Malaya and Singapore is full of all sorts of races – Malays, Indians, Chinese and others, and we knew nothing about them. The Japanese scouts and snipers often wore Malay dress, and in our ignorance we fired at many non-Nips. Snipers, we were told, were often hidden in the tops of coconut palms, and consequently ripe coconuts nestling at the top of the trees turned into Japanese faces, fronds became legs sticking out, and heaven alone knows how many rounds were pumped into surprised nuts. Then the jungle – and to us the Forest Reserve was very jungle! Bushes and lianas blowing in the breeze always had hidden Nips behind them; the croak of bullfrogs, the screech of the myriad cicadas – all was so new, so utterly strange, and nothing breeds restlessness so much as suspicious ignorance.

Then at night, the mysterious tropical night with its multitude noises that were ultimately to become part of our very existence. The deep black shadows, the chirrup and scream of the millions of insects, the ghostly light of fireflies . . . shadows of the huge trees, rustling of creeper, the sighing of the wind in the lalang grass, all these were sinister, strange, possibly hostile things . . . Many times Officers and N.C.Os, themselves dubious in the jungle night went ahead and stood below certain forward trees to demonstrate there was no Nip concealed there – it had only been a shadow.

But not always were these dangers imaginary. We found Japanese lying in drains in the midst of our company positions; and falling bodies of Nip snipers indeed fell out of more than one tree. There was no doubt that the Japanese were brave and clever jungle fighters, and how they stood the big red ants up the coconut palms, heaven knows.

Then lastly, also not calculated to soothe us, was the Fifth Column. This was recruited probably from future members of the Nip-sponsored Free Indian Army, that deluded and soon to be disillusioned body. As trucks whizzed by up the Bukit Timah Road, miles from the Nips, shots were fired; in fact either sniping, or just shots fired into the air to worry us, were going on in all the back areas of the battle more than a week before the end. Then there also appeared to be an agreed signal of red Verey lights fired into the night air above our positions to indicate us; and a few minutes later, down would come the mortars and ‘75’s.

As we went back to the battlefields we intended to lay the ghosts of these fantastic memories . . .

Days spent out searching for the Carrier personnel were not very successful. The Carrier Officer had lost his life soon after springing from his carrier, surrounded by Nips, and spraying them with his tommy-gun. Such members of the platoon as we found, we buried in shallow, grassy graves.