Roderick Egal and the Military Cemetery in Stanley

I’ve posted a few times on one of my great Shanghailander heroes, the Frenchman Roderick Egal who was one of the few residents of Shanghai Frenchtown to join the Gaullist resistance while most appear to have just sat back and tolerated Vichy. It has to be said that the French population of the Concession was not exactly crowned in glory for their behaviour falling the Fall of France – they were overwhelmingly pro-Vichy. However Roderick Egal, and others,  responded to de Gaulle’s Appeal of 18 June 1940 to resist and established an organisation and a clandestine press to fight back. Many were arrested and hunted by the pro-Vichy police with the help of the Nazis in Shanghai too. It was a time of stark sides – collaboration or resistance. Many Frenchtown residents said you could not fight what they felt was the inevitable conquering of France by Germany and that Petain was only being pragmatic – Egal begged to differ.

He was also arrested eventually, taken to Hanoi in French (Vichy-controlled) Indo-China where the British managed to get him freed and on a boat to Hong Kong. After that he fought with the British at the final defense of Hong Kong during the bloody Battle of North Point, he was interned in Kowloon and eventually died in Hong Kong in 1947. The war and his dogged resistance to the Nazis and Japanese was not kind to his health.

And so I noticed in the online Le Souvenir Francais de China a small piece about the memorial in Stanley Military Cemetery (below) to the French in Hong Kong who resisted and did not accept either the German occupation of France or Vichy treachery. Egal is noted – ‘…fait prisonnier, interné à Kowloon et décédé le 29 décembre 1947 après près de 4 ans en détention’

Here’s the article and some pictures of the memorial.