LOCAL World War II veterans yesterday attacked a newly-released report alleging some Canadian soldiers who fought in the Battle of Hongkong were drunken cowards.
Describing the accusation as shocking and shameful, the veterans said the British wartime commander in Hongkong, Major General Christopher Maltby, did not have first hand knowledge of how the Canadians fared in battle and claimed he wrote the report to deflect personal criticism.
They also pointed out it was a Canadian who received the only Victoria Cross to be awarded after the Battle of Hongkong. Warrant Officer John Robert Osborn of the Winnipeg Grenadiers won the medal posthumously after saving his comrades by throwing himself on to a Japanese grenade during fighting at Mount Butler.
The controversial report - written by General Maltby a year after the December 1941 Japanese invasion of Hongkong - was recently released by the Public Records Office in London.
It claims many Canadian soldiers refused to leave the bar of the Repulse Bay Hotel, where they were ''drinking all over the place'', to defend the territory against the Japanese.
General Maltby also charged that when finally forced on to the battlefield, officers from the Royal Rifles of Canada wanted to surrender to the Japanese rather than fight.