大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Lin Freeman of Radio Derby CSV on behalf of Mrs Jennifer Bayley and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Some years ago, when I was at senior school and learning about the Second World War, I was set an assignment to find out from a close relative the things that they found the scariest and traumatic during the war. My father answered without hesitation. It was strange to me as it wasn鈥檛 the fighting.

Whilst he was in North Africa he fell ill with dysentery. The ward in the hospital where he was taken was full of soldiers all with dysentery. Nasty as it is you would not think it could be by any stretch of the imagination one of the scariest moments of the war. But it was for my father. Even though he had seen fierce fighting and other horrors. Being in the middle of that ward terrified him.

As one by one the men were dying. Till there was only one person left alive. In the middle was my father. The only one to survive.

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