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In late January 1945 my feet became infected with weeping sores which our Medical Officer diagnosed as 'Athlete's Foot'. But boils or ulcers spread to my legs and on 15 February I was sent to 104 General Hospital just outside Rome. New diagnosis: 'diphtheria of the skin' and I was whisked into an isolation ward.

If only there had been isolation! The ward contained thirty or more beds. At one end a gramophone was regurgitating some American singer whose voice reminded me of American toothpaste - soap and sugar. I must remain supine for ten days. I must neither read, write nor perform my natural functions without assistance. Others would wash and shave me.

I was to be injected with serum which would produce a relaxation of all my muscles - including my heart-muscles. Activity was dangerous. Most of my fellow-sufferers were in like condition. A nurse produced an instrument which reminded me of a garden-syringe, injecting the contents into my left buttock.

In defiance of orders I wrote to my wife Minna, explaining my situation and assuring her that all was well with me. 'Very well, comfortable and no complaints apart from the radio and gramophone. Jazz from morning to evening. I'd like to smash them both and if I feel so belligerent there can't be much wrong with me. There is a soap-and-sugar crooner called Bing Crosby. I have never heard of him and hope never to hear him again. Bing! What kind of daft name is that?'

'At lunch today I was served before anyone else - a marvellous wing of chicken with all the trimmings. I was amazed... and then the Colonel appeared on visiting rounds. After he had passed, the rest of us were given - stew!!! Good old British Army. It never changes. But the food is usually good - and all fresh stuff which is a marvellous change after the Pay Office.'

A detailed description of a long stay in hospital is a self-indulgence. Small irritations magnify into monstrous wrongs and as day succeeds unremarkable day the patient loses his sense of time and personality. Apart from the mind-numbing noise the only harm done me was to confine my 6 feet 2 inches within a 5 foot 6 inch bed (relic of the Crimean War perhaps) which constricted me into an ante-natal posture and left me with a semi-paralysed left leg. My bedclothes became a tangled mess, infuriating the nurses. All we soldiers and our beds must be as tidy and precisely aligned as if we were on a regimental parade. Matron would close one eye and survey our ranks to ensure that every bed was geometrically aligned. Then she would see my feet protruding.

When the ward was free of staff most of us still condemned to ten days of torpor would rise and riot. One such interlude came to a swift end. Enter Matron, bellowing, 'Back to your beds you lot! I don't give a damn if you all drop dead with heart-failure. But that would mess up my mortality statistics!' In later years a surgeon assured me that all this enforced idleness was a medical 'con'. 'If you have to control a ward full of feisty young men you convince them that disorderly conduct could mean death!'

After some weeks I was moved into the Dermatological Ward and suffered a severe relapse - new sores breaking out on my hand and arm - with nasty-looking red threads running upwards towards the armpit. Medical conferences at the foot of my still-too-small-bed were more frequent. I heard a new word mentioned - penicillin. Things grew better, sores disappeared. I have often wondered if I were one of the first soldiers to be treated with what became known as the 'wonder-drug.' I pottered about the ward in a dressing-gown three sizes too small. I might take the air for ten minutes. This was extended to 45 minutes.

My leg-muscles were flabby and disliked my weight. The normal hospital methods of keeping them in trim had failed. I tottered, one leg inclined to give way. Otherwise I felt fit and, unbelievably, began to look forward to P.T. at the Muscle Factory. This was our name for the Convalescent Depot. Now I was prowling about in 'Hospital Blues' - drainpipe trousers and no buttons on my coat - a curious dress. The newspapers told us that we should all get 'civvy suits' when we were demobilised. Like this one? The war was still 'ending'. Right from the start I had tried to see it as a necessary war but sometimes my mind sickened at the slaughter.

Then came the first pictures of the living corpses in Belsen concentration camp. The war had liberated them. Even so no thinking person could regard 'victory' as a matter for triumph or satisfaction. We could only demonstrate that our quarrel was just, I thought, by giving a lead to create a better Europe than Hitler's 'New Order' would have achieved.

'If this cannot be done,' I wrote to Minna, 'physical victory is mere dust and ashes. There is a fierce controversy in the Service newspapers. A Colonel was rash enough to affirm that unless we retain pity for the vanquished we should stoop as low as our foes have done. A shower of conflicting opinions followed - evenly balanced in the newspaper columns but I should have been interested to know the actual numbers pro and con.'

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