Meanwhile little occurred; some parties of the fitter troops had to work on repairing the embankment, but the only basic thought was to be evacuated below as soon as possible, and not to get better in Takanun where there still lurked the danger of going up above.

After only a week or so, Gibby Field and one of the Officers’ Battalion colonels came down to see about pay. I met him and he said they were due to go back in a couple of days. I said that if he went back at all, after hearing his stories, he was losing his grip. At the end of a week Gibby expected to go back any day, and at the end of a fortnight he and his colonel were once again on the permanent strength of 206! They then had a hard-headed and capable young Scottish major in charge of the Officers’ Battalion above who was very good at handling Nips, and at looking after himself and the officers under him.

From Gibby we heard about this new camp. It was right in the jungle, miles from the nearest supply camp. They had rations at a scale of about half ours, and they were likely to run out soon altogether. The only way they got meat was to go out on a foraging party and steal a beast from another camp. The place was already notorious under the name of ‘Shit Creek’, and was just about 50 per cent worse than it ever had been before. There, work started and ended in the dark; once again it was bridge building, and once again it was under ‘The Rat’, that tiny bespectacled little horror who was responsible for as many beatings-up as anyone on the river. Gibby said there was no sign of the embankment as yet, though it was constantly repeated that the us by October 15th. Gibby was really very glad and rather surprised to be back in Takanun.

The stealing going on in the camp at this time was frightful. Every sort of organised racket went on, for the crooks always managed to work a ‘sick ticket’ and forgathered in the base or sick camps. Drugs and kit were stolen from the hospital patients; rations were being taken in increasing quantities, and the troops were in an ugly mood; something would have to be done to protect them. So, with Colonel Featherstonaugh shutting his eyes to it, men caught stealing were taken by the M.P.s to a quiet part of the river bank and thoroughly thrashed with everyone’s knowledge and tacit consent; gradually the nuisance abated.