Now for the work. During the first months we had to build or rebuild the entire camp – huts, cookhouses, latrines and canteen. Then we had to dig out and keep clean the huge bund around the camp, and repair the fences that were constantly falling into it. We had to make – in spite of the strongest protests – machine gun emplacements inside and outside the camp – emplacements that could either be used against Kamburi, the railway line, or which could fire into our camp. And finally, to raise the level of our camp, which was well below flood-mark, we had to carry tens of tons of earth from one corner to another, to dig slit trenches, and to do all the personal camp fatigues the Nips themselves required daily in their own quarters.

At the end of about two months of this drudgery, the camp was clean and rebuilt. One party was planting castor oil bushes of two varieties and any flowers it could find to relieve the drabness of the camp, and coincident with the easing off of the work, there was formed an organisation notorious for ever more, known as the ‘Levelling Party’, or the ‘Remainder Party’. It worked under ‘The Laird’ and for only half-a-day’s work. We worked for the Nips in rotation, and then always for a whole day.

The function of the Levelling Party was to do this job of raising the floor of the camp above flood level. The method of doing it was to carry earth in stretchers from slit-trenches, or from any other place where earth could be found, and to dump it on the roads, paths or sites of any new buildings. The job was the most monotonous and unending ever devised and everybody detested ‘carrying earth from A to B’, as it was called, a true labour of Sisiphus. This party continued to exist to the bitter end, long after the original levelling job was over, and then it became the ‘Odd Job Party’ or ‘Stooge Party’. Sometimes it had little to do, but whenever there was a particularly dirty job to do, out came the Levelling Party! In the background of Kamburi Camp at all times was the sight of officers in soiled ‘Jap-Happy’ loin cloths carrying stretchers of earth; drawing, tipping and carrying water; and fatigue parties in ‘Jap-Happies’ and wooden clompers, shambling about at the slow coolie walk in every direction.

Of course we made our own reliefs and relaxations, most of which could only take place after ‘Working Hours’, at six o’clock. Even later on, when the camp was doing only half-day’s work, we mightn’t amuse ourselves till after six.