22 Jul 1943, John Charter's wartime journal

Today is my birthday. Many happy returns me. I wonder if Pop and I shall have met again before we celebrate our next. Dear me! I feel I’m growing quite elderly ((he was aged 31)).

Today has been notable firstly for the good feeds we have had – breakfast, fried eggs on fried bread and coffee; for lunch Y made a beautiful little pie from one of our carefully hoarded tins of meat and vegetable and we had one of our remaining two Red Cross parcel puddings (apple), delicious, finished off with coffee. For tea we had a cake which we had made for the room. It was made from rice flour we had ground, flavoured with banana and steamed. I don’t know how it would taste in peace time but in here it was delicious.

This evening we took a second small cake with us to Maudie’s room and had it with more coffee she had provided (real coffee) and some nice little scones. We really could not rise to a birthday party – it really is too much of a business these days and one simply hasn’t the wherewithal to entertain people. We have tried roasting and grinding soya beans as we have all but finished our coffee and cannot afford more at MY9 per lb at the canteen (loose) or MY31 per lb (pdv£175) in a sealed tin! Soya bean coffee makes a nice drink if you don’t try to kid yourself that it tastes like real coffee.

The other cheerful thing about today is the amazingly good news one can deduce from today’s paper. Sicily must be almost in our possession and the gigantic Russian offensive is under way. Hitler and Mussolini have had a hasty meeting in N. Italy.

The Canadians have heard that arrangements have been made by the Americans to evacuate them shortly – lucky beggars! Will our turn ever come? We always seem to be the last in everything. Rumour has it we shall hear something soon. Let’s hope so.

I saw about 20 more Chinese were brought into prison today. Two of them could not stand up poor chaps.

Yvonne Ho sent me MY5 and greetings for my birthday. She really is an ace. I wish I could see her.