大象传媒

VIII. Hospital and Home
Louvain, Belgium and Muswell Hill. N. London

After my stretcher had been loaded on to the Bren gun carrier I regained consciousness fitfully, to vomit over the side watched by the driver of a lorry waiting in a traffic jam out of Tripsrath.
I woke up with the stretcher on the grass inside a Forward Casualty Clearing Station tent to the moans and shrieks of wounded men; looking up and seeing a doctor in the forward hospital in his rubber apron and wellingtons holding a piece of shell. 鈥淗ere鈥� he said with a smile 鈥淚 found this in your boot. You can keep it鈥�. I eventually woke up between clean crisp sheets on 21st November in the 81st General Hospital, B.L A. with gun shot wounds in the back and a compound fracture of the tibia and fibula (the bullet is still in my chest). So from 19th to 21st apart from fleeting recollections I was oblivious to what was happening to me.
Two medical orderlies gave blood for a transfusion. Later because of difficulties in getting the blood into my arm, an incision was made just above my foot. Blood was pumped out of my chest cavity. The doctor let me hold the beaker; it was soon filled with a good head on it.
Ken who was at the hospital saw me arrive as they parked my stretcher in the hall of the hospital. He was still bandaged from the neck wound he had received. My brother managed to leave the front to visit me; that was the last time I saw him.
The 鈥楧oodlebug鈥� flying bombs droned over the hospital on their way to England.
On 5th December I was transferred from the dangerously ill to the seriously ill and admitted to the 101 British General Hospital, Western Europe, then next day flown to Lyneham Airport in Wiltshire en route to Leicester Chest Hospital via Derby City Hospital.
On arrival at Derby City Hospital the orderly removed my leg plaster in error. A fortunate mistake as it was discovered I had gas gangrene in the leg, so my Leicester trip was cancelled. My leg was replastered and fitted with a trap door over the wound, which was treated each day with a sprinkling of powder, presumably Penicillin that had thankfully only recently been discovered.
A Sergeant in the next bed and I were adopted by two local women who baked cakes, brought fruit and regularly visited us. They were very kind. Mice ran along the dado rails on the wall at the back of the beds seeking crumbs that had been dropped from food kept in the bedside lockers. The Sergeant asked our visitors to bring a mousetrap and put it on the top of his locker and caught mice during the night. The noise of the trap going off would wake him, then he would reset it; during one night he caught six mice, which was his record.
The Troop Leader wrote to me in the hospital 鈥淢y co-driver was sent off to England about 10 days (ago) to start his tedious way to a commission. If you are fit - should I say when - you will be in a far better position to start off on yours. If you want a certificate from the Squadron Leader, I鈥檒l see he writes out one if you write and tell me鈥�
I mentioned it to the doctors but they told me I would be invalided out of the army as medically unfit.
On that day of action in Tripsrath, a trap which the
which the Germans had so cunningly set, four were killed and twelve wounded.
In January 1945 I was transferred to Hillend Hospital in St Albans, a branch of Barts Hospital, for another operation on my leg. I was eventually sent to a convalescent home in a country mansion at North Mimms, North of London and discharged from the army in August 1945 after three years and seventeen days.
It was during a home visit that I was told my brother had been killed on 9th April 1945.

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