Dead bodies of all races, barbed wire, fallen cables, shelled and bombed masonry cover the main streets. In Raffles Place, the former smart shopping centre, is a curious collection of shaken humanity. Hundreds and hundreds of Indians squat quietly on the side-walks; they sit there silently smoking, dazed by the prospects of the future. They have fought for us, and we have lost. In the nearby side-streets and bazaars, amongst the debris of shops and stalls, coolies are scavenging on an equal footing with European troops of all ranks. The owners of the big stores, unable to realise that they have lost everything, hesitate to allow British troops in to get clothing and necessities, and bar their doors. Tomorrow the Japanese will own it all.

The reactions of the European troops are varied. The old Singapore troops and the Australians are most realistic, and manage to lay their hands on as many valuables as possible, some taken from bombed shops, some perhaps not. Amongst the members of the Territorial Division that arrived only three weeks before Singapore fell, the effect of the end is different. They are perhaps more bewildered, more completely out of touch than the others. To them everything has been so new, so strange, and everything in the jungle battle area had presented innumerable potential menaces. Now, they are quite exhausted.

Our battalion had a sort of rendezvous in the nearby G.E.C. store, whose manager had been an acquaintance of our C.O. The C.O. had hoped that some of us might have got hold of a boat and escaped to Sumatra, but it was too late – the boat had already left. The G.E.C. shop was quite deserted. We dumped our stinking kit on the floor, and looked around for some sort of bathroom, which we eventually found upstairs. Officers and men continued to drop in all the evening and it was nine o’clock before the C.O. himself arrived, a bitterly disappointed and tired man.

A sombre, messy meal was communally devoured in the darkening shop. We had only the kit we stood up in, and that was foul and sweated right through; most of us, being an infantry battalion, had had no sleep at all for the last six nights, and eaten practically nothing. Our one craving in the battle had been liquid. Now we could at least sleep on the concrete floor of the shop, and by eleven most of us were stirring in uneasy slumber. Outside, lights of flickering fires; the occasional drone of a plane; restless hurrying feet . . .