CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG
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a more cheerful atmosphere became apparent; most people used the contents intelligently to make the basic diet more palatable while the thought that we were not forgotten did much to improve morale.
Six months later, in May 1943 a second consignment of parcels arrived. Some of our patients had already received a second parcel in Sham Shui Po and those who had done so were allotted one parcel between two men from our second allocation. All others in the hospital received one parcel each, but as before a number of parcels showed shortages.
On 1 September 1944, sixteen months later we received a splendid consignment of parcels from the Canadian Red Cross, enough to issue two to each person in hospital. A few parcels remained after this distribution and I took these into the store and used the tinned foods for general messing. As usual some parcels were incomplete though the wrappings were intact, and the shortages in this case and perhaps in others must have resulted from bad packing.
It was only three days later when on 4 September 1944 we received a further 144 Canadian parcels and issued two between five men. As before a few parcels not allocated in the foregoing way were broken up, the tinned food being used for general messing while such items as prunes, chocolate, raisins, biscuits etc. were added to bulk stores of similar nature received three days earlier and used to make 133 prizes which were raffled among 315 people.
No further individual parcels were received, and therefore each member of staff and each long-term patient received a total of just under 41 parcels between 1942 and 1945, though patients admitted from Kowloon may have had a fraction more. In January 1943 the Red Cross organization in Hong Kong had started to send in bulk stores of food to us. These included tins of meat and vegetable, preserved meat, sardines, condensed milk, marmalade, jam, tomato catsup, syrup, Yershey's milk powder, shark liver oil, dripping, hen and duck eggs, barley, fresh limes, dried peas, soy beans, soy bean powder, soy sauce, peanut butter, peanut oil, Chinese and cube sugar, tea and cocoa. In January we had two intakes and further intakes were spread at irregular intervals, one in May, one each in June and July and two in October. In August 1943 Sergeant Seino told me that we could expect no further supplies but in 1944 we had two intakes in each month from March to August inclusive, one each...