I was an RASC Sergeant when, at the end of 1964, a newly built Guardroom was opened in my base, Victoria Barracks, Hong Kong Island, on the edge of the Wanchai, er, rest and recreation District. The smart new Garrison nick had a 3-man cell, three 1-man cells, prisoners’ shower and chinaware toilet and sink, and a ‘Wyatt Earp’ grille door of stout metal bars separating ‘them’ in the cells from ‘us’ in the rest of the long and vaguely ‘L’ shaped guardroom. The cells had metal bedframes concreted into the floor, steel mesh reinforced windows, ceiling lights protected by toughened glass and metal casings, and steel reinforced wood doors with small observation gratings.

This was a period of Confrontation in Borneo, between the armed forces of Malaysia and Britain on one side and those of President Sukarno of Indonesia on the other. The King’s Own Scottish Borderers had recently arrived in Hong Kong for acclimatisation before going off to join the fray but meantime were enjoying a few nights on the town. One night, around 2am, I was Guard Commander with my complement of a locally enlisted junior NCO and six Chinese Privates when, with a screech, a RMP vehicle pulled up outside the Guardroom and a RMP Corporal presented himself to me. Very unusually for this breed he was flustered, red faced and panting, a shirt pocket flap was ripped and an epaulette hung loose.

“Sarge, ’fraid we’ve a lively one here,” he announced, “he’s being a bit difficult.” The routine required the Guard to take responsibility for a prisoner by escorting him from the Police vehicle, ‘booking him in’, and incarcerating him. However the RMP NCO continued, “I think it’d be best if you open the way to a cell, we’ll put him straight in and you can sort out the paperwork after.” Their vehicle was a long wheel base ¾ ton Land Rover and from it SEVEN uniformed RMP NCOs and TWO uniformed Royal Navy Patrolmen carried horizontally ONE combat-uniformed KOSB Private, each policeman clutching a different bit of the violently struggling and ragingly drunk soldier.

I already had prisoners in the 1-man cells so opened the empty 3-man cell, stood aside and with awe-inspiring uproar the KOSB was manhandled in. He was thrust onto the centre bed and held down, allowing most of the coppers to exit. I surveyed my ‘guest’ and remembered the rules required I take two prisoners from the 1-man cells and add them to the 3-man cell, so enabling me to accept a further two prisoners into the single occupancy cells. The rule flew out the window when the last two MPs leapt from the soldier, rushed out and slammed the cell’s self-locking door. I secured the Wyatt Earp door and signed for Live Body One from the senior RMP NCO after which the Service policemen departed, talking animatedly amongst themselves.

I heard noises coming from the 3-man cell so passed through Wyatt Earp, peered in and saw the man grappling with his bed. I told him to calm down and go to sleep, that the bed was firmly fixed and that I’d contacted his unit who’d collect him in the morning. Eventually the KOSB succeeded in ripping a bed from the concrete floor and used it to pound his cell door. Two courses of action offered themselves: I could re-enter the cell to subdue and castigate the rowdy vandal; or I could summon the Orderly Officer and hand him the problem. I chose the latter. WO2 Colin Hand RAPC arrived promptly and we debated what to do next. The Guard 2ic, Lance Corporal Kwan, asked if he could go in and sort out the drunk as he was a karate black belt but WO2 Hand considered this contrary to Regulations for the Care, Maintenance & Welfare of Temporary Detainees.

While we were talking, the KOSB smashed through his cell door using his 6-foot metal frame bed, and proceeded to reduce the prisoners’ toilet pan and basin to little pieces of porcelain, following which he pounded the shower cubicle wall until it was level with the nick floor. He then turned what was left of his weapon on to Wyatt Earp himself. WO2 Hand and I were four feet away and observed him as, over a period of about an hour, he tried to pummel and lever the door into submission.

However it was too strong and eventually, his energy if not his anger expended, he collapsed in a heap. He spent the remainder of that night sitting on the floor, arms through the bars of the door, telling WO2 Hand and me that we would remember him to our “deein’ days.” I lost touch with WO2 Hand long ago but, for me, the KOSB was probably quite right. Forty years may have elapsed but reading Raymond Chan’s account of his brutal encounter with Irish Guards in 1971 brought it all back!