I still vividly remember my childhood days when I would gaze at the barracks on the top of a ridge in pitch darkness from the window of my room. The sight of heavy army trucks entering the barracks gate always brought to my mind soldiers in transit with their missions accomplished. Such scenes ignited my curiosity about the Edwardian buildings on the hillside and, subsequently, my interest in that almost forgotten battle.

Now renamed Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village, this exotic place was known to me as the Lyemun Barracks in my teens. Built and then expanded during the period between 1890 and 1939, the complex of the whitewashed buildings played a vital role in coastal defence in those early years. Alongside the Shing Mun Redoubt and the Wong Nai Chung Gap Bunkers, the complex is one of a few surviving monuments to the Battle of Hong Kong. As veterans passed away and monuments were razed, the battle has sadly sunk into oblivion in a matter of decades.

It was December 1941. A storm was brewing in the Pacific Ocean while wars were raging on mainland China and the distant European continent. Supported by fleets of bombers, more than 25,000 battle-hardened Japanese soldiers were deployed along the border of Hong Kong, ready to pour into the British enclave. The defenders, a garrison of no more than 11,000 British, Indian and Canadian soldiers, were hastily assembled not long before the war, with virtually no aerial or naval support. The odds were obviously against the defenders from the onset of the war.

The invaders crossed the border in the small hours of 8 December. After a brief fight at the Shing Mun Redoubt, the Gin Drinker’s Line, an 18-kilometre defensive line running through the mountains to the north of the Kowloon Peninsula, was breached. The Scots fought back heroically, but failed to turn the tide of the battle in their favour. To familiarise themselves with the hilly terrain during their pre-war preparation, the Scots ingeniously named the tunnels after some of the London landmarks, like Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue. Such names are still recognisable at the entrances of the tunnels even today, evoking nostalgia for the thirties in the lush green field.

The Kowloon Peninsula, subsequent to the New Territories, fell into Japanese hands after barely four days. The invaders made a ferocious attempt to cross the Victoria Harbour. At the Sai Wan Battery of the Lyemun Barracks, dozens of members of the Volunteer Defence Corps put up resistance bravely despite their inferiority in number. Upon capitulation, there were horrendous reports of on-the-spot execution of wounded prisoners of war at the Salesian Mission House nearby. Still standing intact in Chai Wan Road, the monastery was once said to be a haunted place in the neighbourhood, a vivid testimony to the atrocities committed by the invaders.

Strolling along the tree-lined paths in the Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village, one will not find anything left from the war, not even a trace of the spilled blood or marks left by shrapnel on stonework. The billowing smoke clouds, gleaming helmets and shiny bayonets are long gone. What remains is nothing but an exquisitely mixed sense of tranquility and poetry. There lie the barracks, once quarters for married officers, where the names of English poets like John Milton, William Wordsworth and Alfred Tennyson can be found on the facades, creating a poetic and harmonious atmosphere against the emerald valley behind.

As William Wordsworth puts it, “death is the quiet haven of us all”. Death is the destination we all share, and war heroes are, regrettably, no exception. Brigadier John Lawson was the highest ranking Canadian officer killed in action during the Second World War. In October 1941, he shipped out to Hong Kong with two ill-trained battalions of nearly 2,000 new recruits under his command in a futile effort to reinforce the small garrison. A sizeable force of these soldiers was assigned to defend Mount Butler and Wong Nai Chung Gap. Despite their gallantry, the defensive line was broken by the overwhelming force of the enemy, and Lawson’s headquarters bunker in Wong Nai Chung Gap was cut off. With Japanese soldiers firing at point blank range, he was reported to have made his final transmission, saying “I am going outside to fight it out.” He was tragically shot down not far away from his bunker.

Lawson’s sacrifice was far from an isolated case of heroic deeds. Over 500 of his soldiers never returned home. Among them was Sergeant Major John Osborn, whose final act was the most remarkable. During an attack on Mount Butler, he saved his comrades by throwing himself on a Japanese grenade, which exploded and killed him instantly. Posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his exemplary valour and selflessness, Osborn was the only recipient of that honour in the Battle of Hong Kong.

With colossal losses of men and shortage of equipment and supplies, Sir Mark Young, the then Hong Kong Governor, submitted his surrender on Christmas Day in 1941, and the rest is history. In a war perceived by Winston Churchill to be without “the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it”, the Hong Kong garrison fearlessly fought against all odds to defend the besieged city for 18 brutal days, displaying the highest degree of gallantry, endurance and self-sacrifice.

Lawson’s headquarters bunker, like many war structures in Hong Kong, has now become decrepit and dilapidated, with some parts having crumbled into fragments. Yet amid the ruins, it is only fitting that a minute of silence and mourning should be observed for the fallen, those valiant souls who fought to the last and proudly sacrificed themselves in defence of our city. They shall never grow old.