CAPTIVES AT HONG KONG

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 31 December 1941, Page 5

CAPTIVES AT HONG KONG

WELL-KNOW N CANADIAN REGIMENTS HOW THE LEADERS FELL Ottawa, Dec. 24. Colonel Ralston, Canadian Minister of Defence, announced that the Commander of the Canadian Forces in Hong Kong, Brigadier J. K. Lawson, was believed killed in action and the Senior Staff Officer, Colonel Pat Hennessey, was killed under shell fire. Lawson rose from the ranks in the Great War. He saw duty in the United Kingdom in the present war. In May, 1940, he had been appointed director of military training in Canada and knew the Canadian Forces.intimately. The Canadian forces in Hong Kong included: The Royal Rifles. Quebec. Commander, Lieut.-Col. W. J. Home; The Winnipeg Grenadiers. Commander, Lieut.-Col. J. L. R. Sutcliffe. Both regiments have enviable records. The Quebec Royal Rifles, whose regimental motto is "Willing and Able,” was the outgrowth of several rifle companies raised in 1862. When the unit took its present name King George V. approved its being shown in the Army List as Allied King's Royal Rifle Corps. Battle honours include the South African War, Ypres. Festubert. Mount Sorrel the Somme. Arras, Hill 70 and Amiens. Among its officers is Lieutenant t . G. Power, son of the Canadian Minister of Air. The Grenadiers held their first full dress parade in 1910 with uniforms similar to those of His Majesty’s Grenadier Guards. Their baptism of fire was at St. Eloi in 1916. They came out of 1 Vimv Ridge with two-thirds of their number casualties. They served in the West Indies during the present war and returned home with a new marching song “Galloping Grenadiers.”