To our surprise we had only to wait two or three hours before the train came in, a long line of closed, iron trucks. Before we boarded them a Japanese major made us a speech. He talked of the dangers of war, the necessity for discipline and sacrifice, and wished us good luck on our journey and enterprise. We then packed thirty-one people into each cattle truck and with all their kit, which meant we could just sit down, but not possibly lie down. Two officers climbed into the front seat of a lorry going up on an open truck, but after a few miles they were black with smuts and came inside again. In charge of this train carrying 800 officers and men was a solitary Nip sergeant and a guard of about six. After much screaming and excitement the whistle blew, the train jerked forward, and we were off.

As far as we could gather from the labels on the trucks, our place of destination in Thailand was Bampong, alleged to be somewhere inland and west of Bangkok. It was a journey of about 1,200 miles, and we were due to arrive in about five days. Concerning the journey itself the least said, perhaps, the better. The trucks by day got nearly red hot, and we were baked in an oven; when it rained the heavy iron doors only partly shut and the truck was awash in a couple of minutes; and by night, sitting cramped up in our kit, sleep was quite impossible due to the discomfort of such overcrowding, and because a cool wind whistled through the trucks from the open doors. It was a shocking trip, and we sighed wistfully for the cool, air-conditioned compartments of the pre-war Malayan railways.

Our route up Malaya via Johore, Kuala Lumpur and Prei (opposite Penang Island) was very dull. The railway went through unending rubber estates. Rubber trees of all ages and sizes stretched away either side into the distance. A rubber estate at the best of times is not very interesting or beautiful, and after looking at them for three days we wanted never to see another. At each station there was a frantic rush of mess orderlies to draw the messy stew and rice that were our rations twice a day; the Nips used to clout the last arrival among the orderlies on principle – next time someone else would arrive last! Luckily we had some of the Red Cross stuff still with us, and on most of the stations we’d bought, unofficially, little sponge cakes and fruit. The Nip sergeant was not at all unreasonable. At each station there were enormous queues outside the primitive latrines; there being nothing like that ever laid on by the Nips. We saw the beautiful island of Penang, like a tropical Gibraltar, lying across the deep blue sea that separated it from Prei station.