Jake Saunders
The fierce pace of economic growth for Hong Kong was fuelled by an influx of industrious migrants from China and an administration dedicated to laissez-faire tax and trade policies.
He joined The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in London in 1937 on the introduction of the Duke of Devonshire, to whom his maiden aunt Elsie was private secretary.
As training for his first tour of duty in the Far East, he was posted to the bank's Lyons branch in France, where the principal business was financing the silk trade with Indo-China.
When war broke out in 1939, he resigned from The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and took the train back to England to enlist in the British Army as a private soldier.
After a week the Surreys were placed in a quieter section of the front high in the Apennine Mountains guarding the Eighth Army's left wing during the Moro River Campaign in December.
The land was very bleak and wild; although there was little combat during the period (mainly skirmishes between opposing patrols) life was very uncomfortable because of the freezing temperatures, deep snow and remoteness from town comforts.
[4] In February 1944 (by which time Saunders was the Battalion Adjutant) 78 Division moved across the Apennine Mountains to the Cassino sector to become part of the New Zealand Corps under Lieutenant General Mark Clark's U.S. Fifth Army.
[5] After a month the battalion was relieved by Polish units for a short rest period, followed by intense training for the fourth Battle of Monte Cassino.
After the Allied breakthrough in Operation Diadem the division took part in the advance up the Liri valley continuing to fight northwards from Rome towards Arezzo.
Early in October 1944, the battalion, in which Saunders was now a major commanding a rifle company, returned with the 78th Division to Italy and traveled by transport on a circuitous route from Taranto that took them through Assisi, Perugia and Arezzo to San Apollinare in the Tuscan Apennine mountains north of Florence.
It was a grim, mountainous area with narrow, winding tracks, pitted with shell holes which turned to slippery mud in the heavy rain.
The task of the 78th Division was, as part of Lieutenant-General Sidney C. Kirkman's British XIII Corps (which at this time formed the right wing of Mark Clark's U.S. Fifth Army), to join in the offensive to break through the mountains to the Lombardy plain.
Monte Spaduro, a massive, razor-backed ridge running from south to north for almost two miles (3 km), remained in German hands and on the night of 23 October the battalion took part in a brigade attack on the feature.
The approach march to the brigade assembly area took the 1st Surreys along three and a half miles of winding mountain tracks with steep, muddy gradients.
On 14 April, the 1st Surreys and the 2nd Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, as part of 78 Division's 11th Infantry Brigade, moved up to a concentration area in readiness for an assault on the Argenta Gap.
On the evening of 16 April 1 Surreys moved forward after dark and secured a base from which the Lancashire Fusiliers could cross the Fossa Marina and establish a limited bridgehead beyond it.
