Frank Edkins, 63, arrived in Hong Kong as a gunner with the Royal Artillery in 1966 and was stationed at Shek Kong. He went on anti-riot duty in 1967, married a local girl in 1968, endured long separations from his family and eventually left the army. When he was unable to find work, he and his wife decided on role reversals. Today, the children are grown and Edkins is the barman at the Railway Tavern in Tai Wai.
I came to Hong Kong with the 18th Regiment, the Royal Artillery, in September 1966. It was very hot. We arrived by air and the first thing that hit me as I stepped off the plane was the smell from the nullah at Kai Tak. We were bussed straight to Shek Kong and put in billets without air-conditioning. Each bed had a mosquito net and there were ceiling fans. Most of us slept on the balconies. It was a culture shock.
As soon as we could, we headed to the bars at Kam Tin. Across the road from Shek Kong camp was a store, Colombo's. The favourite thing when you ran out of money towards the end of the month was to go in there and buy a watch on credit and then go down to the pawn broker's in Kam Tin and hawk it to get money to drink. Then you went back on payday and paid it off. The pawnbroker paid about $50 or $60 for the watches and that kept you in drinks, because a bottle of beer was less than $1.
Kam Tin town was quite a happening little place. The major attractions at the bars were the drinks and the girls. The girls who worked in the bars in Kam Tin weren't the same as those who worked in the bars in Kowloon and Hong Kong. They weren't the type you paid to take out.
I met Lee Kam-ha in Kam Tin in 1966. She was trying to learn English and we hit it off. We should have got married in '67, but there was no proof that she had been born in Hong Kong. In those days the army vetted everybody because of communist China. That took almost a year so we didn't get married until January '68. Another hold-up to our marriage in '67 was he riots.
During the troubles, people were running around Hong Kong planting bombs. In the New Territories, you'd see a cardboard box and you didn't know whether it was a bomb. After the restrictions were lifted, we were told to stay on one side of Nathan Road and to go in pairs in Kowloon. This was when the Americans were on R and R from Vietnam and some of my regiment were a bit naughty and used to take them for a ride. They had plenty of money and one or two British soldiers would latch on to a couple of Americans to show them the ropes and sort of, not really rob them, but take advantage of them. That was when there were different prices for drinks for different people. There was a price for a local, a price for an expat, a price for a visitor, a price for a British soldier and the highest price was for the American soldier. They didn't complain.
