These outside gardens were quite interesting, and abutted on some Chinese vegetable gardens. We were intrigued to see the extraordinary speed with which the cucumber plants grew, and studied the Chinese methods of using ash manure and urine to bring the plants on quickly. Before we could plant or dig we had to fell, clear and grub up the rubber trees. This was an arduous job, but the soil was far richer than in Changi, and it was well worth it. It wasn’t that we could grow different sorts of vegetables there, but on that soil the leaves of the spinach grew more richly, and the sweet potatoes did tuberate. And of course the Chinese are always businessmen, and anyone who wished to flog anything sent it out via the garden party.

It was on one of these mornings that I had my first swiping from a Nip. We were marching along the road at the head of our column, when we were overtaken from the rear by a Nip cycle patrol. Of course we were meant to salute the little swine, but as they had come from behind us and we had not known they were coming, I thought it unnecessary to salute their backs. Unfortunately, the leader of the patrol was still just behind us!

He got off his bicycle. He was a bespectacled, ugly and Low- Cartoonish Nip, incredibly wearing white gloves. The column halted as the Nip stood in front of me. Then followed the angry, animal whines that in Japanese means: ‘Why the hell didn’t you salute me?’ And having made himself sufficiently indignant, he jumped and hit me across the face as hard as he could. The glove took the sting out of the blow, and the Nip’s topee fell off. He picked it up, put it on back to front, and repeated the process. Again his hat fell off, and grunting savagely he took a vicious swing at my chin that didn’t connect as he didn’t jump. The performance was then over; it had been so comic in execution that I found it hard not to laugh.

The same day I went into one of the Chinese houses to try and sell a broken Ingersoll watch. I tried to prove how valuable it would be when it was repaired, and managed to get a dollar fifty (about 1/9d) and a packet of cigarettes for it. While we haggled we solemnly drank little cups of sweet black coffee ladled out of an enormous tin jerry.