Bad Outbreak of Boils

The food in the British navy was quite different from the Canadian, and it was meagre. I think that if I hadn’t been able to put a lot of bread in my soup I would never have survived, but I did. But when I was sent back to the Canadian naval base in Scotland in preparation for coming back to Canada I had a really bad outbreak of boils. I had them on my arms and I developed a large carbuncle on my neck, I couldn’t hold my head up, and I had them on my face. The admiral came up to inspect the troops at Greenwich and he went down the lines, we were all lined up. He stopped in front of me and he said, “What’s the matter with you, sailor? ” And I said, “Boils, sir.” He said, “Bad food, eh? ” Well, my automatic reply was, “No sir, the food is wonderful, sir.” And that kind of surprised him, but the captain turned to the executive officer and said, “You better see that man gets some leave.” So I thought maybe I’d get a few days off. It didn’t work that way. That was the one time in my life that I, in my service, that I felt that I was unfairly dealt with. I think about two days later I was in the sick bay getting treatment for the boils. I had these hot foments on my face and neck and so on, and there was a pipe from my group to muster and I thought, I got all this stuff on. I’m not going to go, I’m going to stay here and finish my medical treatment. That resulted in my being charged with absent from my place of duty, and I was real annoyed over that especially when I went before the commander and he had that stupid statement. He said, “Sailor, don’t you know there’s a war on? When you’re called, you better be there.” I thought, sure I know there’s a war on. I just came back from Normandy, battle up north and so on. He gave me 14 days confined to barracks. So they sent us home and I was told that we could see the Queen Mary down on the firth from where we were, and we’re going home on the Queen Mary so I went to my divisional officer and I, “What do I do about this 14 days? I don’t want to be under punishment when I get back to Canada.” But he told me, he looked at the calendar, he said, “No,” he said, “it’ll be all over. The 14 days will be up by the time you get home so don’t worry about it.” I said, “Okay.” We got onto the Queen Mary and our group was called to muster again and I was part of a group that were taken and set apart. The rest of them, I don’t know what they did, but my group, our duty on the ship - and remember I’m under punishment - my duty on the ship was to be a military police on the women’s quarters all the way home. What a deal!