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DONALD C. BOWIE
attacks on defences which were hardly dented. The areas in which fighting was taking place were still thousands of miles away from us and the newspaper constantly asked the subtle question as to whether the American losses were worth incurring.
In the hospital 1943 was a drab year for us; the number of patients dropped from 341 on 1 January to 234 on 31 December. Drafts of patients for admission from P.O.W. camps came on ten out of the twelve months and on each occasion patients were discharged. The condition of incoming patients showed a distinct improvement as the year went on though many patients and staff had an additional affliction to endure, that of intestinal worms. Suspicion fell upon a number of food items including vegetables and Chinese brown sugar as the vehicle of infection, but we never established that any one substance was the culprit.
On three separate occasions I was handed sums of military yen by the Japanese in cash, the donors being the Red Cross Societies. One such gift came from the Canadian Society and was marked for Canadian troops only and was so distributed. Apart from this all other gifts had no limitations placed upon them. On each occasion the available cash was divided and paid equally to all except commissioned officers. Each man thus received 40 yen over the year while Canadians had an extra 30 yen, and in all cases I gained a few yen for my Commanding Officer's Fund from small surpluses. The Central Hospital Fund also benefited from money contributed by officer prisoners in camp in Kowloon which was transmitted to us by the Japanese. The signatures of some patients on the receipt sheets were indecipherable scrawls, because they were quite unable to coordinate their movements.
Thirty patients died during the year, and by the end of October 104 of our men were buried in cemeteries in and around the hospital. In April we were given a tin of black paint by the Japanese at our request to allow us to paint the names of the dead on the very well made wooden crosses constructed by us to mark their graves. In December a Japanese interpreter appeared saying that it was his job to see to it that graves were properly prepared and marked and that plans of these existed. I was very proud of the work that our men put in, and the graves of those who had died were properly prepared, identified and maintained. Usually each grave held only one body; occasionally two shared a grave, and on one occasion three men were buried together when they had died