The ‘X’ Company day was more gruesome and Mike Oakley, one of the survivors, was our guide. A portion of ‘X’ Company had been cut off in positions on a scrubby hill covered with bushes about three or four feet high. For some reason or other the Nips didn’t scale the hill and clear out the British they knew were there, but at the base of the hill, and covering it, they left an L.M.G. position. The slightest movement or rustle was rewarded by a burst of fire, and it was dangerous even to lean over and drink from a water bottle. The scrub they were in made it quite impossible for them to see the Nips; they could only lie low. After the first day of broiling heat the water was finished and they ate their remaining rations. Already the chance M.G. bullets had accounted for six men who had died painfully. On the first night the 2nd in Command of the Company had tried to escape with the Sergeant-Major, and they were never seen again. After enduring a second baking day and having lost more casualties, they were apparently given up as dead by the Nips, who forgot about them.

That night Mike Oakley, with several men, all of whom perished, walked over a mile and a quarter back through the Nip lines and rejoined the division quite exhausted. When he found the country stiff with Nips, he split up his sections, gave them a bearing, and they went off singly or in pairs. In the beginning they humped their shoulders and just walked through the enemy transport lines. A few hundred yards from the Allied positions, Mike turned to the Corporal next to him. To his amazement he had put his hand on the shoulder of a Nip, but he was able instantly to shoot him through the head with his revolver. His corporal, though, was lost. We found his grave, and also a Nip grave, nearby . . .

We climbed the hill now prepared for an unpleasant sight. At the bottom of the hill was a path that led up to a small space where the vegetation of grass and bush had been rolled flat by the movements of the men, and this space extended up to the hill’s summit. The whole area was littered with what was left of corpses after two months in the open under a hot sun. The bodies just lay where they had rolled over, and the whole ground was impregnated with the sweet, sickly smell that is human corruption. We dug shallow pits, and there we laid them to their final rest.

On one of the dark green bushes at the base of the hill, I found a giant Atlas moth, just hatched out of its chrysalis, sunning its magnificent wings, about ten inches across, a wealth of brilliant browns, ruddy browns and dim yellows.