A Voyage to War: An Englishman’s Account of Hong Kong, 1936-41

The outbreak of World War II in 1939 found Peter Dulley (1903-41) living and working in Hong Kong, where he had met and married Therese Sander. Soon, this weekend sailor found himself called up as part of the Royal Hong Kong Naval Volunteers, as part of which he was eventually assigned to captain a five-hundred-ton tugboat on the long journey from Hong Kong to Aden. Therese, meanwhile, was evacuated to the Philippines, and then to Australia--with but one brief intermediary stop in Hong Kong, which was to be the last time she saw Peter, who would die in World War II during the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941.

​This book, assembled with loving care by Therese and Peter's son--who was born in the Philippines soon after the evacuation of Hong Kong--gathers six years of letters from Peter to Therese. Equal parts moving and funny, dramatic and quotidian, the letters paint a wonderful portrait of daily life in Hong Kong and at sea in the early days of the war. As World War II recedes ever further into the past, A Voyage to War reminds us that it was fought by real people, who tried to hold on to what they cared about even as the war threw everything into deadly disarray.

Hugh Dulley was born in the Philippines in 1940 and spent most of his career in management for the National Health Service in England.