Then & Now | A history lesson from World War II hero ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert, who fought in Burma with the Chindits
- It’s a lesson every budding historian should learn: you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s one your columnist was given by a legendary soldier
- Brigadier ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert served with the Chindit guerillas in Burma in World War II, having earlier helped build Hong Kong’s Gin Drinker’s Line defences
Probably the most valuable lesson any aspiring historian can absorb is that one doesn’t know what one doesn’t know. This I learned back in 1991, when working with 6th Queen Elizabeth’s Own Gurkha Rifles at Cassino Lines, a then-remote British Army camp in the northern New Territories.
The regiment had fought in the Burma campaign in 1944-45; an annual day off commemorated a decisive victory over the Japanese at the Battle of Mogaung, in June 1944. Two Victoria Crosses had been awarded during that engagement – one, posthumously, to a British officer, Captain Michael Allmand, and another to a Gurkha, Rifleman Tul Bahadur Pun.
With the passage of time, Captain Allmand’s family wished to present his medal to the regiment, and a ceremonial parade was organised; the governor, David Wilson, received the salute. Various “old and bold” personalities from the Burma campaign were invited to Hong Kong to attend.
And so, late one morning, an elderly, very English Englishman strode into my office on his way to explore the camp. Then nearly 80, he chattered loudly in not-bad Cantonese with the Chinese amah who brought some tea, and reminisced colourfully about the colony as it was more than half a century earlier.
I was completely fascinated, until ignorance undid me. “Have you been up around the tunnels at Shing Mun?” he asked. I confessed that I hadn’t – co-authoring a slim book on Hong Kong’s wartime sites was still some years into the future. “Not much point talking to you about it then, eh – hah!” he chuckled. He gulped down his tea and proceeded on his walk. And that was that.
I had no idea who this apparition had been until lunchtime, when someone mentioned that “Mad Mike” – James Michael Calvert – was abroad in the place. Posted to Hong Kong with the Royal Engineers in 1934, Calvert later helped oversee construction of the fixed defences at Shing Mun, in the hills above Tsuen Wan, known post-war as the Gin Drinker’s Line – hence his question, and disappointed snort.