MEDICAL CARE BY THREE ARMIES

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24600, 23 June 1945, Page 8

MEDICAL CARE BY THREE ARMIES

♦- A FIGHTER PILOT’S EXPERIENCES

« GERMAN JUMPED ON HITLER’S PORTRAIT ”

Markedly varied standards of medical attention were received by Warrant Officer J. H. Saville, of Oamaru, after his Spitfire was shot down near Rome in May last year. He has returned to New Zealand after almost complete recovery from extensive burns to his face and legs, and in am interview yesterday described his hospital treatment by the Italians as “virtually nil” by the Germans as “reasonably good,’ and by the New Zealand Base Hospital at Bari as “absolutely marvellous.’’ Warrant Officer Saville was formerly a Christchurch tennis player and before the war held the Canterbury table tennis singles championship. He served in the first fighter squadron to operate from Anzio, a famous R,A.F. squadron which was temporarily under the command of the Americans. Anzio airfield was under shell fire for a long time after operations began from there. He was shot down by a M.E.109 in a dogfight between four Spitfires and 15 German machines. . , .. He crash-landed, with his cockpit a mass of flames, but managed to free himself from the aircraft, though badly burned. He lay in the field for fqur hours, during which time an Italian stole his watch and ring from his pockets. From the hands of the Italian Red Cross he went to a German hospital at Rome, and later was moved to Castellano. The Allied armies were drawing near, and on five nights in succession he was made ready to be taken by ambulance to Germany, but each time the ambulance failed to arrive. It was fortunate, because on the morning after the fifth "false alarm ’ a German officer came to him and said: "You are free now, and I am a prisoner’’ The South Africans had swept through the town during the night. There was an interesting reaction among-the German hospital staff. One German orderly went round pulling pictures of Hitler from the walls and Tumping on them! The food for the patients in the German hospitals probably reflected the generally precarious supply position, said Warrant Officer Saville. Breakfast was invariably a cup of cold tea or coffee and a packet of biscuits, which were issued whether the patient wanted them or not. Warrant Officer Saville could not eat, and at the end of a week had a neat row of seven packets of biscuits beside his bed. At midday there was usually macaroni soup and brown bread and at night the same. But these meals were subject to extraordinary variation. On one occasion he was given three raw eggs, in the shell, tov his ev£hing meal. He had no idea what to do with them, but an enormous German orderly later came to his bedside, picked one of the eggs up in his hand, literally wrung it out into a glass, and made it“up-into a drink.