In 1940, despite Japan’s three-year war with China, Britain decided to reduce its garrison in Hong Kong to “symbolic” size. By the summer of 1941, however, with the Japanese massing on the colony’s northern border, Winston Churchill ordered that the British and Indian troops there be strengthened. A request went out from the Foreign Office to Canada seeking at least two battalions to be sent to Hong Kong.

Quebec City’s Royal Rifles and the Winnipeg Grenadiers set sail from Vancouver at the end of October 1941. They arrived in Hong Kong in mid-November. While elements of the Canadian Navy and Air Force had already been engaged in fighting in the Second World War, the Rifles and Grenadiers were Canada’s first land forces to see combat.

Neither battalion had any battle experience. Few of th

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