After helping Hamish retrieve his dentures, Madge turned to see if Dr Whittaker was still busy with a patient and decided that the reality was he probably knew far more up-to-date news than she did, because she hadn’t seen or read anything new since leaving London, and he was probably aware of that. He’s just trying to make me feel at home, she realised. Her mother’s letters had been filled with news of the family rather than details of the war effort.
Ten minutes later Dr Whittaker returned and courteously invited Madge to join his 10.30 a.m. rounds so she could see for herself that the majority of the soldiers on this ward were suffering from diseases, not combat wounds. The biggest problems included malaria, dengue fever and dysentery. ‘You name it. We do our best to treat it here.’ Madge remembered the endlessly repetitive medical lectures on the Strathnaver and was going to have a bit of fun by adding sandfly fever, sleeping sickness, typhus and yellow fever, but wisely just nodded.
Chittagong was less than fifty miles from the Burmese border so most of the VADs expected to have to deal with combat injuries. They hadn’t heard about the devastation that malaria had caused in the fighting that took place during the Japanese invasion of Malaysia and Burma. In fact, little was ever really heard or written about the heroics of what became known as the ‘Forgotten Army’. The truth was that malaria, of all the deadly diseases, came closest to undermining the Allied forces’ struggle for victory.
That was until Lieutenant General William Slim, commander of the 14th Army, issued an edict in 1943 that swung the balance of power within a remarkably short time. He reported that for every man evacuated with wounds there were 120 evacuated sick, usually with malaria. He pointed out that the annual rate of malaria was 84 per cent per annum of the total strength of his army and it was even higher amongst the forward troops. ‘A simple calculation showed me that in a matter of months at this rate my Army would have melted away.’
Ironically mepacrine, the anti-malaria drug, was first synthesised in 1931 by scientists at Bayer in Nazi Germany. But there were rumours when it was given to troops in Slim’s 14th Army that it caused impotence, made teeth fall out and even resulted in baldness. The fact it also had a side effect that turned skin yellow didn’t help either and the result was that large numbers of troops did their best not to take the drug.
General Slim brought in a system of random checks and if it was shown that less than 95 per cent of a unit had taken the absolutely foul-tasting mepacrine, he would dismiss the unit’s commanding officer. ‘I only had to sack three,’ he said. That certainly did the trick and infection rates fell dramatically. Another of General Slim’s edicts was that troops must not wash or bathe in the open after twilight when mosquitos were so active. Unfortunately he broke his own rules and rued the evening when he had a quick wash-down in the open and ended up in hospital in the spring of 1944 with malaria.
As Madge followed the doctor on his rounds in the BOR ward they stopped at the bed of George, a farmhand with blond hair and a nose he broke after falling off a horse. He had been on the Indian subcontinent for less than six months and after religiously taking his mepacrine went out on his first jungle sortie full of optimism that whatever happened to him he was unlikely to catch malaria, the doctor explained. For just a split second a look of deep concern flickered across the face of the doctor who was doing his level best to lift the youngster’s spirits. George dripped with sweat and looked weary beyond his years. His face was that awful pasty yellow and he had just got over a bout of the shakes.
‘Nurse Graves, this looks like your first patient in India,’ said the doctor as he nodded to George and left to continue his rounds. It all seemed familiar to Madge, who moved almost instinctively to pick up a cool clean towel and used it to smooth that troubled brow. Her gentle smile had exactly the effect the doctor had hoped for and George seemed to relax and eventually drifted into a fitful, but nevertheless lengthy sleep. She used the time to familiarise herself with the modus operandi of the BOR ward, which she noted with some relief wasn’t that different from the system at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, but seemed far more relaxed. Despite being busy, she saw that the doctors and nurses smiled and joked with one another.
It was late afternoon and close to the end of Madge’s first shift when she noticed that George seemed more alert than he had in the morning. When she went over to see how he was, he asked what her name was and clearly wanted to talk.
‘Please could I have a drink?’
After she helped him sit up and quench his thirst, George poured his heart out. By now Madge should have long been off duty and would have loved to have had a relaxing pot of tea in the nurses’ mess, but most of all a shower. Instead she made sure he took his foul-tasting medicine, and was pleased to note that his morning temperature, which at one stage had reached a worrying 105 degrees Fahrenheit, had started to drop. So she listened.
George told her his unit had been on patrol in the Arakan for a fortnight and it had rained almost constantly. Not just showers, but heavy, driving rain that left everybody absolutely soaking wet.
‘Instead of easing off, the rain became worse and the swarms of mosquitos became larger,’ he said. ‘At
