We had our first taste of impending troubles in Hong Kong caused by the Cultural Revolution during the Easter holiday of 1966. On April 6 in the late afternoon we had returned to Queen’s Hill [barracks, in the northern New Territories] from a battalion command post exercise testing our vehicle-mounted radio systems and were looking forward to the Easter break. We picked up some news of rioting in Kowloon and decided that we would leave the radios mounted in their vehicles in case a call came. At 1am that call did indeed come. Without warning we were rudely awakened by the brigade duty officer and told to move the battalion immediately to Kowloon in support of the police, to help contain serious and widespread rioting. I harried the company commanders and Gurkha officers to rouse their men and load our internal security equipment, weapons and ammunition. We reached the Kowloon police compound in Nathan Road from way up in the New Territories before the British battalion had debouched from Gun Club Barracks 500 yards away. Aside from echoes of the Cultural Revolution to the north, the immediate catalyst for the severe Kowloon disturbances was a protest at the raising by 5 cents of the first-class fare on the Star Ferries operating between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. But the three nights of disturbances were symptomatic of wider social discontents – the gap between rich and poor and the frustrated ambitions of the young. The density of population in the urban area of Kowloon allowed rioting to spread rapidly. What was clear when we arrived was that the disturbances – rioting and looting, the long lines of burnt-out buses – had by the early hours exhausted the police. Additional assistance was urgently required. The centre of the disturbances was the broad Kowloon thoroughfare of Nathan Road and its immediate byways. For young officers such as me it was a very different feeling from earlier social expeditions as we marched down Nathan Road. We were in full internal security order and were pelted with flower pots and other bric-a-brac from the balconies above. The riflemen were wearing their Gurkha hats, both as protective headgear and to signal militarily who was about. I quickly noted that the reputation of the Gurkha soldier was such that the hostile crowds melted away as we moved forward. We fired not a shot, nor was tear gas used. Banners and bugles, the somewhat archaic internal security appurtenances of the time designed to encourage crowds to disperse before the use of more lethal weaponry, remained unused. For the following three days we enforced a curfew. We cordoned off the worst affected areas and guarded sensitive places such as Kai Tak airport, as well as acting in support of the police in crowd control. Our presence seemed to be both effective and welcomed, and by the end of the Easter holiday we were back in our barracks. If we had lost our holiday, then at least to the delight of those with motor cars, half of Kowloon’s parking meters – a modest symbol of government authority – had been destroyed by the rioters and were not replaced for several months. These disturbances in Kowloon were but a prelude to events in the hot and steamy summer a year later, when the tremors of the Cultural Revolution surfaced strongly in Hong Kong, inspired by communist cadres to the north urging on their radical supporters across the border. There was mounting industrial unrest, rioting and a bombing campaign, with many hundreds of incidents recorded. A fever of violence overtook the territory. Hotels and shops were boarded up, and Mao Zedong’s “little red books” seemed to be waved everywhere, not least in front of Government House. Some 50 police and civilians were killed and several hundred injured during a campaign designed to severely test, if not engineer the collapse of, the colonial government. Events took a dangerous turn on the border. I kept a close track of what occurred and locked away the lessons learned at that time about border integrity, readiness and restraint. On the border the Chinese militia were actively involved in creating pressure and mayhem. One incident impressed me with not only its potential seriousness but also the style of its successful resolution. At that stage the Hong Kong Police had primary responsibility for security of the border. The army were in a secondary supporting role, and 1st Battalion, 10th Gurkhas were the designated Frontier Battalion on standby to be deployed to the border if required. A firm but non-provocative response to intimidation was very much the policy. Police Special Branch had learned that a demonstration coupled with an attempt to remove and burn the Union Jack would take place on June 24 at the small border police station at Sha Tau Kok . The police had therefore ensured that road blocks and a cordon were in place to thwart such an attack. As predicted, 200 rioting coolies, many of them disguised Chinese militiamen unrestrained by any border barricade, had stormed the cordon. They had been dispersed by the police use of baton rounds and tear gas, albeit with some casualties on both sides. Sha Tau Kok was then reinforced with an additional platoon of Pakistani riot police. By Saturday, July 8, there were 86 Hong Kong Chinese and Pakistani police based at the border police post, with a further Police Tactical Unit company of four anti-riot platoons – some 100 more men – about 250 yards behind it. On the Chinese side of the border and to the rear of Sha Tau Kok were elements of 7085 Border Regiment from the People’s Liberation Army. During the morning a large crowd built up on the Chinese side of the border. Around 11am, a crowd of several hundred surged across the border assaulting the police with bottles, stones and fish bombs – dynamite used illegally by the locals to stun fish. With the police under some pressure, the Tactical Unit to their rear formed up eight abreast in anti-riot formation and began to march forward to reinforce their colleagues. Immediately and cruelly, a Chinese medium machine gun opened fire on the advancing unit, killing one policeman and wounding others. The unit scattered and dived for cover. Police in the Sha Tau Kok post and buildings close by were also engaged by Chinese sniper fire, and more police were killed and wounded. The police were neither equipped nor trained to respond to this kind of attack. They had only a few carbines and shotguns, and they were not allowed to fire across the border. Their position was critical and as totally unexpected as it was shocking; they fought back and wounded some Chinese militia but were hopelessly outmatched. By this stage five policemen had been killed and 11 wounded. Fire was not returned – it was deemed not to be effective. What was effective was the sight of armed and well-disciplined Gurkha soldiers together with armoured cars advancing deliberately but tactically towards Sha Tau Kok. It was sufficient to make those Chinese who had been on British territory quickly melt away, taking their wounded comrades with them. The leading company of the Gurkha Battalion reached the police post at about 4.30pm, and by 5pm the British ground of Sha Tau Kok had been secured. Defensive positions were erected on top of commanding buildings, and the difficult evacuation of police dead and wounded got under way. As a result of the Sha Tau Kok incident and consequent considerable damage to police morale, the British Army assumed prime responsibility from the police for border security. Weeks of political demonstrations, provocation, insults and intimidation directed against the Gurkhas manning the border followed. Occasionally, machine gun fire would be directed over the heads of soldiers in their defensive positions. Further potentially serious incidents took place at the Lo Wu and Man Kam To crossings. The Chinese were forever attempting to engineer a dramatic confrontation with the British security forces. No shots, apart from the use of gas and smoke grenades, were ever fired across the border by our troops in that long, hot summer. Together with the Gurkhas, the British and Hong Kong governments had stood firm and refused to kowtow to pressure as a result of these disturbances; or, in August, to the torching of the British embassy in Peking by Mao’s Red Guards. Some Hong Kong Chinese millionaires departed the territory for the safety of Vancouver, Canada, or elsewhere, but the British continued to play cricket on their ground in Central and the governor could occasionally be seen on the golf course at Fanling. By the end of the summer the disturbances began to decline in the face of the sturdy resilience of the Hong Kong people, the tenacity of its government and the restraint and sensitive handling of provocation on the border by the Gurkha battalions. Fundamental, too, was the issuing of orders by the Chinese authorities to cool the ardour of their supporters. Mao’s intention had been to provoke a kowtow from the British, not to take back Hong Kong “ahead of time”. It was economically too valuable as it was.