Colonel Sir Lindsay Ride, who was then a professor of Physiology at The University of Hong Kong, was captured.
Shortly after being captured, Ride escaped from Sham Shui Po POW camp to China with three trusted men.
The idea was approved by General Archibald Wavell, the Commander-in-Chief, India, and with the agreement of the War Office in London, the new unit was incorporated into the structure of MI9, the Military Intelligence department responsible for support to resistance movements and POW escapes.
A headquarters was established at Qiujiang in Guangdong Province, while a forward operating base was set up at Huizhou.
was established at Guilin under the command of Major Dinesh Misra, who had previously served in Hong Kong with the Rajputana Rifles.
sent agents to gather intelligence – military, political and economic – about conditions in both Hong Kong and southern China.
[4] The agents' main role was to facilitate the escape of prisoners from Hong Kong; British, Commonwealth and Indian servicemen were then debriefed by B.A.A.G.
during the war and following the end of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in August 1945 were summed up in an editorial published in The South China Morning Post in early 1946:[5] At the close of the year, Colonel L.T.
Ride said good-bye to the men and women who have worked under him, in the British Army Aid Group, and this leave-taking marked the official end of an organisation that Hong Kong cannot allow to die.
There, miraculously, were friends, rallying round, beckoning us, assuring, us, impatient at times, no doubt, at the slowness of our response, venturing dangerously close, planning, providing, infiltrating at much risk—a resurgence and a rescue service almost without parallel.
was very varied, ranging from espionage organisation, and other contact-making, to the assistance of refugees and displaced persons, conveyance of news to anxious relatives and friends, and even including “scorched earth” service when the enemy invaded the interior bases.
Nor did its work cease abruptly with the war’s end: for four months the personnel have been here helping to mop up the post-war problems, dealing sympathetically with a host of domestic wants and participating in the avenging of unnecessary sufferings.
The Hong Kong folk who escaped, and those who returned from elsewhere to work with the B.A.A.G., have in appreciable degree removed that blemish.
They return as an embassy, and they have a further service to perform in educating Hong Kong to a more co-operative conception of things Chinese.