Starvation Edema

Interviewer: The people in Holland suffered quite a lot that last part of the war. Can you tell me a bit about your impressions of what the people, what shape they were in, how they had suffered?

They were in poor, poor shape no question about it. And I saw for the first time in my life cases of what they called starvation edema. Edema is a swelling of the body and this occurred in children. And I don't know physiologically just what causes it, but for a week or so before in Amsterdam they'd really run out of food completely. Now the Allies flew over and dropped stuff down. That helped a bit. But they were really in poor, poor shape and had it not been for food getting in and relieving the starvation rate would have been very, very high. I think that's one reason probably why and this is probably applied to a great deal of Holland but in Amsterdam, particularly why they are so very grateful and remain so very grateful to the Canadians who they associate with relief of their city. Well you couldn't help, you know, your feeling towards the Germans was, "How could this happen? " But at the same time we knew the Germans were on the run and like an animal on the run, it's vicious.