The next leg of our odyssey took us across the Indian Ocean to our third landfall, Ceylon. Being well and truly into the tropics by this time, the ship began to leave a phosphorescent wake at night, just as we had read in our school geography books. Dolphins frolicked in our bow wave, as they had done since leaving Suez, and now we could see flying fish cutting through the wave tops, as well as sharks foraging among our flotsam. Someone claimed to have seen a whale on the horizon but I don’t think that whales are too common I those waters. We also began to encounter violent rain squalls at night and those sleeping on deck were often drenched before they could get under cover. I only just managed to rescue my bedding from the scuppers, one night, such was the suddenness and intensity of the downpour!

Since it was now warm enough to inhabit the decks, we were treated to film shows on most evenings. Doris Day musicals were popular, so were John Wayne westerns and ‘Road to Rio’ was much in demand. The same film was repeated several times to allow everyone to see it, as the available space was rather restricted for the number of troops on board. This was virtually our only form of entertainment except for some tattered paperbacks and the inevitable cards. There were no radios and we were virtually isolated from the events of the outside world.

As we were now heading more East than South, we passed through the time zones more rapidly. All of us had to take turns in mounting a deck patrol at night, in case anyone fell overboard. Traditionally, sentries spend two hours on duty and the next four off. There was much competition for the two-to-four ‘stag’ by those on duty on the nights when the clocks went forward, as the appointed time for the change was always three am, meaning that you then only did one hour’s duty instead of two. On the return voyage, the reverse was the case.

At Colombo we had our first sighting of swaying coconut palms, a certain sign that we were approaching the equator. We had a full day ashore here and we wasted no time. Our first priority was a cold beer and we dropped into the Services Club for that purpose.

There is a saying that there is beer and better beer - but no bad beer. That belief certainly doesn’t hold true for Colombo! We should have taken heed of the half-empty glasses standing on the vacant tables. The amber fluid we were served – more black than amber - was the worst beer any of us had ever tasted, a record which, for me at any rate, still endures. Many years later, in Rabaul, I met a man who had lived in Colombo at that time and he too avowed that he had never encountered a worse drop.

In 1949, there were still rickshaws on the streets and we couldn’t resist the novelty of riding in one of these. We also found bananas and pineapples, unseen in Britain since the outbreak of war, and we guzzled! A group of us cut up one of the latter, not realising that the juice can burn the skin, and ate it ‘on the shell’. Our lips soon suffered and we spent the rest of the day looking like Ubangis.

After taking in the local sights (and smells), including the most primitive and dilapidated trams I have ever encountered – they looked like bathtubs on wheels - we caught a double-decker bus and rode down to Mount Lavinia, a resort on the coast a few miles south of Colombo, where we did manage to get a decent drink – at a price - before returning to the ship.

Local transportation, Colombo

The next leg was the final one for me and for the majority of the passengers, who were to disembark at Singapore. Once we had rounded the northern tip of Sumatra, the coast of Malaya was in sight for most of the day. It was time for us to sort our gear, settle our gambling debts and return to the Army. A contingent of Grenadier guardsmen, who had been as anonymously scruffy as the rest of us, suddenly emerged - like butterflies from the chrysalis – scrubbed and clean-shaven, in starched uniforms, polished boots and blancoed webbing. Regimental pride will out!

Eventually, the vessel threaded itself through the clutch of small islands guarding the approaches to Singapore and, just after dark, we tied up at the dockside. The first person to greet me as I cleared the gangplank was a fellow named Davies whom I had known at school. In spite of all the distance I had covered, I still wasn’t that far from home.