ProfileFreedom swimmers from China, boatpeople from Vietnam – ex-marine policeman in Hong Kong Les Bird, now a writer, recalls an eventful career
- After adventures in Africa, Les Bird joined the Hong Kong Marine Police, where he rescued Vietnamese boatpeople and swimmers from China and chased smugglers
- A lover of writing as a child, he picked up his pen again and is the author of two books about his police career. He tells Kate Whitehead about an eventful life
I was born in Staffordshire, in England, in 1951. As a child, I remember my mother showing her ration card to the butcher to get her weekly allocation of meat and the grocer for butter and milk.
I come from a military family. My father, his three brothers and my grandfather were all in the Royal Navy. My father served in World War II in the Pacific war and in 1945 he was part of Admiral Harcourt’s fleet, which liberated Hong Kong from the Japanese. For a year after 1945, he was a de facto police officer because the police force hadn’t yet re-established itself, so the British military were tasked with policing Hong Kong.
During the war, my mother joined the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) and was an ambulance driver. She was seconded to the Royal Artillery as an anti-aircraft gunner. She was our first line of defence against the Luftwaffe and was in firefights with aircraft.
I was interested in art and English, and as a kid I used to write poetry and was very interested in writing, but my dad pushed me towards mathematics and physics. He wanted me to be a technical person, but it just wasn’t for me.
African adventures
In the early 1970s, the UK was entering a recession, there was the oil crisis and the miners’ strike and not much opportunity for young people. So, aged 19, I packed up and left. I arrived in Sydney with a suitcase and £50. I didn’t know anyone on that side of the world.