In the beginning of October the first batches of Dutch troops arrived from Java. A very well mannered young officer with raw feet was billeted in our Mess and we spent the first ten minutes trying to pronounce his name correctly. The Dutch troops were a very new sight for us. There were full-blooded Dutchmen, but the great majority were Eurasians, who theoretically have full European rights in Java. After a little mutual suspicion the Dutch and our troops mucked in. They had far more clothes and equipment than we had, and their kit was good, the material being a strong cloth of jungle green colour. The oddest part of their dress was the enormous floppy, green straw hats that looked like collapsed Panamas. Of course, the Dutch had timed their arrival just right, for now they could share in our Red Cross rations, but they worked well and cheerfully for us, splitting wood in the cookhouse. Generally these parties only stayed about ten days and then they were shipped to Burma, where they were fated to start the railway coming south, as we were to start it from Thailand going north.

Another curious party stayed with us a couple of days, all R.A.F. personnel. They were told by the Nips, and honestly believed, that they were being shipped to Portuguese East Africa for exchange with Japanese technicians. We never heard of this party again, but I suspect they went to the Isle of Ambon to make airstrips, and lived on sago and tapioca as their basic diet, and where they had very heavy casualties from malnutrition.

Towards the middle of the month most of us, including Henry and myself, were warned for Thailand. We regarded it as a nuisance, but had no idea what was in store for us. First of all, the working parties still in Singapore went up, and then they started from Changi. Many welcomed it as a change. On October 30th, my birthday, we had a big party, for on the morrow we were due to leave. Unfortunately I couldn’t eat as I’d had dysentery for a fortnight, and was gently starving myself in order to make the five day journey less unpleasant.

The skill of the Mess cooks produced an hors d’oeuvre that a good London hotel would have been proud of in war time. Arranged on each plate it was arrayed so colourfully that it almost seemed a shame to eat it; the Red Cross and the garden really did give us one first class meal. And after the meal we had a concert, songs, and local cross talk that went down like velvet. Dear old Gutty sang ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’, and insisted on singing each chorus twice through; the troops were delighted and whistled and laughed till they cried. The pièce de resistance was a solemnly chanted skit on The Policeman’s Lot is not a Happy One – this sort of thing: