The food shortage led in the early days to an unofficial Coconut War, brought about by hungry men raiding the trees. On one occasion a troop, caught up in a tree in the night by a serious-minded officer, hurled coconuts at the officer until he retreated, and managed to escape. On another occasion, a C.O. on his way to the latrine at night saw a dim figure slinking out of the coconut plantation with a sack over its shoulder. He shouted at it, and started to run. The figure in front of him ran too, and was finally forced to throw overboard his cargo at the same time as the C.O.’s sarong fell down, thereby tripping him up. Later on it transpired that the despoiler of the coconuts had been the Corporal of the Guard on duty that night!

The most odd thing about these early conditions was the huge space we were allowed, which, in the northeast tip of the island, ran into several square miles, guarded only by sentries along wire fences, or else by the sea. Perhaps it sounds as though it should have been fairly easy to escape, but it was not so, as can easily be shown.

In the first place we were warned that any attempt to escape would be punished by shooting if we were caught, and with no appeal. Secondly, there’s no doubt that in the early days even our friends thought that ‘we’d had it’; the news from Europe was very bleak, and to expect in those early days that a Malay or Chinese should take the responsibility of helping in an escape attempt was quite unreasonable, and all such help, if discovered, was also punishable by death.

And then, where were to escape to? The whole of Indonesia was in Nip hands; their fleets not only ruled the Pacific, but up to the Coral Island and Midway battles, they had strong and apparently successful fleets in the Indian Ocean. Their Air Force was the only one ever heard or seen in the S.W. Pacific. So, then, it was only really possible to attempt to go to two countries – India or Australia; and such an attempt was pure suicide. How could one consider fuelling, purchasing and equipping a boat to cross the seas to 2,000 mile distant Australia, when the difficult, hazardous waters were patrolled by the Nip navy; when supplies would be doubtful in the extreme; and when such a boat would have cost tens of thousands of dollars?