Battle Data Search
[Civilian] Wenzell Brown
Born
:10 May 1911, Portland, Maine
Death
:November 1981, New York
Pre-war
:Brown studied in New York, London, and Denmark, and taught in China and Puerto Rico in the 1930s. When hostilities started, he was a Professor of English at Lingnan University which transferred to Hong Kong University because of the Sino-Japanese war.
Wartime
:Brown witnessed the battle from Victoria on Hong Kong Island, sometimes uncomfortably close to the action (such as when Central Market was bombed or being on the last Star Ferry from Kowloon). As an American, he was repatriated to the States from Stanley Internment Camp in 1942. He then wrote arguably the best and the worst book about Hong Kong during the period, Hong Kong Aftermath, which was published the year after he was repatriated. What makes the book so good is the evocative and atmospheric writing. For example, he noted as he walked with a colleague along Black’s Link (from west to east) in early January 1942:
“Never will Clyron and I forget that journey along Black Slink. The path was too narrow for cars but had been used as a saddle-path before the siege. Pill-boxes and heavy guns had been set up at intervals. A hundred feet up the road, an Indian guard lay flat on his back. The face was massed black with flies. The putrefying flesh gave forth an odour that sickened us. We held handkerchiefs to our faces as we passed. I felt my entire stomach contract and fought down the spasm of retching that seized me. Around the bend there were two more bodies. Clyron and I looked at each other in despair. We dared not return past that sentry with his glittering little knife. We went on and on. We spent hours among the rotting dead. We climbed across their fly-covered bodies. We crossed a foot-bridge where a dead sentry still stood in slovenly watch against the rail. We passed unexploded munitions dumps, the carcasses of mules and horses, pillboxes that were blown to bits.”
Of course, the problem is that he called it Black Slink, and in fact, many of the book’s details are just as inaccurate.
Post-war
:Post war in the ‘50s and ‘60s Brown became a very popular author of paperbacks about delinquent youths, including Jailbait Jungle, Devil’s Spawn, Teen Age Terror, Cry Kill, Monkey On My Back, Murder Seeks An Agent, Gang Girl, and Prison Girl.
Awards (other than the campaign medals)
:The Edgars 1959 Best Fact Crime for They Died in the Chair.
Further Reading
:Wenzell Brown, Hong Kong Aftermath (New York: Smith & Durrell, 1943) or any of his books!
Sources
:Photo: Tony Banham
