And what country! The road was bordered by a hill one in three steep, several hundred feet high and crested with bamboo and high forest. Also, the side of the hill was gullied and valleyed in a way that bodied ill for us. First the entire track would have to be dug out of this precipice of a hill, and the earth carried away so as not to block the road, and the work would have to be done while leaning over at an angle of sixty degrees in order to stand upright; and everyone of those gullies would mean a bridge or culvert. God! If we’d got to do this sector ourselves it would take years.

Still there was no sign of the camp, but at length we spotted a small party cutting bamboo, and we hailed them and asked how much further. ‘What battalion are you?’ they asked. ‘Nuts Joyce’s!’ we yelled. ‘Well, you’re lucky; his is the first camp. One kms up on the left!’

Half an hour later the column came to a halt. There was Billy Phair, Nuts’s adjutant, talking to the Nips in the vanguard. Apparently the Nips wanted us to march another three kilometres up to the H.Q. camp, and then march back again after having had a roll-call there. But Billy said that yesterday all the parties for this camp fell out there and didn’t have to go up to the H.Q. camp. Of course, there hadn’t been a party the previous day, but it made the Nips happy, and the rest of the column marched on, jealously looking back at us as we sat on our kit, waiting to enter 203 Camp. We’d made it, by God, we’d made it!

CHAPTER 10