Chapter 12 Choof on so gently; Parole for a day; The Drome.

CHOOF ON SO GENTLY

NEVER could stand washing. Not so much washing myself-that was pretty crook-but washing my clothes was always a cow. That's where Mum slipped up, I guess. Reluctantly, she sent me off to the R.A.A.F. at Bradfield Park, Sydney. Apprehensively, she looked at me when I first brought home a pile of washing.

"What's going to happen to you when you go overseas?" she asked me. "Who's going to do your washing then?"

"It'll straighten itself out," I said. "Something always comes along. Or someone. Maybe I'll do my flying training in the States and get a coal-black mammy to balance my laundry on her head or something."

My mother shrugged. She knew it wasn't much use trying to train me at that late stage. And I suppose I really did believe I'd bluff my way out of the problem somehow.

I found out.

I found myself in the tropical temperature of Morotai staring glumly at a huge heap of dirty clothes accumulated on the troopship voyage up from-(can I tell, now?). I saw my mates blithely rushing about scrounging and filling "kero" tins and lighting fires under them.

It was probably my greatest crisis.

When I finally got moving all the good tins had gone. The one I found had a small hole in it which regularly doused the feeble flames I fanned and also steadily emptied the tin. Everyone had come and gone-spines were being assaulted on numerous stretchers - when I was still bringing my loathsome brew to the boil.

For a while I spent most of my time removing the bits of letters, train tickets; I.O.U's and pulpy snapshots which kept coming to the top. But at last turgid bubbles began to break the surface scum. I had not sounded an oil well or spouted a gusher, but it appeared that my washing was in the process of being boiled. The sleeve of a shirt surged to the top, then disappeared with the frantic wave of a drowning man. Before my eyes buttons dissolved in the intense heat.

Having poked furiously at the mess of clothes for some time while the entire evil mixture gurgled and spat, I decided that all germs had been effectively boiled and all dirt completely disintegrated. With a little luck I had also split the atom.

Lifting the steaming cauldron off the coals proved trickier than I had imagined. A vaporizing slop penetrated my right boot as if it had been paper and I screamed in pain as two toes poached on the spot. Another slop hit the roaring flames and I was momentarily enveloped in steam. With a grunt I set the tin on the ground and prepared to examine results.

Cautiously I poked my stick into the murk and fished for clothes. Inexperience had prepared me for most discoveries, but not for this one! I had, it seemed, taken amazing liberties with the spectrum and won through. It was more than possible I was a strong contender for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. For I had discovered a new and revolutionary colour - jungle blue!

There, wallowing in the tin, was my new issue shirt-once an indelicate beige, now a hideous, streaky blue. Alarmed, I fished for another item. My underpants came up. Blue.

My singlets. Blue. My trousers. Blue. My blue socks. Khaki.

So ended my first experience with boiling, socks. Why hadn't someone told me?

Panicking, I boiled them all again-without the socks. The blue faded only slightly. My chemical discovery had all the virtues of the strongest dye and the tenacity of tar.

From then on I was a conspicuous figure on all parades. When fatigues were about, "little boy blue" copped the lot. It was "that man there in blue" so often they grew to calling me automatically. One sergeant and I almost got on first name terms.

But as jungle wash followed 'jungle wash, my boiling technique improved slowly. Short of having a washing machine sent to me by Mum, I didn't hold out much hope of ever getting that khaki equivalent of snowy whiteness. Nope, I was a washing washout-until I got mechanized.

When I say mechanized, I don't mean I had a contra-rotating, dish-washer-cum-boiler-cum-hither, but I was posted to a Repair and Salvage Depot and those boys had some clues about amenities. It was their job to service damaged planes and get them in flying order again, but they made sure that all was aircraft shape on the domestic front before they did. Their tents had verandahs, showers, washbasins. They had furniture, electric light and pin-ups.

And choofers.

And that's where they really got on the ball. Invented by some Troppo genius who had as keen a nose for basic wants as Henry Ford, the choofer, to my mind, was one of the outstanding technical achievements of the war - once it was mastered.

The gadget was so absurdly simple I can't understand why I didn't think of it myself. It consisted of an oxygen bottle from a wrecked aircraft, fastened to either a convenient tree or a pole, with a tap for turning on the kerosene fuel it contained. Then a lead pipe ran from the bottle to the ground and ended under a small iron stand for supporting the washing tin. As soon as the tap was turned the fuel ran down, a match was thrown on the thin stream and ignition, and then vaporizing, took place. Then followed the peculiar panting or "choofing" noise that gave the gadget its name.

The first time I used one I had my tin on as usual and, apart from scorching the collar of one shirt which was hanging rather untidily over the tin's edge, I had absolutely no trouble at all in lighting it. But the M.O. said I had narrowly missed first degree burns and my arm would heal in time and the hair wouldn't always look like that.

IN-hen I finally got the thing choofing at what was its best operational heart beat rate I retired to sit under a banana palm and live the life of a wealthy plantation owner. I had emptied half a packet of soap flakes into the tin and it was my firm intention to follow past formulae and "boil hell out of 'em!"

The sun was good. The air was still. And the sound of the "choofer" was a steady, if monotonous, lullaby. I dozed, then slept. This, if it had to be, was the life.

I woke with a strangled cry to find what appeared to be molten lava surging round my recumbent form. A nearby volcano had erupted! The island was about to sink into the sea! Dazed, I looked around, anxious to collect my rations and flee when I saw the lava was only boiling water which, bubbling vigorously in the tin, had caused it to overbalance, spewing the water in my direction and flinging my best pants into the teeth of the choofer which, with the blast of a flamethrower and the speed of a reptile's darting tongue, was hungrily consuming them.

I finished the war, after that, beating my clothes to a pulp with flat stones on the sea shore.

It was salty, sure, but it was safe!

LEICESTER WARBURTON, R.A.A.F.

PAROLE FOR A DAY

I HAD been through the mill in the flagship. Didn't dare breathe out of the dress of the day and even wore my cap square when I turned into my flea-bag at night. Flagships are like that. The only time I dared relax was under the shower and even then I used soap and towel by numbers.

One bright day a signal was received requesting that a relief signalman be sent for twenty-four hours to H.M.A.S. Pingbar, a two-by-four minesweeper with a displacement of two ounces, if that. Pingbar, I was to discover, was a requisitioned fishing trawler that had received a coat of grey paint, a set of sweeps and the Navy's blessings. In those very early days of the war she still retained a faint but unmistakable odour of fish. The minesweepers had moorings in a small bay into which pointed a finger of pier. About fifty yards off shore, secured to a buoy and with the letters PB painted on her bows, was Pingbar.

It was dark by the time I came alongside in a skiff manned by a salty tar in tattered overalls and no cap. A dark figure leaning over the side lifted my bags inboard as I handed them up. Still very much the flagship sailor, I stepped aboard, faced aft and flicked a snappy salute to the quarter-deck, wherever it was.

Said the dark figure: "Hullo, there. Who are you? "

"Relieving signalman. Signalman Wave, ahem-from the flagship."

"Well, I'm the mate. Glad to meet you."

A faint glow from the riding lights revealed him to be a Reserve warrant officer in greasy jacket and peaked cap with sea-tarnished badge. I jumped smartly to attention.

"Yes sir. Good evening, sir." (See the flagship influence? Jumpy as a mouse in the presence of anything higher than a leading hand.)

"You can cut out the 'sir' right from the jump. Just call me Bob. What's your first name? "

"Geoff, sir, er - Bob, sir."

"Right, that's all settled. Leave your things here. We'll go down and meet the skipper. May's well tell you now that we don't stand on ceremony in Pingbar. just call him 'Skipper'. Nothing else. He feels insulted if people get too formal. All one big happy family here. Now follow me, Geoff."

I did, and met a stocky little man with a wrinkled, weather-browned face and the thick, wavy ring of a commissioned warrant officer, R.A.N.R., on his sleeves.

Introductions were made, I "skippered" him nervously at first, then as we amiably discussed signal books and what not we became really matey. The Cox'n eventually materialized but for some strange reason he wasn't addressed as Sam, Harry or Joe, but just plain "Cox'n".

The skipper said good-night in a fatherly fashion and I clambered up and down a few more ladders in the wake of the Cox'n, gathered my gear in passing, and was led to the fo'c'sle. Here I did meet Harry, Sam, Joe and a few others who were sitting or lying in various stages of undress on their bunks. Bunks in the Navy! Once again my flagship-trained conscience revolted. No lash-up and stow hammocks? No seven good turns around the old flea-bag? No, sir. Make up that bunk like a double bed, with a pillow at one end, too.

Actually that same fo'c'sle was a cold, dank, cramped space with a sharply-rising deck that mangled to the bow. The bunks were double-deckers, eight in all, hugging the ship's side. A much-scrubbed table was clamped to the deck in the centre and two narrow forms completed the fittings. The Cox'n showed me a vacant bunk, and retired.

Next morning the flagship training told. I arose with alacrity, folded my blankets and went in search of the bathroom.

The Cox'n was brooding by the ship's side when I asked him politely where the bathroom was situated.

"Why, certainly," he said sarcastically. "There it is, tiles and all." He pointed to the fo'c'sle bulkhead. A big, hairy stoker had started to wash. The stoker placed a half kerosene tin under the pump and, cranking briskly on the handle, managed to produce a thin trickle of water. Several minutes' work brought enough to cover the bottom of the tin, and the stoker, with a long bar of yellow soap, completed his toilet.

As far as my wash was concerned, you can quote me when I say it was the least enjoyable and most hard-to-get sluice I've ever experienced.

Dressed in blues I swaggered out of the dank dungeon of a fo'c'sle and cast an eye about me. A stream of bunting hung limply from a yard-arm at the signal station on the hill overlooking the harbour. Dress of the day signal.

I kept climbing until I eventually found myself on the tiny flying bridge. From the canvas flag wallet I bent on an answering pendant, hoisted smartly and hauled down with the signal station.

I found the mate-pardon, Bob-pacing the iron deck. "Dress of the day, number threes," I reported. The mate looked at me in disbelief, then chuckled.

"Do you honestly believe that?" he asked. "Here, this is Pingbar's dress of the day." We stood in the for'ard well-deck and watched the ship's company file out like Brown's cows.

From what I could make out the uniform was berets and football jerseys, although one clothes conscious A.B. sported the greasiest and most battered felt hat I've ever seen. My blue suit - 'a la flagship - was as out of place as a nerve in a porcelain tooth. I crept back to the fo'c'sle and, diving into my kitbag, found a tatty, paint-spotted pair of overalls and a cap that had lost its shape from being dropped in the drink. Quickly donning these, I felt as well-dressed as the dandy of Pingbar, the man in the grey felt hat.

We breakfasted in a tiny mess, then the Cox'n, who had brightened up considerably, cleared lower deck to get under way. The skipper, in his ancient pea-jacket, was on the bridge, the mate on the fo'c'sle. With another converted trawler, Willieweetie, astern, we sailed down the harbour.

I learned later that, at the outbreak of war, the trawlers had been taken over by the Navy for local defence. Their job primarily was to sweep a plotted but secret channel from Australian harbours to the hundred-fathom line for the safety of ships entering and leaving. In those days, too, the ships' companies were recruited from the blue-water fishermen who manned these trawlers in peace time. Fine seamen, they were as much at home in those tiny ships as they were ashore.

As we sailed out of the harbour into the open sea, the ripples on the calm surface made Pingbar and Willieweetie dip and roll alarmingly. My stomach did a couple of back flips before settling down uneasily.

The book of minesweeping signals open. I prepared to hoist the appropriate flags as and when required by the skipper. He maintained a steady stream of chatter and was now taking compass bearings.

"We'll put 'em over here," he said to the mate who had 'Joined him on the bridge. I stood by a halliard, ready, willing and able to hoist a signal. The skipper, after ringing "slow ahead" on the engine-room telegraph, strolled to the side of the bridge and waved come-on to Willieweetie. She altered course a few degrees and came abeam on the starboard side. I felt sure that hand signals were not listed in the book of words.

Still very keen, I waited for the skipper to give me the sign to hoist "out sweeps". It didn't come. Instead, he grabbed a megaphone and bellowed, "All right Albert, pass your sweep over." Albert, skipper of Willieweetie, waved an acknowledgment and passed the wire.

It was an "A" sweep. Instead of streaming Oropesa floats and towing sweeps astern, the wire was passed between the two ships which then steamed abreast. With a nagging feeling of not being wanted, I sulkily secured the halliard to its cleat, put my flags back into the wallet and, in dignified silence, took up a position in a comer of the bridge.

It was a glorious day and my stomach settled enough f or me to nibble at a light lunch. The watch below sunned itself on the gently rolling deck. Sea-gulls perched on the stays and left their marks on the paintwork, but nobody cared.

We reached the hundred-fathom mark the end of the swept channel -at noon and turned for the second lap back to harbour. So far I hadn't sent a signal so that, when the skipper said "Make a signal to the Port War Signal Station requesting permission to enter harbour", I felt that at last I was justifying my existence and grabbed the Aldis lamp with gusto.

After approval had been received, sweeps were taken in, again by megaphone. (Results of the sweep were logged - a choice collection of marine growth and a rust-covered piece of iron.) Willieweetie took up her station astern and, with all the aplomb of a battleship squadron, we sailed into harbour and secured to the buoys.

Pingbar's signalman came aboard with the duty boat so I went for'ard, peeled off the overalls and packed my bags. The salty tar in the tattered costume and no cap had the skiff alongside. The skipper and the mate were on deck to constitute a farewell committee.

"Good-bye, Geoff."

"Good-bye, Skipper." We shook hands warmly.

"Good-bye, Geoff."

"Good-bye, Bob." Again hands were shaken. I clambered into the skiff, the salty tar started the engine and we pulled away from H.M.A.S. Pingbar. I gave a last wave to the skipper and Bob. Standing on the fo'c'sle was the man in the football jersey and the felt hat .....

After depositing my bag and hammock for'ard of the brass strip that marked the flagship's quarter-deck, I lifted my cap to wipe the sweat from my face.

A voice called: "You! Come here!" It was the officer of the watch, a brand-spanking new sub-lieutenant, resplendent in pressed blues, snowy-white cap cover and wearing a telescope under his arm.

I walked quickly over. "Yes, sir?

"Keep your cap on straight when you're on the upper deck and move at the double when I speak to you or you'll find yourself in the Commander's report.

This isn't a minesweeper, you know. It's the flagship. Understand?

"Yes, sir."

I saluted smartly, turned about and moved - at the double.

G. WARWICK WAYE, R.A.N.

THE DROME

ON Changi Point on the island of Singapore huge planes and flying-boats take off daily from the airfield to all parts of the Far East. Travellers who see the aerodrome for the first time are entranced by the beauty of the wide strips of turf rolling greenly, through borders of coconut-palms, to the sea.

It is a pleasant spot, with evenly sloped banks bordering the strips, a solid sea wall and long smooth roads winding around and about to link the ends of the runways; from the end of the southern arm one may sit at the water's edge and wonder at the soft beauty of the little islands which rise and sink through the dancing heat waves. The spidery fish-traps stand out from the water and the Malay fishermen, crouching low under their wide straw hats to avoid the sun's rays, paddle lazily past the island.

To ride along the smooth roads where every bend gives glimpses of green grass and sparkling waters and of the great hills of Johore, watching from across the Straits, is an enchantment in itself. It is so beautiful there, with all the brilliant tropic colours blending together where the island dips into the sea.

But it was not always as idyllic, as the stranger must realize as he stands in silence before the well-kept cemeteries. Here beneath these simple mounds, sleeping in the peace and the quiet which was denied them in life, rest the bodies of many of the slaves who toiled to build the drome.

In September '43, after some slight verbal sparring between the Japanese and Camp Headquarters, eight hundred men began to clear the palms and rubber-trees from the centre of Changi Point.

The work for the first few months was quite a change from the usual camp duties.

Caterpillar tractors were used to push acres of palms flat to the ground and thousands of ripe nuts were carried into camp to augment the rations. Those nuts were good. Ripe ones were grated into the rice ration whilst the soft kernels of the green nuts were eaten by the spoonful on the spot.

The harvest did not last long enough, and the hard work began with the actual shifting of the trees from the path of the strips. The trees were cut into sections and carried to the edge of the perimeter where they were stacked neatly in heaps. There were thousands of trees to be moved and the underfed prisoners began to fall sick from the constant strain of the heavy lifting.

The logs were carried by teams of men who walked in pairs, grasping each end of a stout stick upon which the logs were placed.

The teams walked slowly, despite the screams of the overseers, and attempted to conserve their energy, but the ground was so uneven that a slip or a stumble by one man would wrench the stomachs of and bring them all to the other carriers ground, frequently with one or two men pinned beneath the log.

Men were evacuated to the camp hospital at such a high rate that the camp authorities asked the Japanese Command to allow the number of labourers to be composed of both fit and light duty troops.

The Japanese promised that the light duty men would be given the less heavy work to do. Theoretically it was a good scheme but, from the first day, the overseers refused to distinguish between the two classes of men and blandly handed out log-carrying jobs and grass-clearing tasks without discrimination. The segregation scheme was quickly abandoned and the weak men took their turn with their fitter comrades who helped them by doing more than their own share of the work whenever possible.

Shelter on the job was non-existent and, during the almost daily storms, men stood in the rain like horses, with shoulders hunched to the weather. Those who possessed them wrapped their ragged shirts around them but those who were not so fortunate stood stoically whilst the cold rain beat against their bare skin. After every wet day a percentage of men would automatically suffer relapses of malaria but no decrease in the number of workers was allowed by the Japanese on this account.

By the end of January '44 the outlines of a landing field had begun to appear in the area. To make good the increasing sickness rate among the workers convalescent personnel, survivors of some of the recently returned Burma Railway forces, were now sent to work on the drome.

Light, two-foot gauge railways crept across the cleared sections of ground and men shifted hundreds of tons of earth daily by filling "skips" of one cubic yard capacity and pushing them to a dumping point where the soil was levelled out. The south arm of the field was raised about twelve feet, to the level of the centre strip. The work was constant and was made a great deal more difficult by the crude tools which were issued to the workers. Shovels and chungkils (a type of hoe), with straight pieces of wood for handles and with blades fashioned from kerosene tins or galvanized iron, made hard work harder.

The prisoners worked in hats and ragged shorts and the luckier men wore old boots or makeshift clogs hewn from rubber-trees. Their scanty clothes, less decent than those worn by the coolies, afforded little protection from the hot sun which beat down upon the area and reflected from the bare ground with such a fierce intensity that scores of men were placed in hospital, suffering with strained and afflicted eyes. At certain spots on the drome the Japanese had ordered tents to be erected to shelter them from the midday sun whilst they watched the prisoners being burned up in the heat. The tents were made of coarse blue canvas and, as the prisoners' clothes rotted away, little squares of canvas were cut from the edges of the tents when the overseers were not looking and smuggled into camp.

So skilfully was this done that the Japanese did not discover what was going on until one day an overseer realized that he was sitting beneath a square yard of canvas and a framework of tent ropes. His roars of anger as he saw in the little blue pants the prisoners were wearing the connection with the vanished tent cloth could be heard for a hundred yards. There was a great deal of stick swinging and yelling and a very late hour for the "cease work" but the troops considered that it was worth while.

The daily loss of salt from the constantly perspiring bodies could not be replaced by the meagre ration supplied by the Japanese. Men lost weight rapidly and began to take on a "burned out" appearance with accompanying lassitude and lack of energy. Repeated requests to the authorities for more salt were curtly refused; instead, a few grammes of rice, enough to give each man less than a pint of thin gruel, were issued to the workers. This stop-gap was turned to good account only by the ingenuity of the tea boilers attached to each party.

These men, who were always selected for their "scrounging" abilities (P.O.W. definition - ability to find something where there is nothing), began the practice of gathering "pig weed" and tender grasses which were boiled with the rice in sea water. The resultant gruel which, by Australian standards, would not be fit for pigs to eat was salty enough to make up for some of this deficiency in the camp rations. Working on the sea wall, many of the men collected seaweed to boil down for food but it was the thin shredded type of weed which lost almost all its bulk in the cooking and was not a great success.

All prisoners engaged on clearing jobs collected snails as they worked and these were carried back to camp each night in big drums. The snails were then fed to the few ducks which were kept at the hospital and the eggs, which were collected in very small numbers, were given to the worst of the hospital cases. A dangerously ill man would be issued with perhaps one egg per week.

Conditions altered slightly when two-thirds of the labourers were transferred from all-day work, to two six-hour shifts, the first shift finishing at 2.00 p.m. and the second at 8.00 p.m. The Japanese hoped that, by using three labour forces, they would speed up the work. The new working hours meant that troops working on the afternoon shift were allowed to sleep a little longer in the morning but by the same token they did not eat their evening meal until 9.30 p.m.

Official rest periods were not allowed during the shorter working shifts. The men drank a cup of black unsweetened tea and swallowed their miserable gruel when time and the Japanese permitted. The altered working hours were welcomed for other reasons than those which could be classed as legitimate or official. The black market facilities on the drome were increased in proportion to the increase in total working hours and the job gave the Japanese overseers less time to watch for these determined traders.

From the first hour of the morning shift until troops were assembled to march home through the sunset, ragged prisoners contacted Indians, Malays, and Chinese in the thick mangrove swamps and coconut plantations surrounding the airfield. The Japanese threatened awful punishments and stern orders were issued in Camp Headquarters warning offenders of the results of these practices, but the trading increased rather than lessened.

There is no doubt that, although the black market was a bad thing in some respects, men preferring to wear rags and sell their best shorts, there were many good aspects of this illegal trading. Thousands of dollars flowed into the camp, so much so that for many months the receipts of the camp canteens were far in excess of the monthly pay disbursements, Every rank in the camp from colonels to privates was represented indirectly in the trading, and many a thin, well-dressed officer grew healthier as he grew shabbier.

Heavy machinery, left undestroyed in Malaya, now made its appearance on the work site. The light railways were replaced by 1 metre-gauge tracks, and caterpillar tractors, towing four and ten-yard capacity skips, moaned across the drome. Modern electric shovels and a great steam "navvy" kept half a dozen Diesel locomotives pushing long lines of skips heaped high with spoil to the swamp edges. As each train stopped at a dumping point the ragged workers attacked it with their crude shovels and within fifteen minutes the empty train would be puffing back to the refilling point, leaving the prisoners, sweating and gasping, sitting on the line until the next unloading.

The prisoners followed the reasoning that the best method of obtaining rest was to unload trains more quickly than the electric shovels could fill them. They preferred a short, fifteen minute burst of labour twice per hour rather than a slow, continuous unloading of train after train. This system was usually quite successful but many of the Japanese taskmasters resented the sight of men at rest and forced them to remain on their feet, packing the sleepers with earth, levelling off non-existent bumps in the ground or shifting the railway lines.

The prisoners always retaliated by such maddeningly deliberate "go slow" tactics that at times a Japanese, goaded beyond all endurance, would grasp a stick and rush among the troops, foaming at the mouth and hitting all and sundry.

Many incidents of this kind occurred.

The work now progressed more rapidly. Miles of dispersal roads, dotted with large open aeroplane "bays", were built around the perimeter. The edges of the four arms of the drome were sloped and grassed and a substantial sea wall was commenced at the edge of the east arm. More men were sent from the camp and Australian, English and Dutch prisoners, together with hundreds of Tamils, Indians and Chinese coolies, covered the area from Ferry Point to Changi Gaol.

Pilots flying over the area were amazed at the changes taking place daily, and within a short time light bombers were using the field. It was a busy changing scene.

The one thing which did not alter with the passage of time was the unconquerable spirit of the prisoners. Always hoping for a cessation of hostilities, they were still able to laugh when the first twelve months' work was completed. The beginning of the Allied air raids on Singapore in November '44 gave a tremendous boost to morale and, as every air raid meant a temporary "cease work", the troops rejoiced in the sound of the air-raid siren.

As soon as the siren began to wall the prisoners would be herded into gangs and forced to sit down, a procedure which was thoroughly popular. Then, whilst nervous guards covered the gangs with machine guns, they would enjoy to the full the sight of the flashing silver of the huge bombers as they swept the sky of all Japanese aircraft. The raids became so frequent that it was always a source of disappointment if the sirens did not sound the alarm at least once per day.

From the commencement of the air-raids on Singapore the work on the drome was speeded up. Notorious Japanese overseers, identified by the prisoners by such names as "Snow White", "The Ice Cream Man", and other names not so polite, began to swing their sticks more often and to force the troops to work longer hours.

They were hard days with few compensations but the harder the conditions became the stronger grew the morale of the troops. Decreasing rations and the extra pressure of the work were extravagantly interpreted as pointers to an Allied blockade, and talk that the end of the war was in sight became a daily topic.

Laughter which had kept the prisoners full of hope for three years became even more noticeable and reached its peak on Christmas Day, '44. It was a day of goodwill and an extra hour's work made not one whit of difference. As the sticks of the overseers descended so the shouts of derision from more fortunate prisoners were so great that even the recipients of the swinging sticks forgot their pains.

That night the troops marched home through the sunset with some of the snap they had possessed in 1941. In bare feet, clogs and old split boots they clumped across the drome together, to the roars of "Tipperary". The skeleton-like shoulders straightened up and boney chests were pushed out as they sang their way home. Gee strings and shorts, makeshift shirts and no shirts, tattered old slouch hats, the slanting rays of the westering sun silhouetted them like marching wraiths as they crossed the drome and were swallowed up in the rubber.

S. F. ARNEIL, SECOND A.I.F.