The hut was crowded with wounded, most of them lying on the damp cement floor. In places there were actually puddles of water. There were only a few bunks and Scotty had one of them. Before the Japanese had taken over, and after the garrison retreated to the Island, the Chinese had looted this camp and had removed everything portable including the bunks, which they used as firewood. Wood was very scarce in Hong Kong and also very necessary for the winter nights.
Scotty provided me with a pillow made like a box of bamboo. Huddled against him that night both of us fearing to move in order not to hurt the other. I slept uneasily, sweating and shivering, but I did sleep … the first sleep that I had in three days. This rough seafaring engineer with red beard and bloodshot eyes, his face flushed with fever, was a Florence Nightingale to me and but for his attention I would surely have died. My throat was so swollen that I could not swallow. Scotty produced, of all things, a tin of condensed milk, which he had procured through his friend the Orderly. The Orderly had obtained this tin from the meager stores in the camp. The prisoners themselves had brought the stores in on their arrival. Many of the troops who had surrendered, and also some civilians, were able to carry in what food and supplies they happened to have with them. Some arrived with large bundles. All this was confiscated by the camp Commandant, as there was no other food supply. Later the Japs issued rice with a meager ration of shriveled greens and occasionally some spoiled meat. What little of the original stores remained were used for the so-called hospitals. That’s how Scotty obtained his tin of milk. He fed me this essential by adding water and letting it trickle down my throat. That tin lasted a few days and about this time I regained the use of my hands.
There were three white doctors in the camp, two civilians and Captain Banfield. They occupied a little partitioned room at the end of the hut but as they had little or nothing to work with they were unable to do their best. They worked tirelessly to alleviate the suffering. Under Scotty’s administration I gradually recovered. The swelling of my head and throat subsided and the wounds began to heal. I was able to swallow a little rice and some vegetable soup, which the camp cook provided, but I had no other attention. My head wound healed under the same dressing, which I had put on in the field, stiff with blood and dirt. My arm must have set itself, one bone only in the lower arm being broken. My leg wound bothered me the most. The bullet had nicked the bone and bone injuries take a long time to heal.
Many others in the hut were not so fortunate. They died like flies, I should estimate about fifty percent. Every day, morning and night, someone died and there was another still shape on the cement floor that ceased to toss and groan. Every afternoon we heard the guard turn out and stand to attention as detail after detail of prisoners filed past their post carrying the bodies of those who had died. This they considered an honor to our dead. No bands played. No flags draped them. Sometimes an old blanket was used, only to be retrieved by the burying party as few of the prisoners had blankets. Wooden crosses were made and erected by the graves on the side of the hill. The next day when another party arrived the crosses were gone, stolen by the natives for firewood.
Then came the sad Christmas of 1941. Hong Kong’s remaining garrison surrendered. The Jap was jubilant, and well he might be. The two huge Howitzers beside our hut were silent, how they used to shake the building, another example of the Jap using prisoner camps and hospitals to protect his own guns.
