Three minutes later we stopped on the corner of the padang [Malay for field], just opposite the gate to the Paper Factory, and we’d arrived. Achit got down to run up to the factory itself and we saw Sowana, and tell him we’d all arrived, and the rest of us drove straight on along the road bordering the padang, and towards our first port of call, the big Base Cemetery. To our left we could see the white factory chimney, and the houses that had bordered our horizon for the last six months; and to the right of us, over the rather overgrown looking padang, should have been, must have been, our so wellhated camp. From the road, one, new, solitary hut could be seen; of the camp, nothing.

The Kamburi Base cemetery is on the site of the old cemetery. It contains, I believe, about 3,000 graves. It is beautifully clean, with trees, grass, and red and orange cannas; the crosses are painted white; there seem to be thousands of them. I didn’t want to go to the cemetery, but I was going to find out for someone if I could trace the grave of a friend of his. It was easily possible, for there is an efficient man in charge, and it’s carefully plotted and listed. While the other members of the party were talking together, I wandered round. Without wishing now to write dramatically, the drama of my visit suddenly was flung at me. I looked at the crosses, ‘2 Cambs’, ‘2 Gordons’, ‘Beds and Herts’, ‘4 Norfolks’: all the familiar regiments. It was suddenly horrible. I saw back clearly, vilely to the scenes of misery and heroism and sordidness, and I saw and hated the Japanese once again, (the first time for ages). I couldn’t help being very much moved, and the thought of speaking to anyone for a few minutes was intolerable. Then suddenly I saw Henry Fowler’s and my batman’s grave facing me. A most indescribable feeling. I saw, bitingly clearly, the day this man left Takanun 205 Camp. He was a slow, humorous Norfolk youth, and I used to read to him when I could in the sick tent. He had malaria, pellagra patches all over him, and was chronically thin due to general debility. When he’d left for down country I thought he would live, and was glad to see him away. Then I heard that he’d died down at Kamburi, due to his heart caving in to the pellagra. In vain my note of information to Henry at the time to tell him of this man’s descent by barge. The up country horrors he’d survived; but his strength was spent . . . And here, in June 1947, I suddenly came upon his grave. Trying to be detached I cut a bunch of the red cannas, laid them in front of the cross, and took my first photograph, intending that it should go to the dead man’s family.