The Four Chinese Nurses of St. Stephen’s College Hospital.



Stanley Military Cemetery, Hong Kong (Wikimedia)

The plain gravestone at the Stanley Military Cemetery in Hong Kong bears a simple inscription, “Met their deaths at St. Stephens, 25^th December 1941”. Then it lists a number of the known fatalities followed by … “and many unknown Chinese, Indian, Canadian and British Ranks of all units”.  The names of the four Chinese nurses that disappeared on Christmas Day 1941 are among the ‘many unknown’.  Their fate is mentioned in a letter from George H. Calvert, a former member of the Royal Hong Kong Regiment.

The hospital unit at St. Stephens College, a private school in Hong Kong once known as ‘The Eton of the East’, was functioning as a military hospital during the defense of the island. It became the scene of a massacre.  Patients and staff were killed, many by bayonet wounds while in their beds or while trying to protect their patients.

Sections of Japanese infantry known as the Tanaka Butai reached the Stanley area early that morning.  Lt. Colonel Black, a doctor in a white coat and a Red Cross arm band, carried a white flag out to the advancing troops to inform them the building was a hospital.  He was killed, as was Captain Whitney, another doctor who tried unsuccessfully to stop their entry.

David Hornell, Ferdinand St. Laurent and Donald Scott

PBY-5 'Canso' Flying boat in CWHM

 

 

The citation for valour in the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum (CWHM) to Flight Lieutenant David Hornell, VC can generally be found close to the Consolidated PBY-5 ‘Canso’ Flying Boat, the ‘Mary K.’, dedicated in his name and now bearing the livery of RCAF 162 Squadron to which he belonged. Beside it also is a copy of the London Gazette entry of July 1944 recording the posthumous award of Britain’s highest military honour for heroism in the face of the enemy to Hornell.

Three members of the crew died that day.  On patrol in the Atlantic on 24 June 1944 in a PBY-5, they spotted a U-Boat (U-1225) on the surface off Iceland.