And as regards the work, my interest in the theatre ended really when the Anglo-Dutch company I formed, that had put on the dancing show, was split and went up country. But I hung on at the theatre up until Christmas to avoid coolieing, and although I was temporarily reprieved due to malaria, we only got five days rest in total for malaria in these days. So, in the New Year I was at work again, hauling bamboos by the hundred out of the river, stinking, slippery, fifty-foot long green bamboos; we dug trenches and built huts, and when it came to the thatching of the huts, we hated that and tried to persuade the Dutch Eurasians to do it, for they were lighter than us and could do it very well. Henry and I found a good job one day pulling nails out of planks. There were no Nips near us, so we drove the nails in again and then pulled them out once more, thus wasting most of the morning. Then the officers were put on clearing a trace round the camp, hauling and hacking the unspeakably prickly bamboo into the jungle and burning it. When the trace was cleared, every available O.R. in the camp had to do a speedo job, which was to build a moat ten feet deep with a far bank eighteen feet high all round the camp.

A few of the Koreans, the first to see which way the wind was blowing, tried to be helpful, or at any rate a little less bloody-minded during this new work. There was one particular Korean who had a brother in the Soviet Air Force, so he said, who was so openly anti- Nip and pro-us that it amazed us he was never overheard and arrested. Everything Nip was ‘no pucking good!’ He grinned his way round the camp, winking at us and making contemptuous and scurrilous remarks about the Nip officers. He answered to the name of George Pucking.

The Nips definitely seemed to be getting windy, and once again night and day shifts were used till this colossal obstacle ditch was finished. We heard that all the other camps in the neighbourhood were having these bunds dug round them, too. Towards the end of January after repeated protests, including one by a major who buttonholed Ishi as he walked round the camp and told him flatly that it was a damned disgrace to see Ishi walking around well dressed while British officers were working unshaved and dirty in loin cloths – after these protests, Kokubu, who had given the order, suddenly announced that there must have been a misunderstanding; he had never ordered the officers to work, he thought we were doing it voluntarily!