Alfred W. Elsliger enlisted with his friends, including my Great Uncle Wilfred Smith, in his little hometown of Jacquet River on New Brunswick’s North Shore. In October 1941, he and nearly 2000 Canadian troops were sent to reinforce Hong Kong against the Imperial Japanese Army.
On Christmas Day, Hong Kong fell to the invaders. Its defenders were taken captive, beginning years spent in brutal prison camps, undergoing forced labour on starvation rations.
A fellow Jacquet River soldier, Andrew Flanagan, wrote in a letter home: “We lived on 3 oz of rice a day. I guessed that I tipped the scales at slightly over 75 pounds. But there was a spirit in all of us, including the dying. It gladdened us to hear that some of the [Japanese] ships we had built [with forced labour] had been sunk.”
(Andrew’s story is told in the remarkable book ‘The Endless Battle’ by his son Andy Flanagan.)
“Some of the boys had exceptional talents,” Andrew continued in his letter home, “which they shared to make our stay a bit more tolerable.”
Alfred Elsliger was one of those people.
While in the Japanese prison camps, he pencilled a remarkable long-form poem in a little black notebook.
It described in verse the expedition from enlisting, to travelling overseas, to the Battle of Hong Kong, to the conditions in the prison camp in stark terms, but also mixed in humour, pathos, and hope.
It is, in the words of one critic, “a descriptive poem of real merit.”
Towards the end of his poem, Elsliger wrote:
“But I’m fairly optimistic,
And some day hope to be,
Back in the land of freedom
At home as I used to be.
There’ll be merrier Christmas greetings,
Then we uttered this Yuletide last
We’ll have happier Christmas meetings
When the evils of war are past.”
Tragically, Alfred Elsliger’s dreams of a Christmas in Canada were not to be.
After surviving the four years in the unimaginably brutal conditions of Japanese Prisoner of War camps — and the prison ship he was transported aboard being sunk — he finally made it back home to Jacquet River.
One month after getting home, on October 25th, 1945, Alfred Elsliger was killed in a car accident.
[Note: This work contains language and terms that are offensive. They are included here, in their original context, in order to reflect the past accurately.]
“The Siege of Hong Kong” by Alfred W. Elsliger
T’was at Valcartier, Quebec, one cold October day,
That we received our orders to pack up and start away.
We marched down to the station in a cold and drizzling rain,
Then bade good-bye to friends nearby and stepped on board the train.
That journey to the West Coast was a rather worrisome trip,
We arrived in Vancouver, then got on board a ship.
We were going to see new country, everybody seemed gay,
There we joined the Grenadiers and started on our way.
They just came from Jamaica,
We from Newfoundland,
We all told different stories,
We were a jolly band.
Our destination was obscure,
But little did we care,
As our ship, an old New Zealander,
Was taking us somewhere.
We knew not where we were going,
What’s more we did not care,
Where we went or what we did
As long as we got there.
We stopped in Honolulu,
But wasn’t there long.
Our officers then told us
We were going to Hong Kong.
We landed in Manila next,
Another large seaport,
Some thought the journey ended,
But our sojourn there was short.
Next landing was at Port Kawloon,
Across from old Hong Kong.
The streets were lined from end to end,
With cheering, waving throng.
We marched to Nanking barracks next,
About a mile away
And there received that welcome
Of proverbial “flowers in May.”
The place was like a festival,
With sport and food galore
At night the grounds were lighted
From the lights along the shore.
What pleasant hours the boys spent there,
In canteen drinking beer.
Both noon and night, day in, day out,
We’d find Tom Thompson here.
The barbers shaved us while we slept
And gave us haircuts too,
As coolies kept the camp in shape,
We had no work to do.
But happiest hours must have an end
Two weeks — it wasn’t long
When we broke camp and crossed the straits
To fight at old Hong Kong.
Just two short weeks of gaiety
For all of us and — well
T’was a touch of paradise,
Before we entered Hell.
We fought a noble battle,
But at such a terrific cost,
That even though the fight was brief,
A host of lives were lost.
We next moved to Stony Hill
And stayed there over night
From there we went to Repulse Bay
To join another fight.
With Royal Rifles,
Middlesex and Hong Kong Volunteers
The Royal Scots,
East Indians and Winnipeg Grenadiers.
We fought together valiantly,
That time at Repulse Bay,
But the Japs outnumbered us,
And we were forced to move away.
We fought till we were famished
With the hope that ground we’d keep
For hours on end the battle raged,
We fought on in our sleep.
We fought while death in its worst forms,
Struck men who would not yield.
But when Jap reinforcements came
We had to leave the field.
Then finally the crisis came
That fateful Christmas night.
The stars, as over Bethlehem,
Were clear and shining bright.
“Peace On Earth” cannot prevail,
While bombs and shells abound
And hundreds of our comrades brave
Lie dead upon the ground.
We knew we were outnumbered
By a thousand men to one.
We felt our case was hopeless
‘Ere that fight had scarce begun.
So we handed in our rifles
And our ammunition too,
Buried our dead, then went to bed
(T’was all that we could do.)
And now we’re in a prison camp
And live on rice and rats,
It might be worst, if Japs were chinks
We’d have to live on cats.
But I’m fairly optimistic
And some day hope to be
Back in the land of freedom
At home as I used to be.
There’ll be merrier Christmas greetings,
Then we uttered this Yuletide last
We’ll have happier Christmas meetings
When the evils of war are past.
We’ll sing merrier Christmas anthem
And cherrier New Year song
When we think of that Christmas battle
On the island of old Hong Kong.
