No one knows what is happening; certainly the Nips don’t. We just stay there and wait for the dawn in the wet, chilly misty morning. As the first light appears we begin to distinguish a large, table-like hill opposite us, covered with forest – that must be Arrow Hill, and Arrow Hill is near one of the ends of Wan Po Bridge, so this must be very near Wan Po, at the 103rd kilometre above Bampong. Daylight eventually reveals to us half a dozen sidings, a few atap stores, glistening wet, and the whole surrounded by spiky swishing bamboo. In the half light, too, a party goes off to try and find the camp, which is nowhere in sight, and which obviously hadn’t been expecting us. It’s far too wet and filthy to rest and sit on the ground and if we sit on our kit we’ll muck that up; well let’s sit on the goddam rails then. Another interminable wait. At length voices are heard in the jungle, and the snapping of branches under approaching feet; soon we shall know the worst.

But the worst is worse than we expected. Wan Po is no longer up country – we haven’t started yet! Some men must go into the camp to draw a pint of boiled rice and half a teaspoonful of sugar a head for breakfast in an hour’s time, and then we march! Yes, we march to Tarsao; the 4 Group H.Q. camp. We ought to get there by the afternoon sometime; it’s rather less than twenty kilometres. What about our kit? Well, the line ends at Tarsao – it’s held up there – Group’s made rather a muck-up, they think. But we can probably get our heavy cooking stuff taken by train to Tarsao and then on by truck on the road. How about personal kit? You must carry all that. Bedding? Yes, carry that, too. You can leave your heaviest bits in Tarsao if you make it all right as far as there – there’s a chance the Nips may send it on later before it goes mouldy during the monsoon. Christ! Where are we going to, then? God knows; sorry, we don’t!

With the breakfast, Ginger de Huguenot appears to see if he can help at all. Yes, we’ve one man very sick with malaria, and actually in a rigor – he should never have been sent up. Ginger tries his best but the Nips won’t help. ‘Our men march!’ they shout, and ten minutes after the rice, we march! A procession of pack-laden creatures, hungry, cold, tired, almost on their knees before they start. Of course, after the first 200 yards, the malaria case collapses flat on the ground and looks quite done in. Then the Nips, too late, leave him behind to come on in a wagon; but it is too late and he dies in Tarsao hospital two days later.