The highest peak reached in what one might call the first and best period of Chungkai entertainment was Leo’s Wonder Bar adaptation, to my mind the best all-round show ever put on. The old story was completely changed and re-hashed, and new music by Norman Broad was added to the old hits like Wonder Bar and My Friend, Elizabeth. This latter number was sung in French, German and English by three young things who ended in a dance routine of high-kicking that delighted the audience and, seeing those three ‘girls’ capering about on stage, it was odd to think that in normal times one was an R.A.S.C. private from London, one a regular officer and the other a baldheaded corporal in a Highland regiment: Johnny Duncan, who had come through cholera, malaria, dysentery, beri-beri and jaundice altogether up country!

The second act of Wonder Bar was a low comedy scene between a waiter, Woolley, and a charwoman, Freddie Mills, the latter later becoming the camp’s leading actor. But the last act was the best. The set was a most attractive scene laid in the Alps, and you looked through Wonder Bar itself to snow-capped mountains, beautifully painted on the back-cloth, and cleverly lit. The whole stage was a blaze of colours and the music, after five weeks rehearsal, was first-rate. Leo was called to the front of the stage to make a speech, and it was not for many months that he had the opportunity to try and excel Wonder Bar with his production of Bonnie Scotland.

Quite different, was the first Dutch show, Circus Cavaljos, produced by two Dutch O.R.s, one a well-known clown in the navy and the other the best dancer in the camp. The Dutch shows were often too much standardised, but this ‘Circus’ was not. Acrobats, pumas, penguins and clowns were mixed together with serious acts such as a legendary ‘Lotus Dance’. For this latter they had on the stage a giant model of a lotus, which slowly opened out to the sound of music, revealing the beautiful nymph of the lotus, a ravishing girl who then danced a most intricate routine with the devil for her partner. In a later show they did a skit on this dance, when Joop Bruyn, the clown, appeared out of the flower and did a drunken comedy dance.

But it is to complete amateurs that we must give the credit for the funniest show ever put on, and that was Thai-Diddle-Diddle, a highly topical thing that the censor must have slept through when he read the script, and which the Nips banned after the first night, threatening to stop all entertainment. It was produced by Dudley Brown, our battalion doctor, and Charles Skipper, the hospital welfare officer.