It was about this time that the first change over in our guards took place. We were told that Inotani and his lot were off elsewhere, and one of the crack I.J.A. Engineering Units was going to take us over. Meanwhile a few days of yasme, or holiday, was declared. But not only was it a holiday, even our guards became invisible, because as we eventually discovered, they had gone! For several days we wandered where we willed – in moderation – for Singapore itself was stiff with Nips, and few were so rash as to go near the town. But we did stroll down to the Bukit Timah Road, and once again drank Tiger lager off the ice at only 55 cents. In a little Chinese shop was also bought queer toffees, soap, slices of iced papaya and some little spiced biscuits. We also visited a few derelict European houses, and in a parson’s house in the Adam Road, I found 24 readable books, including a complete Chaucer and Shakespeare.

But during this period it was the Australians who excelled themselves. For weeks they had been drawing five gallons of petrol a day from the Nips ‘to start the steam-rollers’, which they ‘flogged’ for five dollars a gallon to the Chinese; but now they discovered a hidden supply dump, and actually set up a small stall just off the Bukit Timah Road and sold God knows how many gallons of petrol to the Singapore populace at five dollars a gallon. In the end this did go too far and some Nips spotted them, and they were punished by confinement on rice and water in a wired tennis court for 14 days. By day they were in the sun; by night they slept on the ground. There were no washing or latrine facilities permitted. But the Aussies didn’t much care. Quite a few of them had made several thousand dollars!

They also stole Nip trucks, altered their numbers and identifiable signs, and sold them to Chinese merchants, and, of course, the Australian canteen was packed out with such good stuff that all the other camps flocked there daily.

But eventually the new Nips did arrive, and promptly took over. They were a far smarter crowd than the others, and we had an officer and not a sergeant in charge of us. But the work went on just the same, with the exception that at first, beatings up, after strong representations by our Brigadier, more or less ceased. With Inotani anything had always been possible. One day he’d just swipe anyone across the face he happened to meet; another day he’d spend three hours in a truck driving round Singapore trying to buy a couple of pigs to improve our rations. We were now, so we thought, in the hands of more efficient, steady people.