Hospitals and Home
Recovery complete
In June 1945, I moved to Concord and Colonel David Officer-Brown took over. He was a plastic surgeon.
I only got caught once being AWL and that was in Concord and I think I got out of that. I knew the Colonel - Colonel Stenning - who was a friend of the family.
Anyhow, I was in Concord where I had approximately five major operations for the graft. It was a very successful graft. Before each step they used to take photos, and again after each operation.
What they did was raise what is called a pedicle which was like a big sausage and you could only move one end of it at a time. But they ran a hotbed system there. They had two wards in the multi-storey building at Concord and the wards were always full and whatever number of patients were in the wards the same number patients (or more) were out on leave. You'd get a fortnight's leave and come back and stay overnight and then go out on weekend leave, come back and have another fortnight's leave and come back and be operated on. It was very successful system.
One ward was just straight plastic surgery and the other one was pretty tricky stuff, mostly facial work, rebuilding faces. They did some peculiar operations - one bloke had a hair-lip done.
Eventually my operations were finished and I was getting fortnight leave after fortnight leave. I said to Dr Officer-Brown, or I might've said it to Sister Thomas, that it was a bit silly me going on leave. "Why don't you make me an out-patient?" Which they did.
(Sister Thomas was a captain, while most of the sisters were lieutenants. She was, I would guess, about mid forties, a very strict disciplinarian, and an excellent nurse and administrator. The colonel, Officer-Brown, only had to think of something and Sister T would have done it. To me she was not a person you could get close to, but she eventually married Officer-Brown who divorced his wife who lived in Melbourne (with their children), and lived near Norma's mother in Rose Bay. Officer-Brown at that time would have been in his early fifties.)
Diversions at Concord
We had many diversions in the plastic surgery ward, some put on by the hospital, such as movies and live shows, and the others more impromptu such as "wheel chair races" around the wards. We were a protected species as the plastic surgery wing was run by Officer-Brown, who was not answerable to anyone but the Colonel. The other diversion was the number of cups of tea we drank. The ones organised by the hospital were early morning, breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and supper. But this wasn't enough and, at various times of the day, one or other of us would make tea. I used to do this by using a wheel chair and placing tea milk etc in strategic places to deliver to the few who were in the know.
Another diversion was to go out through the hole in the fence and go to the West Concord pub and have a few. The bloke who had his hair-lip done, had his lips sutured together during the healing process, except for a small hole to feed himself. He would take his cup, fitted with a rubber tube, order a beer, pour into the cup and drink.
I was in Concord Repat Hospital by the time of VE Day. I was still in the plastic surgery ward at Concord, just having had an operation three days before, when VP Day came. I was one of about 7 or 8 people out of 30 who were stuck in the ward. They gave us beer, and Henry Dent (Norma's father) came out with a bottle of beer. One bloke was having a non-urgent plastic surgery - plastic surgery was never urgent - when news came through about 8 o'clock in the morning. He had been given his pre-med and he was up in the theatre. In fact he was on the table, and the Colonel said, "Do you want to be operated on or do you want to go out on leave?" - everybody got 3 days or 4 days leave - and he said - "Leave". So, he got up off the table, groggy as hell from his morphia and walked out of the operating theatre and went on leave.
I got leave from Concord, in April 1946, to get married to Norma (or Lorna as the army called her). They gave me a fortnight's leave. We were enjoying it so much up in Surfers Paradise I rang them up or sent a telegram and got an extension of leave for another week.
