But our stay in Changi was about to be disrupted. From our Battalion strength of about 600 or so, 350 were required for some Nip working party in Singapore. Nobody yet knew who was going and who was not, but all the University people would stay behind.

Then the General asked me to combine my job of Librarian with that of University Adjutant; but for several reasons I turned the whole job in. The Library had so far not come up to expectations, and I also suspected that ‘Adjutant’ meant office boy, and little spare time to learn anything myself. I found a deputy – but it seemed that the General didn’t like my throwing the job over, and to my indignation and sorrow I found myself in the company of another dozen officers and 300 odd of our men, en route for the Nip working party at a place called Bukit Timah – a place that lay in the very centre of the area over which our brigade had fought during the Battle of Singapore.

CHAPTER 2

BUKIT TIMAH lay about 22 kilometres from Changi, and thither we must march with only one 30 cwt. truck to carry all our heavy kit, cookhouse materials, implements of all sorts and all our personal baggage. We were escorted by Nips on foot, while others patrolled up and down on bicycles. We were allowed to march in roughly the normal Army way, and had a rest of sorts every hour.

Our route past the Changi Goal brought us in sight of the civil internees, who were cooped up very severely, and who, up to that time, had had a very much worse time than we. They were in the middle of the Nip H.Q., whereas we could manage to go for days without ever seeing a Nip at all. When the goal was behind us we found the main road flanked by large, comfortable houses, formerly the property of Europeans or wealthy Chinese, but in general the country was once again rubber trees, lalang grass, and small patches of cultivated gardens with little clusters of wooden huts making up small kampongs.

We halted just short of one village, and Chinese boys on bicycles brought us out bread rolls at 10c each, and we opened our last reserve tins of bully beef to eat with it. But the march was really eventless until we reached Singapore itself, and marched right through the middle of the town.

Singapore was no longer a place at war. Little stalls selling fruits, drinks, and spicy cakes were on every corner. All the local shops were open again, though their stocks appeared rather small, and the town was thronged with people. Nip officers with yellow, red or blue flags according to their rank, klaxoned their way through the streets. Nip privates and sailors strutted along the pavements, or leaned back in their rickshaws elegantly eating peanuts. Sometimes lorry loads of sight-seeing sailors in port for only a few days, would flash past us on their way round the town, looking down curiously at us.