Diphtheria Hospital

I didn’t work at Kai Tak that long. About the middle of October we came in one night and Sergeant Major Colwill, our Company Sergeant Major called me down to his room at the end he said, “I want you to volunteer to go to work in the diphtheria hospital.” You know what I said, “No way I’m getting an extra bun out of work.” He said, “Well, if you don’t volunteer I’m going to volunteer your name anyway.” And I went. We had fellows in there with dysentery and diphtheria at the same time. And one I remember was Grenadier Foxhall. We had gone in to help eat, we had to feed him and he needed a bed pan and I put him on a bed pan and finished feeding him and usually they would feebly call when they were finished and it may have been my fault I didn’t get back in soon enough but it didn’t matter anyway. We went in, when we went in to check he had died sitting on the bedpan. So it’s ah, those are things you never forget. And I worked in that hospital until I took diphtheria and then when I, my case, it sort of gone, I guess cleared up, the diphtheria cleared up I worked in the hospital until the end of it until they closed the diphtheria hospital up. There was no more fresh cases.