Bugs 1.

Why Bugs 1? Because there’ll be Bugs 2 in due course. Lots of bugs in the tropics remember.

In Singapore, the heat and humidity bred insects like – well, like flies I suppose. Not that flies themselves were the main problem. In that we were lucky, compared with our comrades who served in places like Aden and Egypt, where the flies were organised into brigades, with officers and NCOs, and were practically running the country.
That, though, left several species of flying annoyances. Because we were short on entomological knowledge we called them one of two things. They were either “weirdies” or “flying kitbags.”
Weirdies were, well, weird. And some of them could nip you. Flying kitbags were huge flying beetles – so big they seemed to be defying the laws of physics, managing to keep aloft with what looked like impossible wingloadings. They were peaceful things, content to lumber around under the eaves of the huts where, presumably they had nests. Maybe they weren’t harmless at all. Maybe they had time expired National Servicemen cocooned in their nests, hoping for death like those missing crewmen in “Alien”
There were ants, too. Big, and fierce and red, like Russian soldiers. They made it impossible to sit on the grass outside the barrack rooms at Tyersall. In fact it wasn’t advisable even to stand still for any length of time. You got the feeling they could strip a horse and rider to skeletal form in short order, like the African jobs I once read about in a horror story.
They were clever devils, too. I once saw them do something that I’ve kept it to myself, because I didn’t think anyone would believe me. So do I tell you now? I only hope that among the half dozen or so people who get to read this there’ll be someone with enough ant-based knowledge to confirm that I really could have seen it.
I was in the shower. The dividing walls between the shower stalls were of brick faced with plaster, and they were about six feet high, finishing well short of the ceiling. One afternoon, I was showering blissfully, enjoying the feeling of the day’s sweat rolling away, when I became aware of movement on the wall beside me. Stepping hurriedly out, I got my glasses from the washbasin shelf where I’d left them and went back to look.
There, on the dividing wall of the shower I’d just left was a working party -- I can think of no better description – of ants. They were half way up the wall, and they were carrying the dead carcass of a very large cockroach.
Imagine the excitement in antland! Think of the joy as they made their way home with the biggest lump of food anyone had captured all week.
Still, they were calm enough when I spotted them, and they continued to work their way up the wall.
The problems they were solving were considerable. The cockroach was hundreds of times bigger and heavier than any one of them. The wall was vertical, and so somehow they had not only to drag its weight, but they also had to keep from dropping it.
What interested me, though, was what they were going to do when they got to the top – the wall didn’t go all the way up remember, so they were faced with transferring their burden from the vertical face of the wall to the horizontal surface on top. How would they do it? I stayed and watched.
Eventually, they reached the top of the wall, where they stopped. They were carrying the insect on its back, and lengthways --- fore and aft so to speak, with its head leading. You can now imagine, can’t you, how they were fixed. The problem was how to get enough leverage to tip the dead cockroach over from the vertical to the horizontal. They tried, several times, and each time they failed. They got the cockroach so that it was ready to be tipped, but they just couldn’t get enough force to bear on it to complete the job. They could get it tilted a bit, but the final topple evaded them.
What’s amazing, of course, is that the ants somehow knew what the limits were – that if they tried too hard they risked losing control and letting the cockroach drop.
So what did they do? First they tried something incredible but rather stupid. They took the cockroach back down the wall a few inches and turned it through 180 degrees and then brought it back up to try again. But what they hadn’t realised, being common squaddies and not members of the SAS, was that with the cockroach facing the opposite way, the problem was exactly the same. It was still on its back, still lengthways.
“What to do now, Lads?” That was clearly the issue in ant city now. They were not about to give up, however. What they did was what you’ve already guessed and what they should have done to start with, which was take the cockroach down the wall again and turn it not through 180 degrees but through 90 degrees so that now they were taking it up the wall sideways. As a result when they presented it to the top of the wall again, the task was easier – probably less leverage needed, and it was possible to get more ants engaged in the tipping. So, over went the cockroach, and off went the working party along the top of the wall, with renewed vigour. I swear I heard faint singing, fading away into the distance like the Red Army Choir at the end of one of their marching songs.

A month or two ago I asked a world authority on ants about this. He confirmed I hadn’t been dreaming, but pointed out that I’d made a sexist assumption and that the ants I saw were undoubtedly female.