Sickness

Heroes Remember

Sickness

Transcript

Dysentery, beriberi, pyuria sores like, ya know, different kinds of sores. Dysentery was the bad one, really Interviewer: What would happen if you had dysentery? Well, if you had it bad you may go, you'd spend most of your days sitting on the can and it would get so bad that your bowels would just come out, you'd drop your bowels out, and it was just terrible stuff. You had to push your bowels back in, nothing for it, they had nothing to give you for it, you just had to survive and try to get over it, you know. There were two kinds of beriberi; the wet and the dry. The wet beriberi, you'd go to bed at night and get up in the morning and your legs would be like this, you know, and the doctor would take a needle, he'd take the water off, you know, he'd draw the water off the legs. Dry beriberi was your finger tips and your toes would start and the extremities would just dry. Your nerves ends would die and just horrible, horrible. They had in there what they called an agony ward. And these people that had this dry beriberi so bad they couldn't walk and we'd work in the airport all day and we'd come back in the night and if you were able you went in and a took a friend and you rubbed his feet like, ya know, and maybe you'd rub his feet for an hour and that would be the only hour of the day that he would sleep, that's the only peace he'd have in the day the rest of the time he was in such agony that he couldn't. But we, the ones that could would go back and, you know, at least give them an hour and they would sleep sound because, you know, you'd soothe those nerve ends. But they, terrible, they'd lose their feet, lose their toes, lose their fingers. I weighed 218 lbs, 217 lbs and when I was released, of course, I weighed 109 when they got me but, oh yes, I lost weight, everybody lost weight, considerable weight.

Description

Mr. McAuley talks about the illnesses he and his fellow prisoners suffered.

William Archibald McAuley

William Archibald McAuley was born on February 4th,1921 in McAuley, Manitoba. He worked on the farm while going to school. After graduating, he worked at a neighbors farm for seven dollars and fifty cents a month until he joined the army on September 17th,1939 when he was eighteen years old.

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