My Mouth was Just Raw

Heroes Remember

My Mouth was Just Raw

Transcript

Well the biggest thing was diphtheria. The doctor we had with us, like the guys that died with it, he tried to make a serum and innoculate the other guys with. I don’t know any medical, I don’t know the medical terms or anything but he was a very smart doctor. I had beri-beri and pellagra, but I didn’t have dysentery. Pellagra it causes sores, my mouth was just raw. And finally this doctor, he got hold of some garlic, and that cured the mouth, the rawness in your mouth. Cause you couldn’t hardly stand even to eat your rice, your mouth was just raw. I’ll tell you something that I had to go through. Like, I was never circumcised when I was a kid. And I was, beri-beri so bad that well my foreskin’s... so I couldn’t urinate. So he got four guys to sit on me and he cut my foreskin off, and it was a dull knife, I’ll tell you. And then I had nine teeth pulled without anaesthetic also, by him. And I, I don’t know, I broke out with boils, had lots of boils. But they wouldn’t let you stay sick, you had to keep working. Unless you were so sick you couldn’t walk. They had a hospital there, but you didn’t go to the hospital very often.

Description

Mr. Agerbak describes in graphic detail some of the illnesses and treatments he endured in the POW camps.

Knud Agerbak

Knud Agerbak was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1918. His family of seven emigrated to Canada in 1927, settling in Manitoba where his father worked as a farm labourer. Mr. Agerbak started working on a farm at the age of 13. He then loaded freight for the railroad, and finally worked in a pulp mill. His sense of patriotism led him to enlist the day that war was declared in 1939. He tried to enlist in the PPCLI, but not having reached the age of 21 didn’t have naturalized Canadian status and was turned down. The Winnipeg Grenadiers did , however, accept him. He performed garrison duty in both Bermuda and Jamaica before his deployment to Hong Kong. Hong Kong quickly surrendered, and Mr. Agerbak spent time on labour gangs at KaiTak airport in Hong Kong, and the Yokohama shipyards and northern iron mines in Japan.

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