25 AUGUST 1950, Page 5

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

EIGHT weeks after the fighting started, the commanding officers of the units who are to go to Korea from Hongkong received . (on a Saturday) their orders to mobilise. Most of their troops first heard the news through the Press or the radio. It was not, I gather, intended to publicise the identity of these units, but the War Office told the authorities in Hongkong that they might, if they thought it desirable in the interests of civilian morale, announce particulars of the reinforcements now being sent to the Colony (the 1st Wiltshires from the U.K. and some Gurkhas and armoured cars from Malaya). Hongkong misinterpreted these instructions, and the Argyils and the Middlesex Regiment burst into the headlines

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