Then it started – and the Chinese showed us what they could do! First a fat grinning Chinese brought along a street vendor of fruit drinks to the railings; everybody had a drink. While we were drinking, another young Chinese came along on a bicycle and pushed a pile of forty little newly-baked loaves through the rails. Then the block of flats on the right opened up. Windows were raised and more friendly Chinese faces appeared, followed by tins of corned beef and sausages, tins which were almost unobtainable in Singapore, and doubtless came out of the private stocks of the flat owners. One of our men was beckoned into a ground floor flat and came out with two large jugs of whisky and water, and he was also told the latest broadcast news. The troops made a very good meal.

The other officer and I have been told that one of the Chinese stalls in the market was particularly friendly, but we couldn’t remember the number of it. So after the meal, when there was still no sign of the doubtless sleeping Nips, we decided to walk over and look around. We dawdled slowly through the fruit market, but drew a blank there, and were just going to go back when we saw the young Chinese who had brought us the bread standing by one of the fish stalls and beckoning us. This stall was apparently our objective, and a crowd of smiling Chinese with gold teeth collected around us.

Some of them could speak a little English and we all agreed that ‘Nippon no bloody good’, and that ‘King George VI and Chang Kai Shek samo-samo – very good!’ They then gave us a very optimistic account of the news, and told us how the Nips had shot to death whole groups of ‘Dal’ Force, a gallant collection of Chinese communists who volunteered and were released from prison to fight the Nips. We already knew some stories about this, as sixty Chinese, tied together, had been machine-gunned on the Changi beach.

Then we were asked, while we drank delicious sweet coffee, how many men we had with us. Before we knew what was happening, they had a lighting whip round among themselves, and within a few minutes we had another pile of loaves and about five hundred cigarettes, so that every troop had more bread and at least ten cigarettes. We chatted and smiled for another few minutes, by which time we thought it safer to go back; so we parted extremely cordially with out new-found Chinese friends. As we left the market, though, another Chinese who must have been waiting and watching for us, came rapidly towards us and bumped into my neighbour; he apologised and passed on, but in that second he had pressed eight dollars into my neighbour’s hand. Fifty cents more than a month’s wages!