WOUNDED
Christmas 1944 24th Canadian General Hospital in East Grinstead
When we were advancing on Caen, we were supposed to have a 24-hour rest. We'd been at the front all along. I picked up the newspaper, the “Canadian Press News”, got a haircut from one of the guys and just sat down in the square. We were camped in a courtyard out on the country. I sat down in a little niche there. I just started to read the paper and cripes, the first shell that came over went BANG and killed two fellows in the courtyard. Iit hit them and killed them. I thought it was just the percussion that knocked me over and I fell underneath a half-track. This corporal and myself, we went under the wireless truck, I said,
“It’ll only last about 15 minutes and then it will be over". It got all quiet and I went to get out and "oh cripes", I said, "Oh Jesus Christ, I'm hit!" He crawled out and got the stretcher bearer who pulled me out of there. He gave me a pill, gave me a shot and put me on top of the jeep on a stretcher and hauled me back to a beach hospital. That's where I was, at a beach hospital back on the French coast.
I was there for a couple of days before I went across the channel to an English hospital. I was in the English hospital for a couple of days and then they shipped me to the 24th Canadian General Hospital in East Grinstead (near London) before they took the shrapnel out. They never did anything for me until that time. They just gave me a bath, that's all. The nurse came to give me a bath. I said, "I can bath myself', "No, no, she said, "You don't touch yourself I'll bath you". So she bathed me!
That's when they shipped me to the 24th Canadian General and that's when they operated on me to take the shrapnel out. Gangrene set in after. The doctor took the cast off. "Oh God", he said, "I'll have to operate. But I can't use the operating ward in the hospital. I’ll have to operate on you right here in the ward". They put a new cast on my leg and put a little jar of maggots inside the cast to clean the dead skin.
I was in the hospital for a little over seven month. Gangrene set in -poison – painful! They fixed it up though. We used to call the Doctor "Bob Hope". He was a comical as Bob Hope.
When his mother received the news back in Chapleau...I don't know if the letter got delayed or what, but she thought it was Albert that got hit. But it was me that got hit
When I got wounded and I was in the hospital, there was a little fellow that got wounded in the throat. He had a tube in his stomach...took his food in a glass funnel. One day he went to the officers' quarters. An officer had brought a bottle of liquor from home. The officer gave him some liquor and he got half shot! He came back to the ward and said, "Come on, Chicken", let's go to the pub". I said, "Well, okay, alright". We went out through the gate. It was not very far to the pub. They weren't supposed to let fellows from the hospitals - "blues" - into the pub. We drank beer. He'd put the beer into the funnel, wouldn't even taste it. We came back to the hospital at 10:30, half shot!
In the hospital there was also a little Scots fellow. He was shell-shocked and was wounded and in the hospital. He'd hear the "buzz-bombs" and oh God, he'd jump under the bed! He'd get under the bed every time he heard a buzz bomb.