Next we had two News Officers detailed to go twice a day to the Governor of Kamburi’s house and collect the B.B.C. News, and from then on we knew in detail what was going on in the outside world and were flattered to find how much there seemed to be about us! But we still continued to go round in a sort of benevolent daze, trying to think of England, London, family, friends and all the things we had dreamt about literally scores of times; but still we couldn’t focus, couldn’t think, just could not take it all in.

Of course the one desire of everybody was to get outside the wretched camp, and as we had a colonel in charge of us who was foolish enough to say to two other colonels that ‘we would commit wholesale rape if we were allowed out’, the whole camp was in an uproar, and this foolish and perverse fellow was re-interviewed by the other two colonels who prefaced their opening remarks with: ‘You don’t think we’re going to obey your bloody fool order, do you?’ But luckily this commander soon hooked himself a ‘ladder’ – a Staff job in Bangkok – and we were left under a Naval C.O., a Commander Sanderson, who was one of the best men any of us had served under, and the universal opinion was that it was a tragedy that he hadn’t been senior enough to command us in the difficult days before. Commander Sanderson was a very shrewd judge of human nature and we suspected that he thought about the same of the late camp commander as we did. He had a perfect sense of humour and dignity, and literally in 20 minutes, with one speech, he transformed the camp from a doubting and angry collection of men into an informed and satisfied body. We were to be allowed out onto the padang in front of the camp every evening between six and nine but, at the Governor’s request, might only go into Kamburi on special passes, for there were many Nips still there – armed – and clashes had to be avoided at all costs. The only pay so far available was a Nip pay advance that amounted to about 50 or 60 dollars, worth considerably less than £1!

So at six o’clock we all put on the most respectable and carefully preserved clothes we could muster and on to the padang we marched, going past the Nip Guard Room without even looking at it. The Nips just sat there dumbly on their little bench; they, too, hadn’t begun to realise what had happened. Nearly all the Koreans had been sent away some weeks beforehand, being suspect, and mostly only Nips were left in the camp, and under Mashusta they were now confined to their quarters and their discipline and behaviour were good.