JUST after dawn yesterday a small convoy of buses left the Sek Kong British army base and headed for Hong Kong airport. It contained 39 men from the Queen's Gurkha Engineers and 36 of their wives and children. They boarded a chartered Nepalese airline to take them to Katmandu and their homes in Nepal.
"It was a very emotional occasion," said Maj Alistair Sheppard, who saw them off. "There were a few tears. We were saying goodbye to some men who had given 20 years' service. And we won't see them again."
Thus did the final phased rundown of the British military presence in Hong Kong get under way yesterday, eight months before the Chinese takeover on June 30th next year.
The Gurkhas, the fierce mercenaries who have become synonymous with the British presence in Hong Kong, yesterday began the end of their long association with the colony. The 67 Squadron of the Queen's Gurkha Engineers was disbanded in September.
The men of 1st Battalion, the Royal Gurkha Rifles, yesterday handed over their duties to the Staffordshire Regiment and will go to England. On Friday for the last time, the leafy Sek Kong base awoke to the strains of a Gurkha piper playing The Save Boat Song, a tradition of unknown origin.
The withdrawal from Hong Kong, one of the last exotic postings available to British officers, actually began some years ago, said Maj Jon Herring of the Royal Marines, interviewed at the Prince of Wales Barracks, the 28 storey headquarters of the British military built in the shape of an upside down gin bottle.
For some years, the strength of the garrison has been declining from its Cold War complement of 9,500. For the last year, personnel levels remained static at 3,250 but in three months it will be down to 1,750, he said.
The Hong Kong Chinese unit will disband in December. In April, the naval base at Stonecutters Island will close. In June, by the time the People's Liberation Army is ready to roll in, only 400 or so British military personnel will be left on the island where the British Royal Navy first raised the white ensign in 1841.
Not that the six million people living in Hong Kong now will notice, for the military has for years kept a low profile in the world's glittering, high rise capital of free enterprise where internal security is a police matter. It has long been accepted that strategically Hong Kong means nothing to Britain any more.
Certainly at this stage there is no need to maintain a greater presence, said Maj Herring. The role of the three air conditioned Royal Navy patrol vessels, the Peacock, the Plover and the Starling, built a decade ago especially to weather typhoons, is to show the flag and, as he put it, to say "good morning" to the Chinese patrol boats which pass through Hong Kong waters. (There were originally five, but two of the 763 tonne warships were sold many years ago to the Irish Naval Service).
The heady days of fighting the tai feis, the speedboats used by smugglers to run stolen luxury ears to China, are all but over the bandits now use container lorries. With the wheels removed, the cars count as spare parts.
British troops still guard the 25 mile land border, patrolling a corridor formed by two rows of coiled razor wire and listening for illegal immigrants through an electronic system called Vindicator.
They watch for military movements across the border from camouflaged positions but don't man the posts at night any more it's an exercise only.
"Are the Chinese going to give us trouble on the border?" asked Maj Herring. "No, they're not. Have we the ability to repel a Chinese attack? Of course not.
The border will not be stormed or come crashing down like the Berlin Wall when the British leave. The barbed wire will be kept Lip to ensure the integrity of Hong Kong as a special administrative region of China for the next 50 years.
Altogether, 14 British army sites will be handed over to China, including the luxurious Peak home of the Commander of the British Forces, Maj Gen Bryan Dutton. This will become the residence of Maj Gen Liu Zhenwu, the PLA commander who visited Hong Kong in July to survey his inheritance.
Gen Liu earns 145 a month, according to the Chinese media, hardly enough to stay one night in the Ritz Carlton or the Mandarin Hotel just across Connaught Road Central from his new head quarters.
In the final days, the British will congregate to await the end in the Prince of Wales building. As the bases are evacuated, all sorts of equipment, radar dishes, files, furniture, television sets, fax machines, are being shipped to England or auctioned off.
Every day now there are sales of surplus material at a warehouse in the New Territories. The six Wessex helicopters will be sold to the highest bidder. The three naval vessels are also for sale but not to the Chinese. It is against British policy to sell armaments to Beijing, but they are welcome to things like the big dining tables in the Prince of Wales barracks.
"Well, it's not economic to take them to the UK," said the major. "Why not leave them behind?"