Ken Bush's War Part 3 - Hospital & Recovery

We went off and our driver found every hole every bump he could find, oh dear, it was a nightmare of a journey. Shaking up and down, with the pain of the wound and the pain of the shingles, oh dear I was in a terrible state. Eventually we got to a proper hospital, a field hospital they call it, it’s not permanent but it was as well organised as a hospital, and they grabbed hold of me again, and took off what the others had put on and redressed in and tied a big luggage label round my neck. I couldn’t read what it was but it turned out eventually that it was telling everybody that I’d got to have an injection every so often, like every hour or something like that. And that they had to put down the time of the injection down so as it worked out on my journey, which was pretty long, I went by road, rail, right through to France from Germany, and they’d look at the luggage label at times and they’d say right, well he had it half an hour ago, had to do a bit of mental arithmetic, had it half an hour ago this journey’s going to take a good hour, better give him another one now. And so it went on. And course this time between jabs seemed to get shorter and I was being constantly jabbed. Eventually I ended up in a Canadian hospital, I remember clearly laying there on the bed, great big lumberjack type bloke came up to me holding a plate, a real old fashioned cooked breakfast, everything you wanted, bacon, sausages, the lot. Do you want this and I said no thank you, he said didn’t think you would, do you mind if I have it. I said no, have it. So he sat there in front me with relish, grease running down his chin, slobbering it all up. Anyway of course I got another jab and off we went and I said we went by train, I could hear the wheels going clickity, clack, I’ve no idea where we were, no one said or told me, they plonked me on change stretchers and changed around and into that, into an ambulance, on the train and we eventually arrived at an airport. And you can tell your in an airport cause the wind blows and I was getting colder and colder and one of them said to me oh you’ll be alright soon lad, you’ll soon be home, so I said where’s that, well Cardiff, I said well I come from London. Oh no, no, no, no this is going down to Swindon and then they’re taking her onto Cardiff and so I duly arrived at the Whitchurch Hospital in Cardiff. I hadn't washed, hadn't eaten anything, hadn't had a drink but I was beginning to come round a bit and be a bit more sensible and I saw this girl approaching me with a needle. And I lost control, I screamed no more, not a needle, oh I can't take another one, and they looked at me as if i'd gone daft, which I suppose I had and said it’s not a needle it’s a thermometer, gonna take your temperature. So they took my temperature and then they started to take off my dressings that they’d put on somewhere in the journey, they’d put on scotch tape as they call it, stuff made out of plasters, this is about 18 inches wide and it went round my body and doctor said, what have we got here, pulled it up in one corner which you know when you take a plaster off, tiny one it is, he said what have we got here, slapped it back down again. What had happened they’d put this plaster over my shingles and it was virtually taken all the heads of the shingle off, it was a ruddy mess. Isolation they said and they put me into a little cell type off the ward, but it’d got a door like a horse stable, shut at the bottom and the top. I was in there away from everybody so I can hear the chaps in the ward chatting, singing around and having a good time, radio on and everything and I was stuck there. There was many a time I woke up and I said to a nurse have we had tea yet and they said oh yes sorry it came round about half an hour ago, I said but I didn’t have it, aaah we must have missed you, I’ll get you next time. And that was the way it went.

I made pretty good progress in the hospital, and pulled round quite well and I was then transferred to Miskin Manor, just outside of Cardiff for convalescing. I have been speaking to a welsh chap since and I enquired about Miskin Manor and he said they’ve made that into a first class hotel. He said its so posh no one can afford to go in and use it, so we didn’t wreck it. When peace in Europe was declared I and another chap decided we’d skip back to London for the celebrations, it turned out to be a complete waste of time really but the experience was alright. We got lifts on VE day, various vans, public transport was absolutely finished for the day and anyway we got to London, arrived at the South London on an open lorry, and course we were still wearing our hospital blues, you know white shirt, red tie, blue trousers and we got, well sloshed really, wines and that were being offered. But eventually we got back to Cardiff and heard that they’d had a smashing time in the hospital and I wish we’d stayed there.

Then we finished with hospital, hospital finished with us, we’d all healed we had corridor for races in their wheelchairs, and you know, we’d been alright, we’d looked after ourselves and we were all ok. So we eventually had to go back to the army and I was sent to Trentham Gardens, just outside Stoke. All of us by that time and we went together. It turned out that two of the older companions devised a scheme to get us transferred to Richmond Park, Kingston on the outskirts of London. They’d got some pretty good excuses, one of them, his brother had been killed in the war, and his mother was widowed and he wanted to get to London to keep an eye on her and all that and the other one is a similar sort of thing, death in the family and he needed to get to London. And I was the third one to go in, you know, left right, left right, left right, and the officer I could see was in a hurry, he wanted to get to his lunch you see and he sort of picked up his baton stick and he said, same reason? Yes sir. Passed. So I passed. I could go with them. And we went to London. And it was a lovely summer and we did all the physical tests, we got quite fit. You know really fit.
Eventually finished our training in Kingston, Richmond Park. We then had to, I was posted to units. I went to Newtown in Wales, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Newtown, it’s the most dreary place you can ever imagine, it always seemed to be raining and we were there and they were gonna get us fit to be sent out to Japan to finish that war off for them. One day we were on parade and the sergeant said I need a volunteer who can ride a bicycle. It was the oldest gag in the army; nobody actually says yes until he selects it you could end up picking potatoes or something like that for a week if you weren’t careful. But I in my usual manner said I can ride a bike sir. So there I was now Company runner and the bicycle was all tuned, brake blocks sorted out, right tyre pressures, so I went for a ride round in town so I’d know where I was if I had to go on any emergency call, came back into the company office, propped my bike against the wall, sat down and there was a corporal sitting over the other side of the desk and I said do I get many runs out, and he said I don’t expect you to get any atall. Sit there he said, you’ll be all right. Afternoon I was still sitting there and he said do you want to do something, can you give me hand so I said OK and he explained to me what he was doing. He was doing part 1 orders and part 2 orders. In those days everything was done by hand, no computers or anything like that. Part 1 orders consisted of things that were going to happen today and tomorrow, list of guards, different duties of that sort. Part 2 orders consisted of reporting on promotions, transfers and various things like that. We were a unit, a holding unit, Royal Welch Fusiliers, whenever they needed a detachment we would send them. I say we, that’s what the job was in part 2 orders. So I sat with this corporal, we got on quite well together, and we prepared list of corrections and things like that and after a while he said what duties are you down for tomorrow. And I said same again I’ll be an orderly or on parade no he said, you come here; report here and you can help me and my assistant. So I said well, can't do that, oh yes you can, yes you can, if they ask where your going just say company office and they’ll be alright. So the next morning, Monday morning I reported to him, not to the parade when they were all outside. And after a week or so of that he said you’re getting this ok, we better promote you now to corporal, or lance corporal. Lance Corporal with back pay. Right that’s ok then, so I'm now a lance corporal. Yes so I said and, he said and we’ll give it a week and we’ll promote you to full corporal he said because I'm going, I’ve got a posting in Birkenhead where I live, he said and I'm going, he said you won’t see any more of me after that. By this time I'm fully confident Ok right and just before he departed he gave me a list to check, of course in the Royal Welch Fusiliers you’ve got so many surnames the same, Jones and Williams and Edwards, there’s so many of them you have to separate them all by their regimental number. And we went down this list and I said oh there we are, Bush, I'm on this list which was a list that had been complied for the next shipment to Japan, and he looked at me and said your not going on that, lets cross your name so I duly crossed my name off, and the list was posted and my name wasn’t on it and they weren’t. I did see them again when they came back actually but they went and I carried on with the job, he got his transfer to Birkenhead, his home town, and never saw him again.

We had a brief time at headquarter barracks at Wrexham where I did share a room with a gang of rugby boys, as I said before they would carry on a conversation in Welsh, drop your name in like Corporal Bush in English, and you never knew what they were talking about. It was eerie really. Anyway we then moved to Worcester and we were at Worcester barracks, doing the same job, same situations, everything the same and then after a while I began to hear rumours that we were going back in force to the headquarters at Wrexham. Now this worried me a bit because having been promoted to corporal didn’t mean that I was capable of taking a parade of six hundred men or whatever and doing all this get your hair cut son and all that, I thought hello I'm gonna get caught out here. I shall lose my job because they’ve got someone doing part two orders and I’ll be rumbled. So as I said we had to do the posting for various units and I scanned through the papers and found that there was a vacancy that required a corporal at Rugeley Prisoner of War Camp. They wanted him in charge of the guard 24 hour’s a day type of thing and looking after two cages of German prisoners. And so without ceremony I posted myself to Rugeley, packed my bag and went. Now I was on hot bricks everything was correct by the book, I don’t know who, I hadn't left the job for anyone else to carry on. And I knew the unit was on the move, I don’t know what happened. Anyway I stayed at Rugeley. Well I eventually arrived at Rugeley, picked up a lorry outside the station, naturally you say to the driver what sort of place is it, he sort of curled his nose up and your prepared for the worst.

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