The sick were already going and, as before, by barge. Nobasawa showed his authority wherever he could, and though he knew the conditions of the hospital cases only too well, he dragged those emaciated bodies out of the hospital and kept them hours on parade while he sent this one on one party, and that one on another – a job our own M.O.s could have done infinitely quicker and better without moving a man out of the huts.

Tropical ulcers and skin infections had become really shocking. The commonest disease was scabies, highly contagious and which was always complicated by some vicious secondary infection which in turn ended in ulceration. The two normal starting places were the private parts and the hands, though if you got it badly, in a week you could be in a rash of pus-filled pimples from neck to toe – mercifully scabies doesn’t touch the head. A normal way of getting the infection was through lice bites, and the treatment was very painful, being either a black concoction known as ‘Maguires’, and which looked like engine oil and was very hot; and then there was the ‘Blue Stone’, or copper sulphate, which bit into your flesh and stung like the devil for hours. But it did ultimately cure you. The M.I. room queues were full of men having great craters in their backsides touched up with crude ‘Blue Stone’, and all over their mottled bodies they were daubed black and blue. And as regards the ulcer cases who had been compelled to go on working, for many of them the only thing was amputation if they could stand it. What could doctors do with a great pink and green ulcer taking in the ankle and stretching right up to the knee, exuding a frightful stench and bared literally to the bone? There were quite a few like that – I believe altogether there were about 250 successful amputations for such cases; many others couldn’t pull through.

By the end of September, Takanun had greatly changed. At long, long last the monsoon was petering out, the three troops’ huts were finished, and the officers’ hut was near completion. Several thousands of sick had already been evacuated, and the railway was past our camp and steam trains were already running on it. I’d had a chat on the line with an officer of my regiment who was in charge of one of the rail-laying parties and he said they were laying them up at the rate of three kilometres a day.

During the last few days in our tents, when I was a neighbour of Gibby, I was again lame through this septic scabies on my feet and the calves of my legs and couldn’t do more than hobble. The last night in our tent was one of brilliant moonlight, and a family of rats went squeakingly down from the top of the tent to the floor via the outside of the mosquito net. One big rat came to a rest not a foot from the back of my head, and I couldn’t decide whether he’d be able to bite me or not if I seized him by the tail through the net. I decided not to, and watched instead, and saw two rats in the bright moonlight playing together and wrestling upright on their hind legs like a couple of miniature kangaroos.