Winnipeg Grenadiers

Mr. Flegg offers insight into how hard work and starvation reduce men to skeletons, but whose spirit still enabled many of them to work and survive.

Mr. Flegg survives a dangerous voyage to Japan. His first ship is holed and makes it to port listing badly. He is transferred to a tanker which is sailing in a convoy. The convoy is torpedoed, but his vessel escapes only to then face a storm with thirty foot seas.

About 50 men, including Mr. Flegg, witness one of Doolittle's bombing raids while he is a patient at Bowen Road Hospital. Their cheers enrage Captain Saito, the chief medical officer and a judo expert. He lines up the men, judo chops them all unconscious and has his guards "put the boots" to them to wake them up.

The Kamloops Kid was a notorious guard at Sham Shui Po. Mr. Flegg provides two examples of how devious and sadistic this man was.

Mr. Flegg describes being harassed by the guards in the barracks. The command 'Kiotski!' or 'Attention!' was quickly learned. A slow reaction or an improper bow usually resulted in being rifle butted.

The atrocities he witnessed against Chinese civilians still weighs heavily in Mr. Flegg's memories.

Mr. Flegg describes crabs, lice, bedbugs and cockroaches, which were often roasted and eaten, as being persistent pests in the POW camps in Hong Kong.

Beriberi was another serious condition afflicting the POW’s at Sham Shui Po. There were two types; dry and wet. Mr. Flegg describes how the dry beriberi, or electric feet, made grown men cry. He contracted the wet variety, which caused massive fluid retention in different parts of the body. Mr. Flegg discusses the consequences of this edema.

Mr. Flegg describes praying to die during his worst episodes of malaria. Also a victim of dysentery, he describes the disgusting living conditions in the isolation ward.

Mr. Flegg credits their regimental doctor, Dr. Reid, with helping many of the men through their prison ordeal. Despite having no medical supplies, his kind and sympathetic treatment of the inmates makes him a saint in Mr. Flegg's opinion.