One of the younger element was a certain Major Woolley, who was a Major at the age of 23, and had a great deal of character and intelligence. Woolley was now ordered directly to work under the Nips; and Woolley, because he was convinced that this was weakness, flatly refused to do so. He was then court-martialled, and though he was only reprimanded, the Camp Authorities regarded him as an absolute four-letter man; the younger generation were very grateful to him as a balancing influence to the good.

But the fight was really only just begun, for the Nip engineers were waiting for a favourable opportunity to get us out on the railway line. Their chance came when Colonel Yanagida, undoubtedly in collusion, went away to Bangkok for a long weekend.

It must not be forgotten on reading the following incident that just as for us the rank of Lt Colonel was the highest court of appeal and seat of final British authority, so, as regards the Nips our highest court of appeal never lay beyond our own camp. If you were in a camp commanded by a corporal, that corporal had absolute power of life and death over every rank of prisoner under him; this was always the case. Occasionally a gaggle of senior Nip officers might strut round the camp, but then every precaution was taken to see that none of us had the opportunity of speech or complaint, and the senior Nip officers who were responsible for the whole policy towards P.O.W.s never once gave us the chance of expressing our views. Written protests never got beyond the camp waste-paper basket, and unless they were politely and humbly worded their interpreter was afraid to pass them on, even to his own Nip officers. And, of course, there was no International Court of Appeal at all, and we saw not a single neutral or Red Cross representative in any camp in Thailand till after the war was over. We were completely at the mercy of our local commanders, who could get away with murder without the slightest difficulty.

To give one small illustration. Some Koreans early one morning came to see one of the Camp Quartermasters and tried to pull him out of bed two hours early to go to the Store. As they were not responsible Nips and were not connected with the Q.M. Store, the officer said quite politely that he would be down at the store at the normal time. The Koreans then beat him up on the spot, and he went to hospital with a broken arm. Nothing at all was done by the Nips even to apologise for this; what, then, could we do, except record and remember it? But such incidents are without number.