The five survivors, who still included the Indian and the Burmese, were brought back to their camp and sentenced to death. Colonel Beaumont was ordered to attend the execution and this Colonel Beaumont absolutely refused to agree to. According to one story, describing himself as the representative of the British Government, he sent a very strong protest at the illegality and inhumanity of the Japanese sentence.

Then, for some unexplained reason, they were reprieved for a while and sent up to Moulmein Gaol for a retrial. While they were there they were contacted by friendly Burmese who offered to get them out of the gaol and take them to join a party of Indians and Burmese who were shortly about to make an attempt to get through the jungle to India, using elephants. The day before the escape was due to be made they were once again moved and sent via our railway for trial in Singapore. They were seen in an open truck passing our camp, handcuffed to their guards and still remarkably cheerful. What ultimately happened to them we never heard.

In the leanest periods, the most fantastic food was eaten. In one Dutch camp in Burma 26 dogs went into the pot including the Camp Commander’s – much to his annoyance. Men went out into the jungle to try and knock over roosting jungle-fowl at night; and there was a regular tariff for fat, thin, cooked or curried rats. A fat, uncooked rat cost 30 cents, and a curried one 50 cents! They just had no meat at all, and even most of the vegetables came out of the jungle where they were in the beginning collected by Dutch Eurasians who educated our people as to what you could eat and what you couldn’t. Other acceptable foods were snakes, lizards, iguanas and vultures.

When some American Red Cross parcels arrived for us – a thing which happened once – they were issued at the rate of one parcel to every six British or Dutch troops, and four to every three Nips. From medical supplies sent up to a camp where a friend of mine was in command, the Nip Medical Sergeant made himself a complete suit of shorts and shirt from surgical lint, and used most of the supplies for the Nips. However, in the same camp, there was one Korean private who was so ashamed of what was going on, that he gave up all his own issued Red Cross stuff and offered it to the P.O.W. Hospital. He asked only that the other Nips should not know what he had done.