At the other end of the camp, at the back of a small clearing, spirals of blue smoke continually arose; that was the cremation centre, and just alongside it was the rapidly growing cemetery. On the first day at 206 we saw a cholera funeral. The procession was led by the same Scottish R.S.M. whom we had known at Wun Lun, and behind him walked four men carrying the body in two sacks, lying on a sacking stretcher. It was dangerous to be a pallbearer – from helping a friend to rest, more than one man had himself picked up the infection and been buried within 24 hours. No Union Jack was allowed and nobody else could follow the body. The important thing only was that it should be cleanly burnt, after which the ashes were raked out and buried in communal graves.

And all the while it rained, and rained and rained. Shortly the Nips divided 206 Camp into two camps, and their fit men went back to work, though it was still necessary for us to help them.

Before our turn came, we had a visit from another brute of a disease – Cerebral Malaria. This brand of malaria occurs when the infection goes to the brain; the patient then loses consciousness and groans and raves until either he dies or the miracle happens and he recovers consciousness. Before the war, the cure of giving intravenous quinine was frowned upon as extreme and dangerous, but there was a chance of it working now, and the very good doctors of 203 made their own quinine solutions and pumped it in, eventually saving 60 per cent of cases. The sick tent was next to ours and, night after night as we tried to sleep, we had to listen to the horrible groanings and howls of these wretched men only a few feet from us. We heard, too, the medical corporal and the Welsh doctor tirelessly moving about and trying to ease the unconscious, and therefore unpained, patients. The doctors in both 203 and 206 were heroic. Never have so few medicos saved so many lives against such colossal odds.

And then the cholera came to 203, quietly and curiously striking just one man. Immediately he was isolated in a tiny tent, and all the men who’d been with him in his old shack were put in a special isolation area. Any of us going anywhere near the Nip quarters had to be sprayed from head to foot with disinfectant. The Nip cholera experts Came in their gum-boots and white gowns to look at the victim, said it was cholera, and pronounced that he would die. But ‘Doc’ Davies wasn’t so sure of that – he wasn’t even sure that it was proper cholera. Anyway, whether it was due to the inoculation or pure good luck, the man survived the crisis of the first few days and lived.