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By Root 618 0

dizzy. Cramps started in my bowels and soon spread all over my body as it rapidly dehydrated. I was drying from the inside out, shrivelling like a picked grape left out in the sun. The cholera bacteria burrowed into the walls of my small intestine producing toxins that sucked the vital salts and every ounce of water out of my body. I was unsure what was wrong but I knew it was serious – I did not want to finish up with the life drained out of me. I had always been extremely careful to drink only boiled water so at first I was doubtful that it was cholera. I did not know much about it but I knew that the first twenty-four hours were crucial. If you see through a day and a night, you would probably survive. Most men who succumbed did so in the first few hours, a horrible death and so quick. Men who threw the bodies of cholera victims on to funeral pyres in the morning could easily contract the disease, die and be thrown on the pyre themselves in the evening. They died in agony like crazed animals and it was dreadful to see.

I lay in my bed, unable to rise for the work party. By then I was semi-conscious and I thought this was the end. I was hallucinating. Vivid red flashes stormed my eyelids. I knew I had to seek help. After psyching myself up I managed to rise and wobble to Dr Mathieson’s hut. As soon as I walked in he knew that I had cholera. It was a death sentence and he was reluctant to tell me. Instead he simply said, ‘You’ll have to be isolated. You’ll be looked after.’

His orderlies led me to a cream-coloured bell tent, like we had used in the Scouts. As they peeled back the tent’s front flap, a deathly stench leaped out. Unknown to me this was the ‘death tent’ and I was the unlucky thirteenth occupant of a dimly lit space already full of men. When I saw their state, their eyes rolled back, rasping, unintelligible voices, raised legs with knees bent – the bizarre telltale sign of a cholera sufferer – I knew that my number was up. The orderlies were putting me in here to die. The fight was fading from me and I lay down on the canvas floor with a sense of of complete and utter desolation.

I have no idea how long I lay there. I was no longer aware of those around me or if anyone came and tended to me. My mind drifted. I allowed myself some thoughts of home, even though they were jumbled and vague. I became upset when I couldn’t picture the faces of my mum, dad and Aunt Dossie. I even struggled to remember what Hazel looked like. Feverish dreams rampaged terrifyingly through my mind. The walls of the tent seemed to move and expand like an inflated balloon, only to pop and come crashing back on top of me. A sudden death seemed as inviting as a warm bath.

Eventually, on what must have been the following day, some orderlies carried me out of the tent and back to the hospital hut. Out of the thirteen men in that tent, Dr Mathieson told me months later, I was the only survivor. His medical staff tried to keep me alive by giving me as many sips of sterilised water as possible. They also forced some coconut milk puree down my throat, as water alone was not enough. While treatment should have been relatively simple, the lost fluids needing to be replaced with a liquid mixture of sugar and salts, the Japanese refused to give us any extra supplies, even though progress on the railway had dropped off and the outbreak threatened to wipe out the whole camp – them included. I was only half compos mentis and just wanted to sleep. But the orderlies kept tapping my cheeks to keep me awake and engaged me in conversation to keep my mind and soul engaged. They found the dog-eared black-and-white photographs in my bed-space and asked about my family. I rambled on about Aberdeen and playing practical jokes on Dossie. They asked who the pretty blonde girl was – the photo more worn than others. The lovely Hazel. I thought of her and how we used to dance at the Palais de Dance, how she was the only girl who could keep up with my twinkling toes, now reduced to bloodied and mangled stumps. The orderlies tried to make me laugh, asking how far