This period, too, was a very greedy time. People waited in their places impatiently for the food to arrive, and then jealously compared each others’ helpings. I used to sit behind the Padre, a little sparrow of a man, who shovelled down more food in a short time than anyone else in the mess. By the end of each meal this exponent of not living by bread alone had a shirt soaked right through due to his exertions with very unspiritual food. But at this time there was no doubt that our stomachs dictated policy – a shameful but inescapable fact.

The only really bright spots in our existence were the special parties going down daily in trucks to Singapore. Two particularly good days I shall always remember. The British Harbour Board authorities, for some peculiar reason best known to themselves, had put a certain number of sacks of cement in many Go-Downs which were otherwise stacked with food. The Nip prime requirement was cement for the making of road curbs; and our prime requirement was a Go-Down full of food that we could privily loot. This looting was fraught with danger. Sometimes the Nip in charge of you looted himself and did not mind what you did provided that none of his officers or N.C.O.s discovered one of you in the act. Others occasionally punished us, but blinked their eyes to most of it. Then there was a Nip Cycle Patrol specially to watch looting, and these gentlemen catching anyone drinking a can of milk, were liable to go straight up to him and bat him hard over the head with a bayonet. Lastly there was the Dock Police, composed of Sikhs, who troubled us little. All these dangers we knew, calculated, and risked.

To get the stuff out we took gas-capes with artificial pockets sewn into the skirts, or just blatant haversacks. One day we struck a marvellous Go-Down. At one end were crates of Yeast Vite, full of vitamin B, which we distributed to every man. One officer during a yasme, or rest, was turning over the leaves of a book with one hand, while the other hand was quietly ladling cocoa from a broken package at his feet straight into his haversack. Troops discovering a crate of ‘A1’ sauce poured it straight down their throats like lemonade. Scores of bottles of Worcester sauce went into empty water bottles brought for the purpose. There were tins of glucose, Heinz beans, stacks of walnuts, bottles of Eau de Cologne, and condensed milk, all of which were filched successfully.

But on this day the hardest nut to rack was a crate of Marmite, right by the door, and on which our Nip was actually standing as we passed the cement out onto the trucks. When one of the trucks went away full, we broached the subject to the Nip in typical P.O.W. pidgin English: