As soon as they knew the war was over, Colonel Champaigne had gone to Nogoochi and asked for batteries for their wireless. Nogoochi asked what wireless was meant? ‘Oh,’ said the Colonel, ‘the one we’ve been working for the last three years, and which travelled here inside your own set!’ And this was indeed true. Tom Stuart, who worked in Nogoochi’s laboratory, had stripped his water-bottle set down to minute parts and packed them as spares inside Nogoochi’s own radio before they left for Nakom Niok! They’d had no batteries for a while, but they’d hoped to get hold of some once they left Kamburi.

It turned out that the Nips had become so polite that a regular servile ceremony was insisted upon by them whenever the British interpreter went in to ask for anything. Where before they had had to stand to attention to a Nip private and bow before speaking, now they had to sit down and drink ceremonial cups of tea before their requests were even listened to. Nogoochi, before he was arrested by his own people, had tried the line of ‘I had to do my stern duty, but now it is all over and we are friends’, and he asked some officers out to dinner. The British Camp Commander at the time embarrassed the interpreter by saying in front of Nogoochi, who understood English quite well, ‘Tell him I don’t want any f . . . ing nonsense – just put that into Japanese!’ In earlier days Nogoochi had told Colonel Champaigne that rather than be insulted by the British, he’d cut his guts out and throw them in our faces. Now was his chance, but he failed to take it.

Shimojo became polite, too. But he was at least a man, and all the other Nip Sergeants told our interpreter that from the I.J.A. point of view Shimojo was the most efficient N.C.O. they had, and never did more than carry out the orders and policy of his superiors. This we knew was true – but Shimojo always looked as though he thoroughly enjoyed it! But Shimojo had guts, and he didn’t whine. He said he’d done his duty, and merely added that he and other sergeants had been beaten up by Nogoochi for not being strict enough. Shim was a swine of a disciplinarian all right, a ‘regimental bastard’ as the British Army puts it, but he had ten times the courage of Colonel Sokusawa.

The second evening we were allowed out on the padang it rained hard, and it was then that Mick Donovan, the officer racketeer who used to break out of Chungkai, proved indeed that he had been in touch with influential Thais, and led Henry, George, Ian White and I out on a series of magnificent parties.