CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG
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too much water, a complaint which I imagine rose from a need to save electricity which powered the water pumps in the mains system in the Island. In the first half of 1944 we drained our reservoir twice to repair leaks and on the first occasion we found quite a number of British rifles, pistols, grenades and a substantial quantity of ammunition which British troops had obviously jettisoned during their retreat. During hostilities R.A.M.C. personnel were armed to protect their patients if need be, but all such arms in Bowen Road together with those which had come in with patients had been withdrawn and returned to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps as the end of hostilities approached. I never heard that firearms were ever used by medical personnel. We were never asked to explain the presence of arms after they were discovered in the reservoir. Mains water was cut off intermittently from mid 1944 onwards and in November we read in the Hongkong News that water supplies would be cut off in a large part of the city of Victoria, while we in the hospital were warned that we might possibly get a mains supply on one day out of three. Our engineers thereupon laid a water pipe from the reservoir to the kitchen with tanks which were baths removed from the hospital, at the reservoir and on the kitchen roof. Provision was made for showers and special arrangements were made for gardeners. The sappers were required to extend our water supply to the Japanese guardhouse and they also dammed a nullah above the hospital to provide a supply for the Japanese administration. The pipes were taken from the handrails on the stairs in the hospital and elsewhere, and the work was timely for the mains supply ceased at the end of November 1944. We then chlorinated our drinking water in containers in the wards and hoisted water to the upper ward levels in buckets using a system of pulleys. Thereafter we relied on hill-water for our supplies though in our new quarters in Kowloon after March 1945 the mains supply system was operating.
The mains supply of electricity, interrupted for a time during hostilities, was restored after our surrender and this was extremely valuable to us in the long months of 1942 and 1943 when we had so many seriously ill men. Each ward had a small electric instrument sterilizer which we were allowed to retain and they proved of the greatest value in preparing drinks, small dishes of food and boiling eggs etc. for patients. Our skilful engineers kept them serviced and they were used as long as we had any current from the