Harold's War - Part 3 - Emergency Aid


			Hospitals and Home Emergency Aid The "Boong" Train There we lay until, all of a sudden, around the corner came an ANGAU with a "Boong train". All natives were "Boongs". (In fact, all black people were "Boongs". There was "Yankie Boongs", "Australian Boongs" and "New Guinea Boongs".) So the "Boong train" came along and we signalled him. Fortunately the "train" came along. They were carrying all their gear on their poles and some of the goods they were carrying were in hessian bags, which the carriers used to make stretchers. To cut a long story short, they made a stretcher for me and a stretcher for Jimmy out of the poles they had.

	I think the other three were mobile. So they made the stretchers and put me on one and Jimmy on the other and carried us back to the first aid place (the RAP) which was probably about an hour away at the most. The ANGAU bloke must have known a bit of first aid because he had got rope and tied my left leg to my right leg. He used my right leg as a splint So, the natives were carrying me back and they jog, they don't walk. And they "tossed" me out of the bloody stretcher, which landed me on my left side, which didn't help. There were a few choice words from me and they were so apologetic you would have thought they had dropped their grandmother. R.A.P. Dobdubi We got back to the RAP at Dobdubi. This was just a hut. Each Battalion carried a doctor, and they were all captains, or more. Ours was a Captain Peterson. I had spoken to Captain Peterson before, when I had malaria, and asked him where he trained and he had trained in Sydney and he knew Bill Richards (my first cousin) very well. They trained together. Jimmy was still alive when we got to the RAP, but he died while we were in the RAP hut, which I will never forget. Nor will I forget the doctors ... Captain Peterson examined me - he asked me to wriggle my left toes, which I could - and he wrote on my file, "Not broken by clinical methods". They gave us a cup of coffee and something to eat there. The "I" section bloke came down and asked us what happened and I was telling him in no uncertain terms, in my own language, what happened and I looked up and the Padre was there. Father O'Keefe was a wonderful man who didn't give a damn what your religion was. Nobody did up there.

The Padre

Father O'Keefe was our unit Padre. I remember an incident just before I was wounded. We all (in the platoon) had run out of tobacco and had tried smoking dry tea leaves, but with no joy. When the Padre came along, the first thing we asked him was if he had a smoke. He produced a pack (unopened) of cigs, and before he knew what had happened, they were all gone.

Aside - Tobacco

Just to flesh out a bit more on tobacco, while I'm on that subject. Once I joined the unit in Wau (I was still not smoking at that stage), tobacco was on rations. You will note that I say "tobacco" not cigarettes, as in the humid conditions, once you opened a pack of cigs, they just absorbed too much water and were useless. Matches were also useless for the same reason. So wax matches were also on rations. At first I was very popular as I gave my ration away, but sooner or later (I don't remember when) I took up smoking and, in a very short time, learned to roll my own. The tobacco was always in tins which kept it reasonably moist but kept out the excess water. The papers were kept in an empty tobacco tin. To keep the matches usable you slept with them between your legs. As I've said before I had a cigarette lighter and to carry spare lighter petrol I used three or four of the empty water purifying tablet tubes, as you could only get petrol back in Wau.

Clearing Station

The next thing was we were taken to a casualty clearing station (ADS Killys) which had a surgical team attached to it. The doctor who operated on me was a Doctor Constable who came from the 2/5th AGH. He was detached from the 2/5th AGH with other doctors and male nurses. I had never heard of Pentothal. They said, "Stick your arm out". I was expecting ether, so I stuck my arm out and the next thing I knew it was next morning. They had given me a transfusion of plasma. And I was in what is called a Thomas splint which is the most uncomfortable thing that God ever invented. It is a wire frame up your leg with the padded end right up in your crotch. Within 24 hours I was fly-blown with maggots and, after 2 or 3 days, they wanted to move me on.

They put me on sulfathilomide which was used because they didn't have penicillin in the Australian army at that stage. They put me in a "doublespiker". I was in plaster from my waist down to my left toes and down to my knee on my right side and a hole fore and aft for vital functions.


	Evacuation over Mount Tambu My trip from the mobile hospital is very sketchy in my memory. It was not pleasant to say the least. I was carried on a native made litter, which was the only way you could be carried over the tracks. It took about three or four days to go from the Francisco river over Mount Tambu to the coast. The carriers had to change gangs every so often, stop at a way station for lunch, and of course again in the evening. As I said I was fed large quantities of sulphur drugs, which had the effect of clogging up the bowels. Mount Tambu was a sight to see. The Yanks had fired shell after shell on to the mountain, and not a tree or blade of grass remained. I finally arrived at the field ambulance where I spent the night on a European type stretcher. 2/2nd Camp Hospital - Morobe In the morning I and some others were taken from Tambu Bay by LCT, a small barge just big enough to take a 5 ton truck, to Morobe. We were given two options, either to have a tarp cover and the exhaust fumes or no cover and get burnt by the sun. We chose the first option. About five hours later we arrived at the 2/2nd Camp Hospital in Morobe. It was a small field hospital run by a Major. They put me and many others in a big copra hut and in the middle of the night and I started to bleed. They took me in to the hospital and the next thing I knew I woke up next morning and I had had a blood transfusion. The plaster was partly removed from my right thigh and all that did was make me rattle around inside which didn't help at all. 2/11th AGH - Dobadura They put me on a boat called the SS Tungsung, all 500 tonnes of her, which took me down, over night, to Dobadura in the Buna area - to the 2/11th Army General Hospital. Going from the boat to the hospital I remember I was in absolute agony and I was given a shot of morphia on the way. How much morphia I had when I was sick is just beyond imagination. I spent 2 or 3 days in Dobadura with malaria again. They wouldn't do anything at all for my wounds.

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Specific comments about Harold's memoirs can be sent to Harold Herman.

Harold's War was written and is maintained by Jack R. Herman as a part of the history section of his website.

Published by
Jack R Herman
Sydney, February 2002

Last updated: 28 February 2002

Hospitals and Home

Emergency Aid