Maxi needed someone sensible with him on this salvage trip. Me, his first choice – that bit older, you see. Orders were to find a downed kite (Spitfire). Reports claimed it had come down somewhere in the hills. Vague, but an army unit nearby knew where. Maxi was after some piece of equipment it was carrying. All very hush-hush. Security too tight to tell this lowly aircraftman. Draw some supplies (including a Sten each), then into the truck. Glad to get off my duties on the base. Sense of freedom. Mission, even.

Maxi wasn’t as silly as some – senior clerk on the railways back home. A wife, two boys (one he hadn’t seen yet), waiting in Brighton. We had a good-natured argument all the way, like brothers.

‘Underestimate your enemy, lose your war. Show me someone who thinks a Jap a fool and I’ll show you someone who’s sun-happy.’

Maxi had all the stories. Collected them in a scrapbook in his head. Pulled them out to scare the white-kneed. ‘If you bring one in wounded then you better strap him down because if you don’t he’ll pull out a grenade and blow everyone up while you’re nursing him. Or, failing that, you’d better tie his hands ’cause a Jap will open up his own wounds – his own wounds! – to die for his emperor.’ They were relished – savoured, even – these stories. Everyone had them. Tales running round the camp blanching even the most sunburnt faces. Maxi’s were not quite as fanciful as some. One chap swore that with twenty bullet-holes a Jap could still run. Others were truly convinced these little men could rise from the dead. But I was having none of it.

‘It’s not that I don’t believe everything the chaps say,’ I said.

‘You should, Pop,’ he replied (that bit older, you see, hence the name). ‘You haven’t been out here long enough to tell us all different.’

He’d misunderstood (my point, finer).

‘You can teach a dog to attack anything to the death. Any dumb animal will keep coming at you with no thought for themselves. That’s not intelligence, that’s obedience. But that doesn’t win wars. Our superior wit will win through,’ I said.

‘I hope you’re not referring to your sense of humour, Pop?’

Deliberately misunderstood (again). ‘The Japs are just clockwork toys,’ I told him, ‘they’ll eventually run out of wind.’

The army CO turned out to be useless. His idea of pinpointing was to wave his arms about in the general direction of the hills. ‘Have you got a more precise bearing, sir?’ Maxi (diplomat) asked cautiously.

One indecisive finger flicked instead. ‘You’ll need a mule,’ he told us.

‘Have you got one we could use, sir?’

‘No.’

Maxi threw me a look I quickly caught. Sometimes it was hard to understand we were fighting a war together, side by side with these khaki chaps. He left us with a curt warning, ‘Watch out up there. Jap patrol was spotted earlier,’ before waving us off.

Looks like curly cabbage from afar, the forest on the hills. Harmless. Playful. Think you could fall and bounce on it. Soon change your mind. Slashing through dark, wet, stinking undergrowth. Painfully slowly. Ticks dropping bloody inside my shirt. Flies sipping on the moisture in my eyes. Mosquitoes massing thick as cloth. The relief at seeing the track the fallen plane had made had Maxi and me hugging like goal scorers. Not too far away, we both agreed. Still took us hours, though. Tunnelling through the undergrowth – each step as hard won as a miner with his coal. Would Queenie have recognised her husband now? Molten and brown as a warm bar of chocolate. Intrepid as Livingstone. Not that pallid bank clerk, fretting when the tube got too crowded.

It was dark by the time we reached the prang. No chance of struggling back without the light. ‘We’ll have to camp here,’ Maxi said. We were ready for a spot of McConachie’s stew, a cigarette, a dry place for backside and gun. Maxi, settling down, wrapped himself tight into a blanket. ‘You’ll need your blanket, Pop.’ Had noticed when we stopped that it was cold, had almost forgotten what it felt like. Couldn’t get the shivers at the base even under cold water. Hot day and night. I even slept under a towel just to mop the sweat. I had laughed when the chap at the stores pushed across this hairy thick blanket. Heavy, dusty, filthy thing. Just looking at it had excited my prickly heat. I left it behind and took extra biscuits and water instead.

‘You have got a blanket, haven’t you, Pop?’

‘Couldn’t see the need.’

‘Couldn’t see the need? I told you you’d need a blanket up here.’

‘Seemed a bit unnecessary . . .’

‘Jesus, Pop, that’s typical of you.’

Uncalled-for, I thought.

Maxi shook his head. Tittered at my expense. ‘You always think you know best, don’t you?’ he said. It was only a matter of time before he brought up the business with the thunderboxes.

‘Remember the thunderboxes?’

‘Not that again,’ I said. The chaps wouldn’t let me forget it.

I still insist it was a good idea. Timing was wrong, that was all. The latrines at the base were disgusting. Hundreds of men defecated into a trench of old thunderboxes with a roof on. The stink, the flies, the maggots. Who knows what diseases were incubating? Bowels in India open more than most. The wallahs do their bit. But every so often only fire can clean, to sterilise it until the next time. A gallon or two of petrol is poured in. Chap approaches with a long match made of a pole topped with a piece of burning four-by-two. Ignite, then run like hell while it burns. To me it was elementary. Pour in the petrol and run a line of it like a fuse. Then sit back to watch the fire trip along the ground before cleansing the trench. No running, just intelligence. Chaps shook their heads – won’t work, can’t be done (Maxi included). It was grist to my mill. There was quite an audience watching.

Poured in the petrol. Ran the line carefully along a prepared grooved track. Sat in a chair to light it casually with a match. Fizzled off as predicted. But it fell just short. One, maybe two feet. Much laughing and merriment. ‘Now what, Pop? Any ideas left?’The problem was I’d spent too long explaining why the fuse had not reached its target. Petrol had evaporated too quickly on the hot ground. ‘Go on, get the pole,’ the chaps taunted. Of course, by the time I’d reached the latrine with the burning pole that two gallons of petrol had also evaporated into the air. There was one almighty explosion. Roof flew off to Kohima. Threw me into the air as well. I landed with a shower of thunderbox contents raining down on me.

‘It could still work,’ I told Maxi.

‘Oh, give it a rest, Pop.’

‘Granted, I didn’t take enough account of evaporation. But next time . . .’

‘Next time! You think anyone’s going to let you do that again? We’re still finding shit in places it shouldn’t be. You just have to know best, don’t you?’

‘Well, maybe.’

‘Well maybe,’ he taunted.

‘But I know a snake when I see one, Maxi,’ I told him.

‘Don’t change the subject. That could happen to anyone. I was asleep!’

Hardly fair to remind him but he’d started it.

Maxi had woken us all in the basha in the middle of the night. ‘Snake, snake,’ he’s yelling. Struggling about on his charpoy. ‘Big bugger,’ he’s telling us, thrashing this way and that. We’re all up, knives, guns at the ready. Snake. Big snake. Maxi going at it like Tarzan to get it out of his bed. The legs of his charpoy collapse. Everything falls on the floor, including Maxi. He screams he’s been bitten and runs off to the MO clutching his leg. Leaves us all turning over this, prodding at that. Scared as hell, we all admit, hunting this big snake in the basha. Turns out Maxi fell asleep on his arm. Woke up, grabbed it, felt nothing. Concluded it was a snake. Cut himself on a piece of sharp bamboo in the struggle to throw his own arm out of bed.

‘Look,’ Maxi said, ‘we’re not discussing that now. What I want to know is what you’re going to do up here all night without a blanket.’