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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Chris Comer of Stockport Libraries on behalf of Mrs B. Lees, Harold P. Lees widow, and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Harold Lees story part 2 – The health hazards of India

Harold had joined the RAF and trained as a fitter. He was posted to India and found himself in a transit camp at a place called Worli, just outside Bombay. He and his comrades had to get used to the range of health hazards that were prevalent at the time.

“Bert had an uncle that had served in the Indian army during the early part of the century…..He lost no time in telling us what his uncle had said. ‘It’s a filthy country. It’s alive with bugs and germs and things that creep and crawl and they all do their damnedest to get their teeth into you. Some part of your anatomy is always available. There are thousands of them of all shapes and sizes that can bite or sting or burrow into your flesh, all with painful and dire consequences and very often fatal….We’d be bloody lucky if we didn’t get a serious dose of malaria before we left India….Uncle still suffered from bouts of uncontrollable shivering 20 years later. And if we got repeated doses of the disease we might end up with elephantiasis’.

Of course Bert said, ‘If we didn’t get a dose of Malaria it was a dead cert we’d end up with dysentery. There were millions of bugs lying around that infested all food and fruit and started you running like the clappers of hell for the loo. There was smallpox….Uncle knew somebody who got smallpox and recovered but his face was so disfigured that his fiancee wouldn’t have anything to do with him when he got back home.’

Then of course we might get blackwater fever. ‘You’ll know you’ve got that if you start pissing blood’ Bert’s uncle said it was nearly always fatal. There was heat exhaustion. If you ever stop sweating you’re in trouble. They try to get you to a hill station and a cooler climate before it kills you but it’s touch and go.’

We could get bitten by a rabid dog which was always fatal or bitten by a small snake called a silver krait which was nearly always fatal. Or we could get a dose of cholera that was usually fatal or we could be attacked by a cobra which could be fatal if not treated in time. ‘And if you’re bitten by one of those buggers’ said uncle ‘you’re never near a medical centre.’

We could get stung by a scorpion and the affected limb would swell up like a balloon and be bloody painful, and if it went wrong, fatal. We were sure to get prickly heat which wasn’t dangerous…..unless it turned septic and then we were in trouble. We would get dhobi itch, no doubt about that and probably athletes foot because it was caused by the same fungus as dhobi itch.’

Came the inevitable day when when somebody got fed up with Bert’s repeated stories of uncle’s warnings…..He went up to Bert and said ‘If you don’t keep you’re bleeding mouth shut I’ll string you up from the rafters’

He’d made his point because Bert never felt it was necessary to warn us of the health perils that faced us after that�

This story is an extract from a manuscript ‘Laugh I nearly died’ written by Harold P. Lees about his wartime experiences in the RAF. It has been reproduced with the permission of his widow Mrs B Lees.

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