing document noted: ‘In assessing the value of the Communists’ armies as a fighting force it must be remembered that it has never met resolute resistance from the Nationalist armies and cannot be judged by European standards. Nevertheless, its standard of training and fighting efficiency is rated very high by neutral observers. In addition the Communist leaders have shown a high degree of professional skill in the past in the tactical and strategic handling of their armies; most of them have been trained in Russian military academies.’8 Hankow was nearly 800 miles from Hong Kong. It was estimated that it would take 20 days to move 200,000 troops from Hankow to Canton using the railway. The Communist navy and air force were considered insignificant.
On 25 April Minister of Defence Alexander and the heads of the navy, army and air force had met to discuss the threat. Admiral Brind, already in London, was asked to attend the meeting and he expressed the view that Communism in China wou
ld prove to be very different from Communism in eastern Europe. It might bring ‘all sorts of evil’ but it was not likely to lead to unanimity of outlook among the Chinese. In China the village was the unit, and it did not make much difference to any particular village what type of government was in control. He had heard that the Communists were at ‘sixes and sevens amongst themselves’. Alexander said he feared Brind’s view might prove optimistic.9
On 27 April Britain decided to send a brigade HQ and one infantry battalion to reinforce the Hong Kong garrison. However, two days later planners at the Ministry of Defence recommended a tougher response, stating that there was ‘little likelihood of a direct Communist attack on Hong Kong if we show our determination to hold the colony’. The planners identified two threats, one from guerrillas, the other a direct attack. It was suggested that two infantry brigades, one armoured regiment, two artillery field regiments and one composite AA regiment should be sent initially. The navy would increase its patrols and the air force would contribute a fighter squadron and early-warning radar. If the threat increased, the reinforcements would be one army division, an aircraft carrier and frigates, and a fighter squadron and a light bomber squadron.
The planners pointed out that in March 1946 the British government had decided Hong Kong would not be defended if an attack came from a major power occupying China.