Wartime sons receive an overdue honour
Laurie Mackay’s story is one of sacrifice – from the hills of Hong Kong to a rat-infested POW camp
TRURO, N.S. – Laurie Mackay felt certain his time was up as a Japanese soldier charged at him in a hospital ward, wielding a bayonet.
It gave him nightmares for the rest of his life.
The nightmare started for Laurie when Allied forces in Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese army on Dec. 25, 1941 and he joined hundreds of other Canadian soldiers in captivity. Many never came home.
“I feel terribly sorry for him, definitely, but I also feel very proud that he survived, because he had such a will to live,” said Karen Mackay of her late father.
Laurie was one of several Truro-area Hong Kong veterans who were honoured with a commemorative display plaque at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 26 in Truro, unveiled May 22.
The biggest reward for Mackay’s family, though, was that Laurie made it home, having spent nearly four years as a prisoner of war in appalling conditions.
Karen’s father was just 16 when he was captured, narrowly escaping the soldier’s bayonet by running out of the hospital ward. He never knew how he made it through the doors and away from certain death, but he remembered being on the other side.
A Japanese officer accepted the surrender of Mackay and other soldiers who made it out alive, but those patients unable to move were bayoneted or shot in their beds.
Laurie was in Hong Kong’s St. Stephen’s College, which the Allies used as a field hospital during the fighting in 1941. He suffered a neck injury during desperate fighting between the Allied and Imperial Japanese soldiers earlier in December.
The nightmare continued for Laurie and his fellow soldiers, as they were marched off to a series of prisoner-of-war camps in Hong Kong and finally Japan.
Prisoners lived under the everpresent threat of death, hunger, torture and malaria. As the captives became thinner, the camp rats grew fatter amid the squalor and constant death.
The POWS were used as slave labour by the Japanese, building airfields, roads and railways across the occupied territories of Asia. All they received in return was a meagre rice ration and whatever food they could scrounge.
“These men were like skeletons,” said Karen. “They were starved and beaten and not given a lot to eat.”
However, Laurie glimpsed some humanity from his captors, too. While working at a steel mill in Nagoya, Japan, he passed out over one of the machines. A Japanese civilian quickly threw his arms over the device, making it seem like Laurie was still working.
Laurie finally returned home to Truro in the fall of 1945. He and the other surviving POWS would suffer from the effects of malnourishment and mistreatment the rest of their lives.
But while the nightmares persisted for Laurie, he never let go of his love for life and his family. Karen, now 67, was born a few years after the war.
“He made a sacrifice for our country, he was a strong man to suffer what he did,” said Laurie’s niece Linda Musgrave. “He was a very fun-loving person and used to hold court in our kitchen and tell stories.”
Laurie passed away in 1998, at 73. Today, there is only one Nova Scotian Hong Kong veteran still alive, a 102-year-old living in New Minas. The Japanese launched their invasion of Hong Kong on Dec.
8, 1941, using 50,000 troops advancing from Mainland China.
Facing them were 12,000 Allied soldiers, including 2,000 Canadians. Most of them were from the Winnipeg Grenadiers and Royal Canadian Rifles, of which Laurie Mackay was a member.
Fighting raged across Hong Kong for 17 days, but the Allies, outnumbered and outgunned, were forced to surrender on Dec. 25.
Approximately 300 Canadians died in fighting and another 300 lost their lives in POW camps.