Then the camp came in view, bounded by a bamboo fence on the railway side and by the river on the other. It was a long strip of a camp, 300 to 400 yards long, and we walked to the far end to enter by the only gate, where the Nip Guard Room was. We assembled on the square for checking, and the senior officer in command of our party ordered the officers for the Officers Working Battalion to fall out in order to go up to the Fit Camp.

Luckily, the 206 Camp Adjutant was an acquaintance of mine whom I’d known in Scotland, and a man with a mind of his own. When he saw me lame and barefooted, though not senior in rank himself, he didn’t hesitate to say that it was a damned disgrace to send up such a man to a Working Battalion, and Gus and I, instead of going off with the six other unfortunates, were sent to report to Colonel Finch, who commanded the sick officers of the battalion who were all lying in this camp. Gus and I went cautiously down in the steady rain to the hollow where the Colonel’s tent lay, for the mud was washed smooth everywhere and in bare feet was incredibly slippery. We put our kit down outside and announced ourselves to the very pleasant, open-looking Irishman, Colonel Finch himself.

From the start he made our position and his request for officers quite clear to us, and we heard him attentively. Three or four weeks before he had asked Colonel Featherstonhaugh whether he could find any other officers in the Group to replace his sick, because the Officers Battalion was then doing a 13 or 14 hour day on bridging. under a perfect little swine of a Nip Under Officer, Taki, known universally as ‘The Rat’. Out of their original 300, they had less than 40 fit to work. At that time, Colonel Joyce had been prepared to offer no one, for with certain exceptions all his officers were already working on the cutting, and doing 12 hours a day themselves. But now, just when the Officers Battalion had got so small that they had really believed there was a chance of it disappearing altogether as a working force, they were confounded to receive unwanted recruits from other camps, who would just make the battalion up to a sufficient working strength to start again. And why on earth two sick officers among the undesired eight had been sent up, Colonel Finch simply couldn’t imagine. What on earth was Colonel Joyce up to?

However, there was nothing to be done, and we were helped by Johnny Place, the Adjutant, to find accommodation. First we climbed the long slope into the camp to look for a space in one of the tents, there already being 14 people in Colonel Finch’s tent, which was an inner flap only. At the first tent we drew a complete blank. Two officers with obvious jaundice, a normal sequel to malaria, and one of them a fully grey-bearded Public Prosecutor from Malaya, were trying to patch a large rent in the canvas that had left a corner of the tent right in the open the previous night.