The second thing was an extraordinary attempt at escape by three officers, including George Tilly. This party had collected maps mosquito nets and bedding, rice and tinned food up to the weight of about 60 lbs. per head. This they hoped to carry and replenish through 1,000 miles of jungle till they reached Yunan Province. They had not much in the way of medicine, and they could speak hardly a syllable of Thai, Burmese or Urdu. They were due to leave at five o’clock one morning, an hour or two before dawn, and they were to collect their rations near the officers’ bridges where they had hidden them. They had an arrangement with their C.O. that he wouldn’t notify the Nips that they were missing until they had had forty-eight hours start. Well, everything turned out badly. In the first place they overslept and weren’t on their way before seven o’clock. Then they were seen by Thai villagers within a mile of the camp, and were afraid of being given away. And finally they found that a load of 60 lbs. just wasn’t practicable if you had to move through jungle with it. So, altogether they decided by the middle of the morning to return to camp and try again later on from a camp higher up. They left their kit still hidden outside, and returned as if coming in from a stroll. (The work on the bridges was finished, and everyone was resting for three or four days before the move up country.)

When they got back to camp, only four hours after leaving it, they found that the Nips already knew that they were absent. Apparently their C.O. had told Featherstonhaugh immediately after their departure what had happened, and asked him to keep it quiet a couple of days; but Featherstonhaugh, who genuinely feared punishment of the whole camp, had thought it better to inform Adachi. And Adachi at first wouldn’t believe it! He visited the bed spaces of the alleged three escapees, saw much of their kit there, and said that they must have gone for a walk. He even asked whether anyone had a grudge against the three men? Shortly afterwards the escapees returned, and indeed said they had been out walking. But because they said they’d been out walking, Adachi wouldn’t believe them. They were shut up in the guard room, ‘The No Good House’, for three days. This meant lying in dirty cells without blankets and with little food, but our police smuggled in both, and they were really very lucky. They were released on the eve of the move up country; none of them made any further attempt to escape, and they marvelled at their own foolhardiness a few months later when they saw what up country was like.