70 years ago: Hong Kong's wartime diaries

Today the European war completes its fifth year and embarks on its sixth! I do not think it will last for much of the sixth year. A number of the more optimistic people in camp have lost bets on this date, as they had wagered the European War would be over by Sept 3rd. Well, there may be something in my date of 17th Oct. 

On Friday last we had another most pleasant surprise: the Japanese Authorities sent us in ox-tongue! So since the electricity has been off we have had pheasant twice, then grouse and now tongue. It arrived frozen in blocks. I am told it will take 3 months for the inner chambers of the cold storage depot to thaw out so we continue to live in hope! This time there was enough tongue for about 3 ½ ozs each. That was supposed to last three days, but having no refrigeration of our own we had to eat it at once – not that we minded! It was boiled and allowed to cool and then cut in slices. Each person received quite a decent slice. Then cooks made a delicious vegetable stew with sweet potato, taro and onions cooked in meat liquor with rice flour thickening. It really was a delicious meal. If we get a few more like that we shall soon be putting on weight.

Yvonne stayed in bed today with a slight feverish cold, it may have been from a touch of flu, but she is better now and will be up tomorrow. That reminds me that on Jan 16th this year I went to hospital for four days. I caught a heavy chill and had in addition an upset tummy. By the evening I had a pretty high temperature and Y sustained quite a shock when she borrowed a thermometer and found I had sent the mercury up to 105’. Dr Smalley came and packed me off to the hospital. They thought it might be malaria and took a blood smear and dosed me with quinine. The blood test proved negative so then I was dosed with castor oil, followed next morning with salts and then I was put on a course of strepticide. Their second guess was dysentery but in the end they put it down as enteritis, a mild form of dysentery. I still think it was a heavy chill on top of an upset stomach. The strepticide kept me awake for the whole of the third night. I did not sleep a wink. I thought of everything under the sun and got so bored that at 4 a.m. I just sat up in bed and smoked a cigarette! The following night I was given a sleeping draught and slept like a log.

I quite enjoyed my brief stay in hospital, especially as I was given half a pint of milk each day. Y used to visit me in the afternoons, bringing a thermos of tea and we had tea with milk in it! When repatriation was first mooted, the hospital called for volunteers amongst the men to train as male nurses for the men’s wards, as the QA’s and the Naval nurses were on the repatriation list. Some of the bankers, who had recently come into camp, volunteered and Mike Holmden, Alec Kennedy, King and a man named Evans (who had come out from England and driven a truck on the Burma Road) used to sweep the ward, wash the bedridden patients and make our beds. They have kept on with the work ever since.