The next morning I awoke amongst the other women and children in the muddle of the dining room floor where everyone had been sleeping on top and over everyone else in the hurry of that first chaotic night, but then after breakfast of the usual fare, the officers came to check the numbers involved and who had children. The mothers with children were allocated the few empty cabins, and we were in that happy position, Mother beingonce again able to enjoy the luxury of a bed after three weeks of hammocks, whilst I slept on a mattress on the floor. The strangest twist of this story which at the time as a young boy I found completely incongruous, was that now as prisoners of the Germans, we had a more luxurious and well appointed cabin with 2 proper wooden beds and windows leading onto the deck, which could not in any way bear comparison with the pokey hole that we had actually paid for on the Nankin! Also on deck was a small outdoor swimming pool which could also be used by the women and the officers from our ship as well as the German Officers. We shared our cabin with a Mrs Gabriel Lyons, a French lady from Saigon who had come over to Malaya about a year before in a hurry after the sudden death of her French Army husband . A few months later she had married Capt Ivor Lyons a scion of one of the county families in England, and like a lot of others had managed to escape from Malaya after a hazardous trip being constantly bombed by aircraft following the Japanese invasion. Lyons once in Australia became one of the pioneers and originators of Combined Operations in the Far East, working with small craft dropped by submarines behind Japanese lines. He caused havoc by sinking shipping in Singapore with limpet mines and later he attacked the Japanese in a similar way in Java where he was captured, and cruelly beheaded by the Japanese. The bravery of these exploits were officially recognised when he was awarded the posthumous DSO for his gallant services. Gabby as we called her, had a small three month baby Clive, of whom she was very casual and nonchalant, more often than not neglecting him, leaving him crying continuously because she could not be bothered to change and wash nappies, and perform the normal regular motherly caring duties. She was an extremely attractive woman, quite petite with a soft olive complexion, high cheek bones and sensuous lips. Mother swore that she must have had a bit of Indo-Chinese blood, in her ancestry to give her such strikingly good looks, but she said her family were from Provence originally. Her father had been the commandant of the French Military Penitentiary in Saigon, and she had married her first husband, a French army officer, who she said was continually drunk and beat her. He died suddenly at home, probably from an excess of alcohol but in very suspicious circumstances, and to avoid any hint of scandal or problems with her father’s position, he had hurriedly sent her off on the first boat to Malaya to sit out the inquest. A few months later she had met and married Lyons, who must have been captivated by her looks, charms and her soft French accent. I got on well with her, as did Mother with whom she would constantly chat in French and we all would together talk a lot. She always dressed in a provocatively tight black skirt, slitted below the knee, Chinese style, and wore an open very elegantly cut white silk blouse. The other passengers disliked her intensely not only for being so chic, but also because she was aloof, haughty and had a rather supercilious disdainful Gallic manner, and the neglect of her baby child who was always crying, also did not help. After getting our cabins, and then rolling in the fuel line, we departed from the Regensburg and finally got under way at 11.00 am that morning, with a lot of cheering and waving from both vessels, setting a North East course, from which we then knew that we would be heading for Singapore or even possibly though more

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