But when the first grey streaks of dawn arose, the firing hotted up on all sides; L.M.G.s that had crept up on us in the night were rattling at us from less than 50 yards away. Grimly we stayed in our trenches, unable to see or do anything. And then, in the half light; from a hut directly behind my Platoon H.Q. trench, went up repeated fast-firing red Verey lights from a Fifth Columnist to give our positions finally away! Earlier in the night I had fancied seeing a light in the upper storey of this shack, but investigation had only produced a cowering Indian who swore, and showed, that he had only been cooking by a very minute fire. I threatened him with my revolver; I suppose I should have shot him.

To try and locate the enemy guns, and to find a healthier spot, I gingerly took a section down to the road to try and find the Carriers – but they had vanished. To our surprise, though, on the other side of the road, was a company of British troops we didn’t know were there. We joined them, as from there we could see and shoot up the Nip L.M.G. positions, the first time we had seen Nips in their greygreen uniforms. The mortar fire was extremely heavy, and we kept having casualties. After a while we could see many Nips running round to our left flank, and soon they would be right behind us. Shortly, we all had orders to withdraw from the Race Course. We saw our company come out, and my section got hold of a bullet riddled truck that would still go, and we made our inglorious way back down the road to a hospital with our wounded . . .

It was very interesting to revisit this site to see exactly how far the Nips had got up to us that night. In the first place it was clear that they had occupied the house that we had hesitated to hold, and in the bank beyond it, tucked round a corner, were scores of the little scrapes the Nips always dug with their entrenching tools in any brief position they stayed in. The platoon on my right had had heavy casualties, and the young officer had been killed. The nearest Nip position to that Platoon’s H.Q. was less than 15 yards away on the top of the house’s bank; it consisted of a round hole to hold one man, dug out in the middle of a clump of Cannas. From here grenades could have been rolled, let alone thrown, into our trenches. The nearest position to my platoon was about 40 yards below me. We found five Nip graves nearby, and then continued the gruesome routine of identifying our own people.