Red Cross Parcels

We had four Red Cross parcels and the Japanese had opened them and helped themselves to anything, some of the treats that were in there. This was proven because we would go around to some of the places and see some of the tins been used and thrown away you know so we had the evidence right. There’s no question about it. But the first one to come in and it was passed around the hut. They were addressed to most of the people, and the odd fellow didn’t get one you see. In fact I don’t think I got the first one, but most of them did get parcels and there were food in there. It was just like Christmas when you were a child, the guys went crazy. Although there was very little of it, as I say four over four years they did help us a lot. Even the little bit of vitamins, you might get a tin of salmon, or a little tin of other kind of meats and you’d chop in all up and divide it all up between four or five men you’d have maybe an inch square of something out of somebody’s tin to help with your rice and that was it, but even that was a hell of a lot better than nothing. And there were cigarettes, of course. The men were crazy for smoking, and in fact I got into smoking for the first time to properly inhale and that only because two or three of my buddy officers, buddy officers I said, talked me into selling. I had a beautiful watch, a wrist watch and it was quite an expensive watch, gold, so I had to trade it over the fence. We could do that occasionally when the Japs weren’t looking at night or early, early morning. There’d be the odd guy that would have enough gumption to bring some stuff over and trade through the fence and I was able to get a bag of I would say, oh a pound and a half maybe of soya beans, real soya beans for my watch. Jeez one hell of a good trade, but anyway the boys got a share of these. We traded, oh and I got some cigarettes, that was it. I got the soya beans and I must have gotten about 2 packets of cigarettes, that was the Chinese kind, 10 cigarettes in a packet. Now I could have handed them out, 2 to each of the officers. Say there were three or four officers, I have the names down I know who they are, but oh no, damn fear. One cigarette would go around and it lasted us two weeks or more you know. And I have, at home, I have one or two IOU’s that they promised to pay me so much when I got out for these cigarettes that I had given them. That was one episode.