We travelled by rail, in dirty steel trucks, on the five day journey to Bangpong. The heat in the daytime, lack of water, and the uncomfortable quarters put everyone in a state of depression and nerves. Men bickered and tempers flared as the journey went on. At various stops en route we got out and sometimes managed to obtain hot water when the engine released steam during refuelling.

Some of the guards took a dim view of this; usually they cursed us and tried to scare us off with the butt end of a rifle, but most men persisted and succeeded in scrounging a welcome half-bottle of water. Food throughout that long trip was scarce. When the journey ended no one was sorry. It had been yet another trial of endurance.

We were taken to a large transit camp of bamboo huts with stap roofs. The rainy season was almost spent, but the camp was in an atrocious state. Water and mud reached up to the calves as we ploughed our way through a quagmire to the huts. There was plenty of mud inside, too. Luckily the sleeping quarters of split bamboo, raised two to three feet above the waterlogged ground, offered some comfort.

With what little money we had left we were able to augment our short rations by buying from Thailand traders dealing in fresh fruit, eggs and dried fish. This was a welcome change from Changi. Cigarettes were on sale, but their price was prohibitive. Most prisoners chose to buy food if they could. It helped us build up strength after the hardships of the rail journey.

For a few days we were left idling about the camp. During that time we saw a ceremonial cremation of a local inhabitant. We were never far from the chill of death, but this was a surprisingly colourful event - and, I remember, very noisy. The mourners clothed in finery, carried huge dishes of cooked food, fruit and wine, as they followed the body which was in a fantastic, ornamented, draped hearse. When the corpse was lifted on to a pyre in the open, adjoining our compound, the singing and chanting of the mourners increased in volume and intensity.

The funeral pyre was set ablaze and to the accompaniment of crackling wood the mourners began to dance as they sang. When the cremation was over they walked off to enjoy their feast. Our mouths watered. We were sorry we could not join them. It is astonishing how limited one's horizon becomes when one has lived on the verge of hunger for so long.

A few days later we were on the move again - by foot to our first working camp, Chungkai. We marched alongside the first sector of the newly planned Thai-Burma railway, and at Chungkai we were quickly gathered into working parties. Our daily stint would add to the railway's progress.

It was the start of a wearying, backbreaking life, fraught with hazards, not least illness and disease. We were prisoner-serfs and the Japs, our masters, were determined to work what muscle and sinew we had to exhaustion point ..... and beyond. Every man who was fit - in Jap eyes that was a term covering the last extremity of animation - was mustered for railway and bridge building. They had thousands of prisoners on whom to call to blaze the strategic railway for them, through the jungle.

As the railway snaked farther and farther P.O.W.s were thrust into an all-out action which had the urgency of a battle. Dutch white and native troops from Java and Sumatra were brought in to work, too.

The railway kept close to the river. Water was needed for drinking and cooking. The river was also the most important means of bringing food and equipment at that time into the camps.

I had not been working on the railway long when one evening, as I sat outside a hut watching the light fade from a cloudless sky, there was a sudden yell from inside the hut. I heard a voice call "you bloody thieves! stop! What the hell are you doing with those blankets?" I ran inside, followed by two or three friends. At the top of the hut, in the gloom, two men were disappearing with bundles under their arms. We chased them, but in the labyrinth of hutments they escaped. When we got back to our hut I discovered that my only blanket was among those missing. I cursed and raged like a madman. Now I had nothing on which to lie at night except the devilish hard bamboo bed. That night I got little sleep. As the hours passed, the bamboo slats dug deeper into my back. I had lost a lot of flesh in the last few months, and the blanket had been a cherished possession. I went on cursing. The thieves had obviously taken the blankets for disposal in the nearby Thai village black market.

The black market flourished. It was known that a number of prisoners nightly squeezed through the frail bamboo fence around the camp and went off into the village under cover of darkness. By this time, prisoners had begun to dispose of many personal belongings - that is, anything saleable. Fountain pens, propelling pencils, watches, gold rings, surplus socks or stockings, were handed on to the "middle-man", who in turn passed them on to the black marketeers running the nightly gauntlet.

I disposed of my wrist watch, a gold signet ring, and fountain pen at various times in order to get money to buy food. By the time those doing the deals out of camp, and the "middle-man", had had their cut there was not much left for the original property seller. What there was came in useful for buying eggs, dried fish, bananas and brown sugar, which helped to make meals rather more appetising than they normally were. They helped too to give a few calories and vitamins to the shrinking body. Pay for railway workers amounted to 10 Yen every 10 days, but payment was flexible. Often several weeks went by before we received any money. As the railway progressed and we moved to camps in the higher reaches, pay stopped altogether. By that time it did not matter; in most camps there were no facilities for buying anything. This was "back of the beyond", with civilisation unheard of.

The loss of my blanket drove me to scrounge two Hessian rice sacks from the cookhouse. I undid the stitching of one to give a better cover spread, and used the other to lie on. I had to make do with these until new working battalions arrived from Singapore and I met a friend, who generously gave me one of his two sheets.In P.O.W. conditions of this kind there was inevitably some thieving and roguery. Many times men had their blankets or other belongings stolen. Reduced as we were to the bare necessities of existence, we looked on articles such as blankets as vitally important to the little comfort we could make for ourselves. I am sure that had I caught the marauders I should have had no mercy on them, colleagues or not. I felt at the time their behaviour was intolerable. Come to think of it, I still do.

After toiling and sweating in the heat of the sun some of us enjoyed going into the dirty river for a swim or a wash in the evening. It was here that was brought to an end a recurring dream I had had for years in earlier life. I used to dream that I was swimming, mostly under water, in a wide river with hills or mountains on each side, and the sun shining gloriously. In that dream I was always alone. But, in fact, I could not swim until I came to Chungkai. The first sight of the wide river there and of the hillsides "broke" my dream, and during my longish stay at Chungkai I learnt to swim. I was coached by several friends. The instruction they gave me undoubtedly saved my life some time later.

We returned from the railway embankment one evening to learn that mail for prisoners had been delivered that day. Everyone felt elated. After the evening meal the orderly sergeants visited the huts to hand out letters. I was delighted beyond words when a large bundle was handed to me. I counted the letters ... 24! I read the whole lot at one go; they included letters from my wife and relatives. When at last I turned from my letters and saw other prisoners reading theirs, I was struck by their look of radiant happiness, rare in that grim place. I suppose mine looked the same to them. Then I noticed several men lying disconsolately on their beds, arms covering their heads. They had been unlucky. There had been no letters for them. I was moved by a deep sense of pity. Johnny, a Cockney, seemed utterly deflated. Almost involuntarily I went across to him, not knowing how to offer consolation, but feeling that some sort of gesture of companionship was needed. He shrugged me off and I did not speak, realising that nothing in my letters could really be of any comfort to him. We, the fortunate ones, immeasurably cheered by news from home, even though months had passed since the letters were written, could not share our joy with the unfortunate.Returning to my letters, I began to wonder whether my wife had had any news at all that I was a prisoner of war. It was a long time since Singapore had fallen and I, had written my last letter to her shortly before its fall. Surely, she must have received some news through Red Cross channels, I reflected. Had she yet received the one P.O.W. card the Japs allowed us to send? Or had the Japs held them back, another subtle form of morale-breaking? How was my wife now and what were her feelings? I asked myself such questions endlessly .... but there was no answer. Uncertainty enveloped all like a creeping fog.

In the months that followed I received several more batches of letters from home. They, too, were completely out-of-date, but for long afterwards they gave me renewed hope. On countless occasions I took them out to read them over and over again. But many men received none at all. Some bore it with fortitude, keeping their thoughts to themselves; others broke down and wept, and were miserable for days. There was no way of helping them.

Sing-songs were a popular form of relaxation at the camp in the evening and concerts were organised by a group of very versatile prisoners. Scores were written for musicals and several excellent plays were produced. These entertainments were eagerly awaited and always there were big attendances. The Jap guards too, paid regular visits and seemed most sincere in their appreciation. The expert way in which the scenic artists created realistic "props" out of all kinds of odds and ends was a wonder to everybody.

In those early months in Thailand some prisoners had still enough energy left to play football. Matches were organised between Companies on a competitive basis, and sometimes the Korean guards formed a team. They were exceptionally fine in ball control, though inclined to be rough in the tackles; they seemed to enjoy heavy charges against P.O.W. opponents. When a British side scored a goal against the Koreans the cheering was vociferous.As the months went on, fewer and fewer prisoners took football exercise, and in the higher camps such relaxation was unknown. The wearying work sapped everybody's strength and any spare time was spent lying on the ground or on bamboo beds.

As the Chungkai camp extended so did the rodents. Rats often visited the huts during the night. A terrific din woke me up one night. Men were shouting and throwing kit about. At first I thought someone had gone raving mad; then I realised that rats had come down from the roof rafters and scurried over some of the sleeping men. They had awakened in alarm and begun hurling anything they could lay their hands on at the slimy creatures.

Small snakes often squirmed their way through the huts and over the beds. Men fought them with pieces of bamboo or heavy stones. Their "bag" was considerable after a time, but many more escaped. Snakes, large and small, were often seen on the daily walk from the camp to the railway. Once half a dozen prisoners came across a cobra-like specimen gripping a tree trunk. They stunned it with working tools, killed it, and brought it back to camp in the evening tied with tough tree creeper binding to a thick bamboo poles. It was more than 11 feet long. One man gutted it and laid the skin on the roof of the hut to dry out. It was there in the sun for many weeks. It was, I believe, his intention to make purses and bags from the skin. I never knew whether he accomplished this because I was on the move again to another sector of the "Death Railway".As the work of tearing into the jungle and building the railway embankment went on, we often met villagers and tried to find out if they had any war news. We have to be careful to make sure that the guards were not within earshot, but in spite of our questioning the Thailanders, more often than not, refused to say much. If we were lucky we might get a hint that the Allies were perhaps holding their own in Burma. If the items of news, true or not, seemed favourable, our spirits rose. Our hopes began to rise even more wh en we occasionally heard a bomber droning high in the sky. We were sure it was "one of ours". We always broke off work and scanned the heavens in an attempt to identify them. But they were too high up; sometimes we caught a glimpse of several tiny dots travelling southwards.

The guards soon brought us back to earth with a strong command. Anyone declining to obey at once was either kicked or knocked to the ground, and roughly told to get on with his pick-and-shovel work. After hearing our planes, we often speculated among ourselves on the possibility of an early attack by them on the railway we were building. But it was to be a long time before these attacks began - and by then many of us were on our way elsewhere.

Labouring without headgear hour after hour under a tropical sun was a shattering experience for most of us. Day in and day out we did it, with sweat streaming from our aching bodies. "Brew-up" time used to bring some slight relief. You could not call it tea; you merely threw a few tea leaves into a large tin containing boiling water over a fire of twigs. But half a mug of that almost colourless liquid was as refreshing to us in those circumstances as the real thing served in delicate china in an English teashop is to others.

Whenever we struck tree roots as we dug out more and more earth for the embankment we came across an abundant variety of insects, large and small. Once there was a scare when a tarantula spider shot out of the dislodged soil. A Jap guard standing nearby yelled a warning - No goode! No goode! I lunged with my spade at the spider, which was large, ugly, black and crablike, and had a hard scaly back about the size of a saucer. I missed, and my spade lodged hard in the ground. Others had a go before someone eventually spliced it down the centre of the back. Almost cut in half, the spider raced in a small circle, its tail curved over, repeatedly darting its needle-like fang into its own body. Ugly matter oozed out gruesomely in spurts on the brown soil. We were relieved that it had been struck down before it could inflict its wrath on us.

In the hot climate bed bugs became so profuse that they sneaked their way into every niche of clothing and kit. Periodically each hut had a "debugging" drive. Bamboo bed slats were pulled out of their sockets, taken outside into the sun and bashed on the hard-baked ground. The fat deformed little insects from the white undersides of the bamboo gyrated, bounced and swivelled when they hit the scorched earth. Then they resisted no longer, shrivelling up and disappearing into the dust. It was a relief to seem them go.

Malaria continued to strike down prisoners. When afflicted, one had to "go sick" and receive bed down orders for three or four days. Sufferers were soon back in action and out on camp fatigues for another few days before returning to full-time duty on the railway. Recuperating from a malaria attack, I went out with a fatigue party cutting down bamboo and small trees for the cookhouse fires. In dry spells it was easy to wade across the wide stretch of river to the quiet peaceful regions beyond the opposite bank.

On one journey of exploration seven or eight of us penetrated into the interior from the far bank. We had no guards to supervise us on fatigue duties. From the woodland we suddenly came upon a clearing. Before us was a beautiful vesta of green lawn, and in the background were scores of steps leading to a Buddhist Temple on the hillside. The air was remarkably still. No one was in sight. We ventured up the wide staircase. Its balustrade on each side took the form of a dragon, the coloured image sweeping down from the tail at the top of the steps to its grotesque head at the bottom.We peeped into the interior of the temple from its wide entrance and found it large, cool and in semi-darkness. On each side of the entrance, delicately chased brass plates held offerings obviously put there by worshippers. There were items of cooked food and fruit and coins on the plates. We looked at one another and then longingly at the food, sorely tempted. But our better judgement prevailed. We committed no sacrilege, silently withdrawing, and returning to tree felling. When we had finished felling, we lashed bamboo and tree trunks together and floated them across the river to the camp bank.

We had seen no priests at the Temple, but often, as we toiled on the railway, Buddhist priests clad in vivid yellow robes passed on their journeys to and from the village. They walked under large black umbrellas, which shielded their shaven heads, and gave not the slightest sign that they had seen us.