OUISTRHAM, France (AP) — The captain of the Royal Navy’s giant battleship gathered his officers to give them a first taste of one of the best-kept secrets of World War II: prepare, he said, for “an extremely important task.”
“Speculation abounds,” one of the officers wrote in his diary that day, June 2, 1944. “Some say there will be a second front, others say we must escort the Soviets or do something else in Iceland. No one is allowed to disembark.”
The secret was D-Day: the June 6, 1944, invasion of Nazi-occupied France with the world’s largest sea, land and air armada. It destroyed the fearsome defenses of Adolf Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall” and hastened the dictator’s fall 11 months later.
The diary’s writer was Lam Ping-yu, a Chinese officer who crossed the world with two dozen of China’s comrades-in-arms to train and serve with Allied forces in Europe.
For Lam, 32, watching the landings unfold in Normandy, France, from aboard the battleship HMS Ramillies proved to be momentous.
His meticulously detailed but long-forgotten diary was rescued by urban explorers from a housing block in Hong Kong that was about to be demolished. It is reviving its history and shedding light on the involvement of Chinese officers in the multinational invasion.
As survivors of the Battle of Normandy disappear, Lam’s compelling firsthand account adds another vivid voice to the enormous library of memories the World War II generation is leaving behind, ensuring that their sacrifices for the freedom and international cooperation that defeated Nazism are not forgotten.
“I saw the army landing craft, as numerous as ants, scattered and writhing all over the sea, moving southward,” Lam wrote on the afternoon of June 5, as the invasion fleet crossed the English Channel.
“All hands on deck. We should be able to reach our designated location tomorrow around 4 or 5am and begin the bombardment of the French coast,” he wrote.
Advances
Research by history enthusiasts Angus Hui and John Mak in Hong Kong pieced together the story of how Lam found himself aboard the HMS Ramillies and proved vital in verifying the authenticity of his 80-page diary, written in 13,000 faint and delicate Chinese characters.
Hui and Mak have curated and are touring an exhibition about Lam, his diary and the other Chinese officers, which is now on display in the Norman town of Ouistreham.
A breakthrough was the discovery, confirmed in Hong Kong land records, that the abandoned ninth-floor apartment where the diary was found had belonged to one of Lam’s brothers.
Another was Hui’s discovery in British archives of a 1944 logbook from HMS Ramillies. An entry on May 29 recorded that two Chinese officers had come aboard. Misspelling Lam’s surname reads: “Junior Lieutenant Le Ping Yu, Chinese Navy joined the ship.”
Lost, found and lost again
Lam’s black leather-bound notebook has also had a dramatic life.
Lost and then found, now gone again. Hui and Mak say it appears to have been hidden somewhere (possibly brought to the United States or the United Kingdom by people who emigrated from Hong Kong) after explorers searched the apartment, rescuing the diary, other papers, a suitcase and other curiosities, before the building was demolished.
But Hui, who lived nearby, was able to photograph the diary’s pages before it disappeared, preserving Lam’s account.
“I knew, ‘Okay, this is a fascinating story that we need to know more about,’” he says.
“Such a remarkable piece of history…could have stayed buried forever,” Mak says.
They shared Lam’s story with her daughter, Sau Ying Lam, who lives in Pittsburgh. He previously knew very little about his father’s experiences during the war. He died in 2000.
“I was shocked,” she says. “It’s a gift for me to know who he was when he was young and to understand him better now, because I didn’t have that opportunity when he was still alive.”
A lucky escape
Lam was part of a group of more than 20 Chinese naval officers sent during World War II to receive training in the United Kingdom by Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang led a Nationalist government in China from 1928 to 1949, fighting against the invasion of Japan and then Mao Zedong’s communists, before fleeing to Taiwan with the remains of his forces when Mao’s insurgents took power.
On their long journey from China, the officers passed through Egypt (one photograph shows them posing in front of the pyramids in their white uniforms) before joining British forces.
In his diary, Lam wrote of a close brush with death on D-Day aboard HMS Ramillies, as the battleship’s powerful guns pounded the German fortifications with enormous 880-kilogram (1,938 lb) shells before Allied troops attacked the five invasion beaches.
“They fired three torpedoes at us,” Lam wrote. “We managed to avoid them.”
His daughter marvels at the lucky escape.
“If that torpedo had hit the ship, I wouldn’t be alive,” he says.
Through ship logs, Hui and Mak say they have confirmed that at least 14 Chinese officers participated in Operation Neptune, the naval component of the invasion that was codenamed Operation Overlord. About 7,000 ships participated. The Chinese were deployed in pairs, on seven ships, Hui and Mak say.
Operation Dragon
Some of the officers, including Lam, also participated in the Allied invasion of southern France that followed, in August 1944.
“Action stations at 4am, traces of the moon still visible, although the horizon is unusually dark,” Lam wrote on August 15. “The bombardment of the French coast began at 6, Ramillies did not open fire until 7.
“The Germans put up such weak resistance that it could be said to be non-existent.”
France awarded its highest honor, the Legion of Honor, to the last surviving Chinese contingent in 2006. Huang Tingxin, then 88, dedicated the award to all those who traveled with him from China to Europe, saying “it was a great honor to join the anti-Nazi war,” China’s official Xinhua news agency reported at the time.
Lam’s daughter says her story remains inspiring.
“It talks about unity, hard work, doing good,” he says. “I think World War II shows us that we can work together for the common good.”
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Leung reported from Hong Kong.