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[Page 149]
side tearing a hole out, the right jaw was also fractured halfway to the chin, causing the abcess to form there. At Netley I was fed on milk and jelly as I could eat nothing else, I got an occasional egg too; just before I left. I used to dilute the porridge with the milk and drink it. We used to get some home papers here a lady used to bring them round. After a while I got well enough to walk around outside, there is a memorial there to men who fell in Crimea. I used to go out to the pier, and watch the ships go up Southhampton waters. The waters are very muddy looking.
The sisters were very good to me. I saw a book a 21st Batt boy had picked up in a German dugout on the Somme. It had the "Hymn of hate", Gott Strafe England, and a picture of Germania holding a sword in her hand, underneath was " We Germans fear God and nothing else in the World". How about tanks Fritz? There were a good few of our men in Netley hospital, also some Fritzs in one part, there was a bit of a scandal about tommies being turned out to make room for them when I was there, but papers made more out of it than what there really was.
Early in October, I was transferred to Sidcup facial hospital in Kent, and set out early one bright morning with an orderly. We travelled via London. On the train a kindly old lady was travelling in the same carriage down. She inquired how I was hit etc and I told her, then she said my poor fellow, it must have hurt a lot, and gave me some "tracts", tracts are a cure all for ills so I took them.
On arrival at Queen's Hospital Sidcup I was put in 11 ward and proceeded to make myself useful, and soon became a kitchen king. Oh yes its grand to be a kitchen king, if you're a glutton you can eat all the buckshee, that the patients leave and I can eat a lot of Buckshee because I am hungry always somehow, I suppose it is just because I am a great big kid. Sidcup is a very pretty place in Kent