Dysentery in the Camp

I was the first one at the camp to have dysentery. And I am, I don’t know if I am the only guy that got out but one of the only guys that got out. And I had it first. I don’t know how I made it, you know, through there. But some men were going twenty-two days without going to the can. They weren’t getting enough to eat to go to the can. I was going forty times a day, not passing nothing but trying to all the time. After the mucus lining in my intestine started to come out, you know, had little gobs of it when I was passing out. But straining all the time to go, and oh Jesus, I went through hell for years for that.

Interviewer: How long did you have the dysentery?

Until I got home.

Interviewer: Okay, so it was right through until the very end of your captivity.

I had over a hundred ulcers of the intestine when I come home.