And the food was unvarying and atrocious! Every day breakfast was a ground-rice and soya bean porridge, plain – and easily the best thing in the diet. Lunch was so-called Nasi Goreng (Malay for ‘fried rice’ and always called by the troops Nazi Goering), which was in reality a grey stodge of wet rice with a few peanuts in it; and the evening meal was the notorious ‘Jungle Stew’ and rice. A ghastly programme, and for months it never changed for a single meal.

After a few months a ‘Rissole Club’ was formed, and daily we paid 10c for a privately fried rice rissole, flavoured with anything we could buy from the canteen; if the canteen had nothing it was plain rice fried in coconut oil. The rice, of course, was subtracted out of our normal rations. Everyone was very hungry; in varying degrees, all were greedy. In the dishing out of the troops’ meals when there was any left over due to the impossibility of absolutely correctly distributing the food to so many people, there was always formed what was known as the ‘Leggie Queue’ (Malay lagi, more). In the Officers Battalion for the first time I met a ‘Leggie Leggie Queue’, especially for ‘second leftovers’, and a considerable number of officers would be seen at each meal silently standing in this queue, eating their first rice as they waited, stolidly watching the food containers to estimate their chances of picking up a few more scraps.

The rights of this business I could never properly decide. A particular friend of mine, who had a huge appetite, was a regular leggie queue man; and he just used to say that I was a bloody fool if I was hungry and didn’t try to get extra food; or else I had only a small appetite. Certainly he was more realistic than I. We both lived through it all – but still I’m not sure who was right.