Chaps v. Japs

Does anyone do derring-do anymore? Here’s the real thing. On Christmas Day 1941, despite Churchill’s call to fight to the last man, Hong Kong fell to the Japanese, the first British possession to surrender since the American War of Independence. Within a few hours, Chiang Kai-shek’s main official in the colony, the one-legged Admiral Chan Chak, together with three of his staff, several senior British officials and a few others, fled the colony under heavy
Japanese fire and managed to reach a little flotilla of motor torpedo boats manned by 50 British sailors. Thus began a journey by boat, foot, truck and train across China, with most of the party reaching Burma — also about to fall — then India; and, after five months in all, some of them arrived home in Britain.

The book contains many photographs — and a good thing, too, for credibility. A suspicious reader might groan that too many people are swimming under fire, being shot and wounded while speeding along in torpedo boats, bombed by Japanese planes and hiding while Japanese cavalry ride past.