Then comes the first night. ‘The Curtain goes up at 8.30 – call the cast for seven p.m., please, Mr A.S.M.’ At seven p.m., more or less punctually, the cast begins to assemble back stage. I have malaria again, with a high temperature, but the heat should sweat the fever out as we go along. Leo is a little anxious about me – I fear only because no one else is quite sure how to set the different scenes and distribute the hand props. The actors are first of all made up by the ex-Hollywood make-up man, and they then cross over to Wardrobe for their clothes. The Wardrobe has two sorts of clothes – borrowed and home-made. Each week Gerald collects all the available clothing we need to borrow in the camp, has it washed in the river over the weekend and returned to the owners the following Monday. He has a ledger and knows just where he can lay his hands on the owner of a pair of flannels, a blue scarf, a white shirt or any of the other amazing bits of kit some of the cunning people still own who’ve not gone up country or lost their kit. And then, secondly, the Wardrobe buys, dyes and makes up cloth of all sorts that it can buy, and the dresses turned out from old, used, white mosquito nets that have been dyed, are marvellous.

Bobby, the leading lady, has a wardrobe of his own, including scanties which he has made himself. You see him now made up and patting his hair, walking up and down in a pair of light blue silk panties, looking at himself in the mirror. In another corner, the Camp R.S.M., Sandy McCulloch, with a very beery complexion, is striving to get into a commissionaire’s uniform – a converted Dutch tunic! At eight o’clock, Leo sings out, ‘Call the Half, Mr A.S.M!’ I consult the pundits and then bellow, ‘Half an hour to go, please, gentlemen!’ ‘No, no! It’s not necessary to say “please gentlemen”. In theatre etiquette you merely say “Half an hour”!’ ‘O.K., half an hour!!’ Then there’s the Quarter, then ‘Beginners, Please!’ and the orchestra of about twenty instruments, led by the vast Norman Broad, its conductor, goes down to the orchestra pit. There, the wooden music stands are lit by tiny oil lamps, and among the instruments are about four Red Cross 7/6 violins and two that are privately owned, two clarinets, two accordeons, one good and one home-made guitar, three of four trumpets or cornets and a magnificent string-bass made from three-ply sugar-chest wood and cable wire – it can’t be bowed, of course, but it plucks well.