Some time in July this advance party left under the Frog. It was three weeks before the next party of 400 went, and the more we heard of the camp the less we liked the sound of it. We heard that, after their 47 kilometre march, and arriving in dense jungle, the very next day the Advance Party were out fetching bamboos from a dump about 12 kilometres from the camp. The first days were spent out in the open, and the first huts built were naturally for the Nips. It rained every day and there were lots of mosquitoes. It sounded perfectly bloody, and when we had a brief note from Colonel Champaigne saying, ‘Work here hard, but good!’ by which he meant they were not being mucked about. We merely thought that after all the strain he’d been through he was losing his grip.

Our whole camp was divided up into eight parties of about 400: all the industrial workers would go on the 5th Party with Nogoochi; the 6th Party would be the hospital party; and the 8th Party would have to do a lot of heavy cleaning up and kit carrying, and they asked for volunteers. Well, Jim was so fed up with life he let himself be detailed for the 3rd Party. Three of our Kongsi were industrial workers and went with the 5th; one was sick, and Henry, George and I risked the last. We hated hut building and hoped the new camp would be nearly finished before we arrived, and of course we joked and said the war would be over before the last party left Kamburi. The latest addition to our Kongsi had to go as interpreter to Party 3. That was Peter West, a rubber planter from Burma, a poet and mystic who intended retiring to the Shan States after the war and studying Buddhism. From all this it will be seen that we were in a pretty chaotic state and resigned to being split up in typical Nip style.