Winter dragged on and the spring sunshine, luring out the buds, came as a benison, and a message of hope, but the food rations were very bad and as sparse as ever. Rice had been augmented by soya beans. It was obvious that the village inhabitants were feeling the pinch almost as much as we felt it. They lived on a community basis, drawing rations of rice, soya beans, vegetables and fish from a central distribution point. When we had begun working at the mine in early February we had seen the womenfolk collecting their food twice a week as we marched along the main street. Within a short time they were queuing for only one collection a week; then once a fortnight; and eventually no more than once every three weeks. We noticed that as we passed they would cover their mouths with their scarves and turn away, presumably thinking we were carriers of disease. We must, indeed, have looked a sorry bunch, but our frail, skinny bodies still hid sharp sensibilities, and to be treated as pariahs was not pleasant. The disdain of the womenfolk earned them many sarcastic comments, but they could not understand our muttered protests.

One striking thing was the Jap habit of allowing children to carry burdens of astonishing weight. As soon as a child was able to walk it would be encouraged to carry something strapped on its back. The load was usually firewood. As the children grew bigger so did the loads, until some of the stronger boys and girls were carrying a staggering weight of wood with an unbelievable nonchalance.

On ration days when fresh fish was available the camp cookhouse received fish heads and bones to flavour the soup with, but the allocations were meagre with so many mouths to feed. Sometimes we received a small meat allocation. The first time we got it, one of our men, Taffy, rushed into the hut to tell everybody excitedly about it. The meat, he said was frozen stiff. From the size of the carcases he deduced it was goat meat. We rubbed our hands and licked our lips. This was an occasion. We looked forward to the meal, but next day our joy was lessened when it became clear that the meat was undoubtedly a dog. There were violent arguments. Most prisoners decided this was too much to ask of them. They would refuse to insult the stomach with such fare. It was barbaric. It was unthinkable. It was an offence against Britain's best and most faithful friend. But when the dog meat appeared at the dining table the smell was so appetising and delectable that resolution began to crumble. Each man tried to avoid the other's eyes. Suddenly caution went, as if by the unbearable pressure of communal yearning, and soon men were not only devouring the soup but counting how many pieces of finely chopped meat each had received. As I ate mine I thought of the day of starvation in Singapore and remembered someone had told me that at the labour camps there hunger had driven them to kill cats, which had then been cooked and eaten. At that time the story had sickened me. Now, here we were eating dog meat and thoroughly enjoying it! Men must eat or perish - and in certain circumstances there is hardly any limit to what he will tackle.

Illness began to trouble the camp again - it had nothing to do with the dog meat we had eaten - and as more and more men were unable to work a night shift in the mine was ordered to maintain output. I was roped in for this with others and soon found the work was not quite as arduous as the day shift duties. The few Jap engineers in charge often took the opportunity of sleeping. They would give us our instructions, work with us for a while, and then craftily disappear round some corner for an hour or two's kip. While they snored we would be drilling holes in the rocks ready for dynamite charging to provide enough material for the day men to start on. The overseers at night were certainly no hard taskmasters. When we had drilled the requisite number of holes for the charges we could sit and rest for an hour until it was time to leave the sector and return to camp. We always looked forward to going back in darkness to the sleeping camp in the early morning, making a beeline for the wash-house and soaking our limbs in hot water in a large sunken bath.

As spring gave way to summer the camp guards and the mine engineers began to show signs of increasing strain. They were tetchy and short-tempered. We had the feeling they knew they were losing ground in the attempted conquest of the East. It became painfully apparent as we walked to work each day that the population were tense and suffering. Their food rations were still dwindling, too. This was no master race.

At the nightly roll calls in each hut the guards were ready to take offence at the slightest provocation. We had not to make a single mistake in shouting out our number in Japanese or there was trouble. We countered these displeasure by allotting each prisoner the same number at roll-call. This paid dividends. The number were rapped out smartly and the guards had to try harder to find other reasons to rebuke us.

It was my nightly duty as sergeant-in-charge to assemble the hut for roll-call and bring the men to attention on the entry of the camp commandant or his sergeant with the usual routine of guards. I had to order "Right Dress!", make a smart half-turn, salute in Japanese style, report the number of men present and those sick - in the Jap language - and then call out "Number Off". Sometimes my salute was adjudged not snappy enough or my words of command were inadequate and I was brusquely reprimanded. If everything was not perfect in the eyes of the Japanese the routine was always the same; orders repeated until they were satisfied.

Yet they had strange moments of concern for our welfare about this time. One day we were told to our surprise that there would be no work that day - it was a national holiday. We were allowed to go for a stroll into the hilly country. I remember our party came to a large dam and in the heat of the afternoon many of us took off our clothes and had a swim. This was a welcome change from routine.

But we went back to the grindstone in the mine the next day and it was a day I shall never forget. I was destined for car-filling, working alone in a sector where the track dropped steeply and turned sharply round a bend in the main track. Five or six cars were coupled together, and by standing on the coupling hook of the last truck and fixing a strong piece of wood under the offside rear wheel attached to a leather thong on the coupling it was possible to hold the cars in check in a primitive form of braking. Unfortunately on this occasion the brake slipped as I was running to the central collecting area. The lamp, which I was grasping while holding the top of the car at the same time, was knocked from my hand and went out. I was in total darkness, bumping down the track on runaway trucks. The trucks, which were all metal, made a terrific clatter as their wheels gathered speed. I yelled a warning to anybody who might be around the corner with other cars, but I doubt whether my frantic call could have been heard against the roar of the trucks. I hung on grimly, seeing nothing in the blackness, praying there were no trucks ahead, tensing my body for a sudden crash in that narrow lane of death. I felt the trucks hurtling round the corner and still they kept going until after what seemed an eternity I saw ahead the dim lighting of the main shaft and knew there was nothing in my path.

Gradually I felt the cars slowing down and then they came to a dead stop. Trembling, I got off and looked around. Had there been a supervisor about I should have been in real trouble. But I could see nobody. I hobbled back up the track, picked up a few empty cars and pushed them to my loading bay. I found my lamp in the darkness, struck a match and relit it. It was undamaged. For that I was even more thankful. To damage a lamp was a heinous offence in Jap eyes, demanding heavy punishment. After that escape, I took particular care not to take more than three trucks down the decline. I always tested the braking system before setting off, too. It is unwise to presume too much on Providence - particularly in a Jap mine and by now, I thought, I must have exhausted even the amazing allocation of extra lives I seemed to have been granted. So I went back to the routine of daily labour, the exhaustion, the hunger, the peering little greasy yellow faces, the stern, smug looks, the round of work and disturbed sleep and thwarted desire and yearning for the old, familiar things of far-off England - now only remembered like sequences in a dream from remote childhood.

Like the rest of that little band of Britons I toiled, longing for the day when the iron circle of treadmill routine should be broken for good and civilisation beckon once more. I wiped the sweat off my fantastically thin arms - they looked like the arms of a stranger now - and worked on. Then it happened.