As the weather got fouler the work of digging and making the railway became infinitely harder and bloodier; but this only infuriated the higher-up Nips, who simply gave the order that the same amount of work would be got through as before – the monsoon was to be ignored. And that started the grand speedo that was to last until the railway was finished. It meant longer hours of work for the men; and it meant railway work again for all spare officers; and eventually all yasme days were abolished. The officers, thanks to Ino, who only wanted to be able honestly to sign his chit that all officers were working, were once again fortunate; they paraded with the men in the morning, drew some blunt old axes and saws and sludged off into the jungle outside Takanun village to fell small trees suitable for use in bridge building. We felled the trees marked and dragged out and trimmed the trunks, and had the job clear after an hour or two.

The worse thing about it was the number of mosquitoes. Some people went out with bare backs and came in with their entire torsos pink under a rash of bites; others nearly suffocated themselves in wet strips of mosquito netting they tore off to make a sort of ‘bernous’ under which or through which the mosquitoes bit just the same. When the trees were ready, we had to stay out in the jungle all morning and avoid all Nips for fear of them realising how little we did, and we generally found shelter from the rain underneath some Thai house, where we sat and swatted mosquitoes and tried to buy fruit till it was nearly one o’clock and safe to wend our wet way back to camp.

But come with me for a day on a working party with the men, and then perhaps you’ll begin to realise what they had to face and endure, day after day, for months and months.