That afternoon we carried iron spikes, baulks and ropes to the site of the bridges, one of which was to be about 40 yards long, the other slightly smaller, crossing two gaps too high to embank. The skilled work did not exist – we were to be Very coolie of Very coolie. Now Japanese bridge making is simple and temporarily efficient. You first rig up a primitive pile-driver on a scaffold, worked by two teams pulling on dozens of ropes, and then you drive great pointed stakes into the ground as the bottom uprights. When these piles are all driven well in, and are level, the entire wooden bridge is built on those wooden foundations. Some of us sat on the ground and cut the ends of the crude piles into sharp points; others on a rope and pulley hauled new teak timbers up from the river 30 feet below; others carried these enormous baulks and stacked them; others broke stones and piled them; and then there was the hated pile-driver.

God! those scorching afternoons wearing a minute loin cloth, and sweating and pulling in that accursed team like slaves of the Pharaohs, hauling vast blocks of timber into place. On the top of the scaffold stood a Nip who directed the weight on its downward beat precisely onto the timber we were driving in. To haul the weight up once to the top of the scaffold before letting it go, when it crashed down to the baulk below, took two or three strong pulls. Our team leader would be shouting all afternoon, ‘One-Two-Three!’ And on the Three, down came the pile-driver, Wham! and immediately we started to haul it up again. Hands were blistered and bleeding, backs scorched by the fierce sun. At six o’clock, very wearily, we went down with the troops to bathe in the river. Bridging work was worse than embanking, and Taramoto hated officers more than he did O.R.’s. This was the daily job of the officers’ Working Party till the two bridges were finished and we left Chungkai. On one day we hauled 88 giant timbers by manpower out of the river, carried them 60 yards, and stacked them. And you worked unless you were a hospital case; light sicknesses, or diseases that didn’t obviously show, were always passed as fit by Nobasawa; unless you were so sick you had to go straight to hospital, there was no escape . . .

It wasn’t long before we were reduced to working in literal rags. Two weeks of such work destroyed a decent pair of shorts, and so any rags were good enough, provided we could save our scanty kit. We were a scarecrow sight.