55 The Royal Canadian Legion MANITOBA & NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO COMMAND www.mbnwo.ca BLACK, Mike WWII Mike was born in Horod, Manitoba in 1919. He enlisted in the Army and served with the Winnipeg Grenadiers in Hong Kong. He was a fourteenyear member of The Royal Canadian Legion Dauphin Branch. Mike passed away in 1991. The following is Mike’s experience as a prisoner of war in Hong Kong, in his own words. In the fall of 1940, I was called for one month of army training in Brandon. In July 1941, I was called back to the army at Portage la Prairie, then moved to Fort Osborne barracks in Winnipeg.When John Wojnarski and I enlisted in the active army, we were the only two from Elphinstone, Manitoba. In October 1941, we left the draft.We boarded the New Zealand ship Hiawartha. The first supper they served us was mutton as I well remember.We had never eaten mutton; and the men started walking off the gang plank. They had quite a time putting them back on board. The next morning we sailed on to Hong Kong. The ship quarters were so crowded that we slept in hammocks. We stopped a day at Hawaii for refueling but we weren’t able to get off the ship. We had Hula dancers on the front of the ship for entertainment. We sailed on for days until we arrived at the Philippine Islands for refueling but again were not allowed to get off the ship. We then sailed two more days arriving in Hong Kong in the early morning. The trip took three weeks from Vancouver to Hong Kong.We departed the ship and it looked very scary as there were thousands of Chinese dressed in very poor odd clothing. We marched through the streets of Hong Kong for three miles to the barracks. The barracks were very poor and the rations were also bad. We were quarantined in the barracks for three days. Then we were taken to the hills where our positions would be in case of war. At nights we roamed the streets visiting bars and all the exciting places we could find. During the day we were on the parade square training. Three weeks later war broke out. I was in the hospital at the time with another buddy of mine. It was minutes after we were released from the hospital that we drove back to the barracks where the Japanese were already bombing the barracks. We gathered whatever we could for the battle and took the ferry across to Hong Kong where we arrived at the Pill Box. My friend, Harry Piasta, from Rossburn was the last one to leave the Pill Box. He said goodbye to me and left. He was with the “B” Company and I was with the “C” Company. I was serving with my platoon on the little Aberdeen Island. Early next morning the news came to us that several of our men were already killed and one of them was my best friend, Henry. I took it very hard. That was no joke, it was a real war. Finally, we were moved back to the mainland and fought with the rest of my company. We were moved daily from hill to hill. One morning we got to our headquarters for breakfast. Before we started eating, our company commander ordered us to “get the hell going and to stop the Japanese” because “B” Company had been wiped out. That was the end of our breakfast. We started down the road where we met some boys coming back bleeding from bullets to the stomach. There were very heavy casualties as we got closer to the front. We spent a day at the side of the mountain. The army truck brought us food but as we approached to eat, a trench mortar shell hit the pots and another came down. That ended our meal, so we spent most of the night on the mountainside. As the Japanese came closer we moved. (continued)
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