By force of circumstances we had to master the pidgin-Nip just as the troops had done. One officer with a party digging earth reported to a visiting Jap officer without a blink of embarrassment: ‘Sichi shokos shovelling s . . . t’, i.e. seven officers digging earth. To us, all earth was expressed by that four letter word. Old favourites like the Leggie Queue, Benjo Speedo (I must run to the latrine), Bioki (I’m sick), were well known from up country; and the Nips contributed with: No Gooderana (no good), O.K.-gah? (all right?), and if they disapproved strongly of something it was ‘No pucking!’ Without thinking, Korean privates would rattle off ‘bloody pucking bastard’ this or that, and I fear that such words were almost the only ones they get from us, P.O.W. language being justifiably the foulest in the world. But then phrases such as ‘I worko sweejibah’ (I work in the cookhouse), ‘He soon paradise go’ (the Allies will bump him off soon if he doesn’t behave better), were also part of our normal language and from the roll-calls, or ‘tengkos’, we had all to be able to drill a little and number up to twenty or so in Japanese.

There were one or two very odd expressions in our English. ‘You’ve had it!’ meaning ‘You’ve missed it’ was developed quite crazily and never ceased to mystify the Dutch. The main one, though, arising out of the Army expression ‘F.U.J.! I’m all right’ (an almost universal P.O.W. attitude) was ‘Ladders up!’ The precise origin of this expression was the variation on ‘F.U.J.’ – ‘Pull the ladder up boys, I’m aboard!’ From this, if you said ‘My ladder’s up!’ or ‘Has he got a good ladder?’, you meant ‘I’m all right; I’ve got a cushy job,’ or ‘Has he found himself an easy job yet?’ Number four hut, the Senior Officer’s hut, was always known as either the ‘Snakes and Ladders’ or ‘The Imperial War Museum’. The Dutch were invariably known as the ‘Gotverdommers’, and so on.

Not long after our confinement to the huts, when the work was just dull carrying of earth from A to B, digging air raid shelters for the Nips, bund and fence repairing, carrying rations and so forth, we were told that we were going to yet a new camp. This camp was 180 kilometres N.E. of Bangkok and right out in the jungle, which would have to be cleared. It entailed a 47 kilometre march in one day carrying all our kit. The Nips asked for volunteers, and though everybody realised the remoteness of the new camp and appreciated that they would arrive in unprepared jungle and that there would be an enormous amount of work to do, Colonel Champaigne himself offered to lead the party, and the necessary 450 volunteers – suckers, but thank God! – were found.