One officer took the photograph of my fiancee from me. I objected strongly and argued that he had no right to take it. He threw it back at me and ordered another search to be made. My overcoat was taken and the lining ripped out; the Egyptian pound notes fluttered to the ground. I stood motionless as the officer picked them up with a look of triumph on his face. He laughed and asked whether the photograph was worth £17-10-0. I said nothing!

Next, he took my particulars - name, rank and number.'What regiment are you in?'he asked. I refused to tell him. He stood up and struck me across the face, stating that he must know, and for my insolence I would not get a receipt for the money taken from me. I then told him that I did exactly what he would have done had he been in my shoes. That remark flattered him, and a receipt was forthcoming.

Next to the showers. All clothes were taken off, made into a bundle and put into a delousing machine. The machine looked like the boiler of a train and the clothes were put into the front of it. The door was shut and the steam pressure turned on. The steam killed all the lice, but we were soon to find out that it hatched the eggs that rested in the seams of our clothing. While this was going on I went under the shower. What ecstasy! What delight! As the hot water ran down my body and the dirt of months mingled with the soap, I realised that it was the first shower I had been under for nearly a year. My last bath had been had in Suez in November 1941 - it was now September 1942.

My three minutes were up, and my ecstasy was disturbed when an Italian guard prodded my backside with a pointed stick. Several of us grabbed this guard, a lad of about seventeen, and held him under the shower while another prodded his rear with the stick. We released him and in his soaked uniform he ran from the shower, sobbing.

Showers over, we collected our clothes, dressed, and with our shaved heads must have looked like a host of men from another world. During the last few months we had got so used to each other with long hair and beards, so the effect of our bald heads made most of us look more like skeletons than ever before. Our hope now was that Red Cross parcels would soon be issued in order that we might get some flesh on our bodies.

Some of us expected to be put in the cells, if the young guard came back to his superior officers after reporting what we had done to him, but nobody came. And so to the tented camp; each tent had room for 20 men to sleep. The floor of my tent - as were the others - was covered with straw, and after collecting two blankets, I claimed my position and lay down.

It was late now, and the lights round the camp glittered, and the sentries lounged in their sentry boxes. No meal was forthcoming that night, so sleep and silence fell on the camp. Hungry men, weak in body and some in mind, warm and comfortable in comparison to the past months in Bengasi, of the Hell Ship, and lately the river bed. Indeed,'foxes have their holes, the birds of the air a nest', and tonight Allied POW's have somewhere to lay their heads.