And then down to the Pantomime. The atap theatre was an amazing sight, the stage lit up by one kerosene lamp and the sandy scoop of an orchestra pit illumined by three little oil lamps from empty pilchard tins, and in front of them an audience of a thousand people sitting round on the natural ledges of the arena, the rear seats looking down from 40 feet above the stage. The night was full of laughter and the reds of cigarette and cheroot ends, and on the flat immediately before the stage were the stretcher cases from the hospital who had been carried there by their friends. Gibby and I sat in the orchestra pit alongside Gus and the accordeon. Punctually to time the show began.

The story of a pantomime has little to do with the title, but ‘Babes in the Wood’ surpassed everything in that way, though one did have the vague impression that the woods were Thai woods, but it was a success from the moment the mosquito-net curtains were lumberingly dragged aside. Only the oddest things about it come to mind now.

The first thing was the drunken act of the camp dentist who lay flat on his back in the orchestra pit mumbling and laughing so that all the first rows could hear him, and who, when Ginger leapt onto the stage in a puff of much rehearsed smoke as the rather sensational and over-weight Fairy Queen, immediately started to shout out: ‘Look there’s old Ginger! Ginger! Ginger! Have a radish, Ginger?’ and promptly began throwing Chinese radishes up onto the stage. Ginger, before speaking his proper lines, tripped to the front of the stage and whispered to his drunken friend in a voice audible to half the audience, what must have been a quite unique opening line for any show ever put on anywhere – a succinctly stated: ‘Shut up, you . . . t!’

Later on Woolley appeared on the stage in the briefest imaginable Jap-Happy pushing what was intended to represent an ice-cream cart and trying to sell ice cream to a crowd of Thai brigands. The eyes of the watching Japanese bulged out of their slits to see a British major prepared to make such an ass of himself on the stage. The song hit of the evening was Tit Willow, with new words. The villain of the piece sang the verses, and in the refrain lay the novelty. As he sang ‘Tit Willow! Tit Willow! Tit . . . ’ an interjection came in the form of the Gecco lizard’s call (that was universally interpreted as ‘F . . . you!’) from the lips of Gus standing in the pit below.