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Untold story of Royal Navy’s Chinese heroes of D-Day comes to the UK
6 June 2025
The unique story of two dozen Chinese sailors who fought on D-Day will be told in the UK for the first time next month.
Almost entirely forgotten or overlooked for eight decades, 24 junior officers from the Chinese Navy were attached to the Normandy invasion fleet.
Language barriers and the sheer numbers of men involved in Operation Neptune – there were nearly 300,000 souls in the vast armada of ships stretched across the Seine Bay on June 6 1944 – mean the Chinese contribution has, perhaps understandably, been eclipsed.
A new exhibition, which has already proved to be a hit in Hong Kong, aims to redress the balance, thanks largely to a long-lost diary kept by 33-year-old Chinese Lieutenant Lam Ping-yu.
China was one of the major Allied powers in WW2, central to defeating Japan with which it had been at war with since 1937… four years earlier than the rest of the Pacific nations were drawn into the conflict.
Among the many agreements between the Allies, the pledge by Britain and the USA to provide training for junior Chinese naval officers.
Lam Ping-yu was top of the tree of the 24 naval leaders sent to the Royal Navy in 1943 - ultimately leading to the beaches of Normandy in June the following year after four months of travel (via the Pyramids) and six months of training.
After that Lam was assigned to a warship and began a diary to record his experiences, leaving us with the only known contemporary Chinese account of D-Day.
“‘Bade farewell to the gunnery school commodore today, went to London in the afternoon tocatch the Glasgow train along with seven others, beyond excited, though we only know that we are to train on a ship; as for the ship’s name or location, we haven’t the faintest idea."
The ship was veteran battleship HMS Ramillies and over 80 pages, the officer recorded what he and his 23 comrades went through – not just on June 6 and the following days, but also during the lesser-known invasion of southern France in August 1944 (Operation Dragoon).
Ramillies sailed across the Channel on the night of June 5-6 with thousands of vessels “as numerous as ants, scattered and wriggling all over the sea, moving southwards”.
Shortly after first light the next morning, Lam continued in his diary: “Before 6am: Ramillies also opened fire. Three torpedoes were fired at us; we managed to dodge them as we were at that moment turning around to adjust our firing position.”
Lam survived both invasions and returning to the Far East post-war, settling in Hong Kong where the last known records of him date to the 1960s.
His diary and other personal effects were found when a home earmarked for demolition in the Shek Tong Tsui district of Hong Kong a decade ago.
Historians quickly realised they had unearthed a unique account and insight into a long-forgotten story.
Lam’s diary – and the wider story of the two-dozen Chinese officers serving with the Allies – has proved to be something of a revelation in Hong Kong, where it has been the centrepiece of an exhibition.
Now Britons have the opportunity to learn about Lam and his comrades as their story is told by the touring exhibition - Lost and Found in Hong Kong: The Unsung Chinese Heroes at D-Day – which begins its UK journey at Bush House at 30 Aldwych in King’s College London, running from July 16 until September 3. It will then move to the Chelsea History Festival at the end of that month, September 24-28.
Those behind it hope it will not merely reminds people that D-Day – and other operations to liberate occupied Europe – was a massive international undertaking as well as celebrating long-standing Sino-British relations.