After various intrigues and changes, the camp was commanded by the popularly-accepted best colonel in it, Colonel Champaine, who was a very brave man, a terrifically energetic worker himself, and a bull-shitter of the best, or benevolent variety. The boss of the work on the British behalf was known as ‘The Laird’, a Scot who used still to wear a battered old bush shirt exactly as if it was his old shooting coat at home.

Our daily routine was three rice-and-swill meals a day, work from nine till six with a two hour gap for rest and lunch, and a morning and evening roll-call taken by either one of the two junior Nip officers or the Warrant Officer, assisted by a sergeant, who actually walked round and checked the numbers. If Shimojo was the sergeant, someone would be sure to be swiped for an imagined movement on parade and the whole parade kept standing there for an extra halfhour – or else he’d whip round twice as quickly and efficiently as any of the others. We were drawn up in companies by huts, and had to number in Japanese – that damned Ichi, Ni, San, Si – and all orders were given in Japanese, too. The Nip taking the parade would stand in front of us all, on the top of a double step, and at a command that sounded like ‘Kasharaniki’ we all turned our heads towards him, and he pivoted a salute in return; and then we ‘Nari-ed’ and stood at ease. Kiotski was the command for Attention, and the ubiquitous yasme for Stand at Ease.

The sick officers, after being declared sick by British M.O.s, had to parade daily before a Nip Medical Private who looked them casually over, and only three or four men were allowed ‘bed-down’ sick in each hut, so that if ten people in a hut had malarial rigors on the same day, six or seven of them had to parade on roll-calls and couldn’t lie down during the day in their own huts! The hospital was always full and the only safe place to be if you were really sick. During the first couple of months there was plenty of liquid quinine, but in the last months there was none for ‘B.T.’ cases and only 36 hours instead of 10 days’ supply for the ‘S.T.s’.