大象传媒

In India the medical officer announced he was going to run a chiropodist course for his medical orderlies. He was going to teach them how to deal with foot troubles. It's incredible to think back know, that the Army weren't organised in this respect. They never had a chiropodist.

The medical officer put a notice on the notice board, to say that if anybody had foot troubles they could go on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon and gets them attended to while he instructed his class. I put my name down and appeared one Tuesday afternoon for treatment for my corn. It seems queer again, that it should be me I don't know how many fellas went for treatment for corns. The medical officer had me out in front of the class, he had a scalpel and began pairing away at this corn of mine. As he was pairing way he said to the class, "On no account must you draw blood, if you do then pack up right away and wait until it heals before having another go." As he said that he 'nicked' my toe. I'm sure that was just to demonstrate to the class, that if you draw blood you should stop. Well I thought, "Bugger this for a lark." So I put my boot back on and that was the last he saw of me. Well it wasn't the last, this will come further in the tale. I was determined not to go back for further treatment.

Sometime later I was lying on my bed one hot afternoon. In India it got that hot on the plains, (we were under canvas at the time,) that we couldn't do anything in the daytime. The sweat just poured off us. We used to get up at about four thirty to five o'clock in the morning. We'd then do a few parades or training exercises, then after breakfast the day was ours. We went back to bed usually, because you just couldn't make use of your time, you'd be sweating too much. After teatime when it went cooler we'd do a few more parades.

This particular afternoon I was laying on my bed, when I heard this, almost a wailing coming down the lines. It sounded something like this, "Corn wallow, in growin' toe nails." At the end of every utterance, this bloke reached a higher pitch with his voice. I was curious, I thought, "What the bloody hells this coming down?" Well I looked outside the tent and I saw this little Indian bloke with a little attach茅 case walking down the lines between the two rows of tents. So I collared him showed him my corn. He had all the typical 'bull shit' on the side of his attach茅 case, 'expert and this that and the bloody other. he motioned to me, "Atcha sab," that means to say very good. He opened his case and took out a little cone shaped thing. It was like a tun dish. Then he put the narrow end of the tun dish on my corn, then he sucked the other end. I didn't feel any pain, but he showed me this little hard piece of stuff, which he said was the corn he had sucked out. Well I didn't know what the hell he'd done. I can't now remember if he then put a plaster on it, or not. All I can remember is that, a few hours later my toe was throbbing like hell. I paid the little bastard bear in mind, for so called curing my corn. A few hours later I tried to put my boot back on, it was bloody hopeless. My foot had swelled up that much. I thought, "Oh Christ what do I do now?"

I decided to report sick on a special sick parade, which you could do in the Army but they didn't think much of it, unless you were seriously sick. If you weren't sick you could be charged with malingering. I thought that there was nothing else for it, I could hardly put my foot on the ground.

When I finally managed to hop to the medical officer, I took my boot and sock off. He took one look of at it and said, "Have you been letting that little black enameled bastard give you treatment for your corn?" He knew all about this little bloke. I denied it, "No sir it has just happened. I have had this corn for a while. I've tried myself to pair it," I said. Whether he believed me or not I don't know. The outcome was that I still had the corn after all that.

This again seems incredible, this tale because after the war, I was still left with my bloody corn. Sometime after I had left the Army I went to see a pal of mine in Keithley, Yorkshire. He was an old Army mate. He had just got married and was living with his mother-in-law and family. I'd spent the weekend with them. Just before I left to catch the train, it was a nice warm sunny day in the late summer of 1946. I said, "By God, this corn gives me some jip, especially on a day like today."

So the old lady said, "Corn! You don't have to put up with corns this day and age. Have you never heard of Carnation corn caps?"

"Here we go again, another bleedin' old woman's tale," I thought to my self. "Call at the chemist at the bottom of the street, it will cost you about half a crown for a packet of carnation corn caps. Take my tip, they'll shift your corn," she said.

So I left them and went to the chemist, I bought a packet of carnation corn caps. Just as the old lady said, I only used three out of the packet of six, because the bloody corn came out with the third. I never had a problem since, apart from a red patch, which is still on my toe. It looks as if the skin is thinner there than anywhere else. Now doesn't that tell you something about those so-called experts and the medical profession and the bloody Army, the whole bleedin' lot of them. It's bloody incredible! It was incredible that the Army didn't have anyone to care for your feet, especially the infantry.

Army boots as they were, were ridiculous because they were inflexible. They were studded, hob nailed. The sole was bloody nearly half an inch thick. I called them 'cripplers'. It's no wonder that the first pair of Army boots gave me a corn. They must have caused most soldiers trouble, even if it was only for blisters appearing sooner than they should. I say this because when we met the Japanese, especially when they started to retreat, they left all sorts of equipment behind. For the first time we had a good chance to look at their gear, which we'd been told was rubbish. We were told that the Japs were a load of short sighted, very bad shots and their equipment was trash compared to ours. We were told this to boost our morale, but it backfired. When our blokes saw the quality of their equipment they were amazed. Their boots particularly. They used to have a boot called a patrol boot. it was a rubber boot. It has been said since, in accounts that I have read, that the British Army couldn't supply their soldiers with this kind of boot or similar boot, because the Japanese had conquered all the rubber supplies. They had, they had taken over Malaysia which was the country which supplied most the rubber in the world. I think that the only other country in the world was in South America and they weren't sympathetic to our war. So you would think there would be a point there., but I don't believe there was a point because, they had all those bloody years to design an Army boot. We were still being issued with these bloody 'cripplers', while the Japanese were marching in their marvelous rubber patrol boots. They were soft leather uppers and rubber soles. They were like the trainers of today, only they came up over the ankles. The main thing is that they had a split toe. That was said to be because the Japanese had a broader foot than Europeans. I never wore them, I didn't fancy wearing them because blokes used to take them of the feet of dead Japanese. That's another indication, they used to take them of dead Japanese, because everybody knew or were told how comfortable they were to wear. Well I never bloody well fancied that. I put up with the 'old cripplers'. The Japanese could march mile upon mile without any ill affect to their feet.

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