Jim rather fancied the hats, and could probably have purchased one for a few annas, but there was no time to stop, and it would just be one more thing to carry. The brightly patterned longyis the women wore were pretty too, and he wondered momentarily what Peggy would look like in one – and then dismissed the idea. The hats and sarongs suited this place and these people – and neither Peggy nor Cliffehaven were ready for such exotic things.

Having reached the end of the valley, their commander set up a temporary HQ, arranged for the first supply drop, and after a brief rest, ordered Jim’s column to attack the Japanese posts to the west which had been sighted by air intelligence. The idea was to keep the Japs occupied during the next three days of air drops but to avoid getting pinned down.

Jim, Ernie and Big Bert eagerly followed their senior officer in Indian file into the dense black jungle of a starless black night. Jim could hear the man walking in front of him, and the breathing of the man behind, the creak of mule harness and the clink of metal on metal – but although his night vision was usually very good, he was virtually blind in what felt like an endless void of utter darkness.

They were closing in on the co-ordinates given to them by air-recon, so they walked more slowly, alert and ready for action.

And then all hell broke loose at the head of the column. Explosions ripped through the jungle in great flashes of blinding light to rain dirt and debris down on him as stuttering bursts of gunfire opened up, the bullets zinging in from all directions as the Bren guns roared and shook the earth beneath his feet.

Jim dropped to his belly, firing into the jungle at the unseen enemy, trying to gauge by the flash of his gun where he was hiding, when a terrified mule broke free and almost trampled him in its crazed bid for escape.

Jim lobbed a grenade into the jungle and followed it up with a long burst of rapid fire, aware that the man next to him had slumped against him and was probably dead.

He swiftly reloaded and pumped more bullets towards the few flashes of light that were still coming out of the all-enveloping darkness, and then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.