28 August Comrade Sen is here again. There is a rumour of two people executed at the next camp for deviationism. Comrade Sen reviewed our achievements. Out of forty-six thousand trees slashed last month, thirty-four thousand were slashed in our State. The night train has been derailed twelve times in the past two months by people of our Unit. The imperialists go in fear of their lives, rushing about in armoured cars, forcibly recruiting thousands of ignorant Malays in their Police and Army Forces. They are bringing more red-haired troops from Overseas, they say it costs them half a million dollars a day to fight us. They confess they have a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers and police against us. They also say that we are a mere handful of five thousand ‘bandits’. Yet they have kidnapped in their prisons and in their detention camps thirty-five thousand people, and put half a million more behind barbed wire in resettlement camps!

At the end of our meeting we were filled with hope and strength, and clapped hands and shouted slogans.

1 September Small Cloud told me that her mother had been detained six months ago, together with her small brother. She is able to pass news to her mother in detention camp because another woman there, who is friendly with her mother, has a cousin married to a Malay mata-mata in the camp. He costs very little. There is also a girl police informer who sleeps with one of the white police officers; she is willing to help if she is paid. I was astonished by the amount of information that Small Cloud is able to pick up about everyone and everything. I said I hoped she had reported all this to our Corps Commander. She said Comrade Sen knew about it.

5 September Comrade Ah Mao is dribbling stories again. He says that Sen and Small Cloud are having a love affair and have asked the Party to approve their union.

I reprimanded Ah Mao for his gossip. Time and again Ah Mao makes up stories about comrades. He was a travelling salesman for bicycle spare parts, and did much work for us turning grenade casings on a lathe in a garage in Singapore, before the police raided it and he came Inside. In spite of his subjective attitude, everyone puts up with him; he is very capable with weapons.

10 September Suffering from headache. Our Corps Commander gave me malaria pills. One of our new recruits has brought a Brownie camera with him and took a picture of me while I was sleeping. The new comrades like to take group pictures of themselves in full kit. Some are quite foolish, although old in years; the youngest is already eighteen. When I look at them, I feel as if I were an old man of forty, and can scarcely remember that I am not quite twenty-two.

26 September Execution in our camp.