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American History

Heroes from History People Really Don’t Appreciate Enough

William Colby - William J. Donovan
William Colby (oak leaves on cap) with OSS personnel and Norwegian Resistance members in Norway. Special Operations

23. The Dangerous and Exhausting Life of a Hero Behind Japanese Lines

Bill Chong, third from left in belted trousers, at a BAAG medical outpost. Chinese-Canadian Military Museum

Bill Chong completed his mission in Macau and reported back to BAAG, who promptly sent him out on more hazardous missions that called for a hero. Some of the missions involved scouting and reporting back on Japanese troop movements. Others entailed helping downed Allied pilots and aircrews escape to the safety of friendly lines. Equally hazardous were his missions of mercy, delivering desperately needed medicines to BAAG outposts and resistance cells behind Japanese lines.

It was physically exhausting work, traveling the war-torn countryside on foot, sometimes covering up to 50 miles in a single day, then sleeping on the bare ground. Chong wore disguises, and affected a limp as cover for the use of a walking stick: it had a hollowed-out compartment, in which he secreted intelligence documents or hid medicines.

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A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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