THE WOODED PATH along Sir Cecil's Ride and Wong Nai Chung Gap is a pleasant walk, but Gerry Gerrard remembers this part of Hong Kong very differently. For this is where he fought in the days leading up to Hong Kong's surrender to the Japanese, on Christmas Day, 1941. During the second world war, the rocks were bare and the Allied soldiers were visible to Japanese snipers.
'It was terrible,' says Gerrard, who defended Hong Kong as a teenage signalman with the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals. 'There was all the shelling. But what used to bother me most were the mortars. They made a wobbling sound, so it was difficult to tell which direction they were going in, which was very unnerving,
'Then there was the steady machine-gun fire, artillery fire, grenades. It kept you in confusion on which way to go. You were on your own and did the best you could do to stay alive.'
The 84-year-old great-grandfather, who now lives in Victoria, Canada, was one of 600 Allied soldiers and civilians-turned-army volunteers who fought in the pre-dawn hours of December 19, 1941, in a deafening cacophony of gunfire and exploding grenades as the Japanese army took Hong Kong Island.
To commemorate their bravery that day, the Tourism Commission and the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department have set up a 4km heritage trail that traces the battle for Wong Nai Chung Gap, one of the bloodiest in the defence of Hong Kong. The trail encompasses the water-catchment area, starting off at Tai Tam Reservoir Road, across Sir Cecil's Ride and ends at the West Brigade Headquarters on Wong Nai Chung Gap Road. Along the way, signboards have been placed at strategic points to tell the story of the battle, and some of the Allies' armaments and defences are still visible.
The trail was the brainchild of local war historian Tony Banham, author of Not the Slightest Chance, The Defence of Hong Kong, 1941, and Bill Greaves, senior project adviser with the Antiquities and Monuments Office, who separately approached the Tourism Commission with their ideas three years ago.