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When we’d been in Burma for a while, we worked out how to improve our beds - we used lengths of bamboo, and fastened on the ground, and you’d lie on top of that. And sometimes you could make a little bed off the ground. All very carefully made. We even made legs — all out of bamboo.

Then we put a roof over our head with leaves and so on. We lived in the jungle all the time, on the ground or in the ground; in our fox holes. We didn’t have any buildings.

All our food, everything was dropped by parachute; from the planes, and sometimes if you managed to get hold of a parachute, you could put it inside your fox hole to line it and keep it clean. Now that would be a luxury bed, off the ground, with a leaf roof made from throngs of whatever it is - perhaps banana leaves and then your half blanket and your ground sheet — and your mosquito net of course - you had to put up your mosquito net because the mosquitoes were around all the time.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Richard Jones and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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