Prime Minister Harper will, once again, spend Remembrance Day in Hong Kong, at the Sai Wan War Cemetery, at the end of his current Asian (mostly to India) trip.
I hope that he and, especially, the journalists attending reflect on what happened there 70 years ago. Despite the heroism, and there was plenty, the Battle of Hong Kong was a colossal failure: at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Unfortunately the tragedy was magnified when some senior officers tried to blame their subordinates for systemic failures. There was never a sensible sane plan for the defence of Hong Kong, and it is wrong to blame Maj Gen Maltby for that (there are plenty of reasons to blame Maltby for many other things) because his ability to craft and implement a sound plan were circumscribed by:
1. Orders from London; and
2. Resources - he did not have enough and most of what he had was inadequate in quality.
The simple fact is that, with exception of the Indians (Punjabs and Rajputs), none of the troops were ready or properly equipped to face the Japanese. Just before being promoted and sent to command them, then Col J.K. Lawson, a skilled and experienced regular officer and the Director of Military Training in Ottawa, had declared both the Royal Rifles and the Winnipeg Grenadiers to be unfit for combat, despite the fact that both units had been mobilized for months. The Canadian Army was growing too fast and, for the most part, only units in England were receiving anything like adequate training and equipment. But they were, at the end of October 1941, sent to Hong Kong anyway. Didn't Ottawa know that a war with Japan was looming on the horizon? Yes, probably, but, in fairness, not so soon and they (Prime Minister King, Defence Minister Ralson and Chief of the General Staff (then Maj Gen) Harry Crerar) were unprepared for the speed and violence of the Japanese offensive. Maj Gen Maltby wasn't a bad general, but he wasn't a good enough leader: he understood his grave, even hopeless situation but he lacked the moral where-with-all to defy London and mount a defence that had some remote chance of success ~ and please don't ask me what that defense might have involved: look at the maps, looks at the ORBATs and comprehend futility. Then, as now, Hong Kong Island needs the mainland ("Kowloon side") for survival, but the island, itself, might have been defensible, with adequate troops, supplies and preparations ... until the water ran out.
Canadians have much about which to be proud, despite Maj Gen Maltby's and Brig Wallis' self serving accounts of the battles, both of which tried to lay of blame on to brave Canadian officers, one of whom, Lawson, had died, in battle, with two guns blazing; the Canadians fought as well as one might expect given their poor states of training and inadequate support. But: Canada did not perform well - our whole Army, and the Navy, too, had grown too fast and both were, broadly, unfit to fight until much later in the war. The British "plan" for the defence of Hong Kong was to add minimal resources - Britain was stretched too thinly - and hope the bluff would work. I don't know if King, Ralston and Crerar understood the poverty of London's "thinking," if we can call it that, but they went along.
The lessons of Hong Kong are, or should be, clear:
1. We, Canada, never know when or where we will have to fight. The admirals, generals, bureaucrats and officials in DND, the PCO, DFAIT and the PMO are not doing/thinking strategy, they are planning and programming for the next election. That's what King was doing in the 1930s; Lawson, Hennesy (Lawson's principle staff officer) and the men of The Royal Rifle of Canada and the Winnipeg Grenadiers would pay dearly for our failure to plan, adequately, for the defence of our country. I say "our failure" because most, indeed almost all Canadians, agreed with King's decisions to fight the Great Depression rather than prepare the CF for a war King did not believe would come just as almost all Canadians support Prime Minister Harper's decisions to fight the Great Recession by, in part, starving the CF of the resources it needs to keep itself fit to fight.
2. We cannot mobilize quickly or well - we lack stocks of materiel and enough trained officers and NCOs who can, in their train, train new troops.
3. We should not assume that our "senior partner," now the USA has any useful, sensible plan for much of anything.
