We still used to get daily news reports, though the danger of operating was greater than ever and one officer, for putting news in writing and thereby endangering the lives of the operators after countless oaths of secrecy, was tried by an unofficial court martial and beaten privily with bamboos. We had seen what happened to people found with a radio, because the Nip Secret Police, the Kimpis, had found one in a sudden search in Kamburi. The whole camp was on tenterhooks for weeks, many people being tortured and beaten up and two officers being beaten to death. At another camp, a colonel was sentenced to five years imprisonment and a severe beating up for merely smuggling in copies of The Bangkok Chronicle – a Nip controlled paper printed in English. Thanks to our interpreters, though, there was only one search in Chungkai that they didn’t get wind of and warn us about – and very little was ever found, though the Nips liked pulling our scanty kit to bits and pinched bits of old wire and paper and all sorts of junk.

Other people who risked their lives for private or public benefit were the camp racketeers. The biggest racket was in hooch and men were regularly breaking out at night, getting lao at $2.50 a bottle from the Thais, and selling it in camp to the wealthy few at $5 a time. The other great racket, seldom successful, was cashing cheques through some friendly Thai or Chinese; but though Pong was always generous, the normal rate of exchange of the others was only 1 to 3 tikals to the pound. Well, these rackets became so openly organised and blatantly profitable that when the Nips had caught two men outside the fence and threatened an ultimatum that the next caught would definitely be shot, Camp H.Q. decided to bust the racketeers. And after a period, our police caught the lot and there was a young colony of people in what was known as Preventive Detention.