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Description
Mr. Ganong talks about being aware of the poorer conditions prior to his time in service, and describes the experience of a wounded friend captured by the Germans.
Transcription
I had a friend. I just met him three years ago and he was in the 5th Battalion from Vancouver. The ones, those soldiers that were over there in ‘15 and ‘16, in the first half of ‘16, had it a lot worse than we had it, that went over there in the middle of ‘16 and after that. You know, the organization wasn’t right, the rations weren’t good. This man was up at, you remember Ypres, at the first gas attack. He was there, he got wounded and badly wounded in the hip with shrapnel and was taken prisoner. He was taken to Germany and they didn’t get care for several days and gangrene set in in his hip. And one day a German doctor came into them. And he looked at him and he says, “Sir, we owe you an apology. We know you’re a brave man and here we are, we let you get in this condition.” And he got busy and it took him three months to cure him from this hip and then he was a prisoner for three years. They did cure him. He’s alive today. He’s ninety-two years old. I like to visit him.