“FINISHED WAR”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4534, 9 February 1942, Page 5

“FINISHED WAR”

WOUNDED SOLDIER’S LETTER “IT WAS HEAVEN” Six weeks ago, Sergeant Elliott Myers, of Christchurch, a nephew of the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers, who is at present presiding over the Supreme Court sessions at Hamilton, wrote the following letter to his people:— “Here I am at last in Cairo General Hospital after some worrying and cruel trips, but it is now a matter of getting better. Here is good news for you. I am finished with the war and am coming home to you all. You will find out in a few minutes. . . . There were Hun guns we could not silence, and they had our range perfectly . . . and just plastered us to bits. I was in a slit trench, and a shell landed right on the edge of it and got me in the legs. In the left leg, just above the ankle, it took out a big hunk of flesh and fractured the bone. In the right leg it took the back of the heel off. Actually I felt no pain, which is rather marvellous; everything just felt numb. They could not get an ambulance, so my driver took me away in my own truck. Finally we found Dr Boyd, who said to me, ‘Finished war.’ The doctor bandaged me and sent me on as soon as he could get an ambulance to the C.C.S., and after waiting there for a couple of hours, we were put on a truck and taken to Tobruk. “We were only 12 miles away, but they had to go a long way round to avoid minefields. We had a hell of a trip, not arriving at the hospital till 11.30 p.m.—about six hours. On the way my stretcher broke, and they had to support me on boxes, and you can imagine how hellish it was every time we went over a bump—and there were hundreds of them. About 2.30 a.m. they X-rayed me and told me that my foot was completely finished and that I would never be able to walk on it again, and suggested amputation. So I said O.K. It meant, if nothing else, home to you all, and, after -all, one can get marvellous artificial limbs, so it is very little to worry over. “On Saturday they took us down to the wharf (at Tobruk), where we lay for an hour shivering in the cold, and finally put eight of us on a large rowing boat, a launch towing three such boats out to the hospital ship. It was a lovely ship, and we were well fed and made comfortable. On Sunday we got away, and arrived in Alexandria on the Monday night, and got off by train to Cairo the next morning. I slept most of the way. What a thrill it was at last to get into a New Zealand hospital, with New Zealand doctors and nurses. It was heaven.”