We left Rin Tin while it was still dark and set off on our jungliest day yet. Bamboo and larger trees closed the jungle over our heads. Sometimes we would see a cascade of orchid blossoms, white or apricot or mauve, pouring in sprays two feet long down from the branch of some blackened old tree; the ground, deep in sodden leaves, sometimes was carpeted with little mauve orchids and occasionally giant, speckled fungi like huge brown arum lilies rose three feet from the ground. Each morning in the half light, when a mist still shrouded the trees, we heard the plaintive whistling notes of the Wak Waks, the tailless Gibbon apes that followed us at a distance along their tree top lanes. We seldom saw them, but the ghostly, melancholy flutings of the Wak Waks was to be our morning music for months. We did sometimes see smaller monkeys clambering on the rocks beside the river, and there were snakes of many sorts, chiefly the harmless rat snakes. But of big game we practically never saw anything. At Wan Tai Kin a tiger’s pug had been found, and one of the C.O.s. had seen a panther; the little Barking Deer had been heard, but not seen; and the only animals we saw were the tame elephants dragging timber – a variety, it seemed, of the Indian elephant.

Since we had lost our Sick truck no further sick were recognised. Alan and I marched at the back before the Nip rearguard to help keep an eye on the weakest men. Several of them, mere walking skeletons, had thrown away all their kit except the Jap-Happys they wore, and were just tottering on bare feet, intent on only one thing – to get there; and once there, they felt they had a chance to rest and survive. But one of our sergeants, a first rate strong fellow and acting as sergeant-major, was having to march with both malaria and bad dysentery and had to rest, only to be driven forward again by the Korean guards, who carried out their orders only too thoroughly. Over and over again he fell and we were allowed to leave him at Hindato, the next camp, because he couldn’t even stand, let alone walk. Though the doctors did all they could, once again it was too late. After a lingering sickness of two or three weeks, we heard that the unfortunate sergeant died, not so much from the malaria and dysentery, as from complete exhaustion.

At this new camp, Hindato, we were met with clean tents and a sympathetic group of Nip cooks who had prepared a hot drink of sugar and water for us when we first started to straggle in; to us that sugar and water was pure nectar.