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IN THIS ISSUE

• Les Davison cares for the wounded in a Dutch hospital
• Jack Peaker forwards a journalist's tribute to Canada
• Marilyn Magid shares the story of a dangerous food
• Gerrit de Leeuw suggests that objects have sexual traits
• Bruce Galway sends a tribute to a war veteran
• Irene Harvalias forwards a really awful pun
• Don Henderson finds an independent medical site

Les Davison recalls working in the hospital in Arnhem in his

WARTIME MEMORIES

All the beds were occupied and dozens of wounded were lined against the corridor walls, sleeping in their bedrolls. We had two well-known patients, Brigadier Lathbury and Brigadier Hackett. Both had removed their officers insignia and were referred to as corporal. Hackett was very seriously wounded, with internal injuries to his stomach, but Lathbury had only a leg injury, as far as I can remember, and he was quickly rescued by the underground forces. Hackett also was spirited away after he had recovered a little.

The St. Elisabeth Hospital was run by German nuns, who stayed on and worked with us. The medical forces of both sides worked together and there was no favouritism as far as who was next for surgery. The surgeons decided who were the more seriously wounded and operated on them in order. German or British, it made no difference.

The battle was over on the 28th September. That evening about 2,000 of the original 10,000 who landed were evacuated across the Rhine to the forward Allied lines and the final batches of wounded were brought in from Oosterbeek, where the division had made its last stand. A couple of days later, the Germans started evacuating all of us to Dutch barracks in Apeldoorn, about 20 kilometres to the north. They had decided that we would run our own hospital from these premises until such time as they were able to take us all to P.O.W. camps in Germany.

The barracks were vacant but there were enough beds to accommodate all our patients. The Germans fed us, more or less, from a field kitchen. Watery potato soup twice a day, accompanied by a slice of black bread and something called coffee, which I think was made of roasted grain of some kind. At least the German guards got the same food, so we could hardly complain. Soon the walking wounded were put on trucks and taken to Apeldoorn station. Here they were packed into cattle cars or freight wagons, with a little water and some dry bread, and carried off to P.O.W. camps. With the doors padlocked, they had little chance to escape, although I heard after the war that three of them had worked away at some rotten floorboards and made a hole large enough for them to drop through. They then went through the hole and dropped to the tracks and let the train pass over them.

After about two weeks the population of the barracks had diminished considerably. The ratio of medics to patients improved to the point that some medical personnel were offered the chance to escape. Generally speaking, R.A.M.C. people did not escape if there were wounded to look after, but as the wounded were evacuated, the medics were left behind in Apeldoorn with the result that there were more than enough to look after the casualties that were still there. Finally we were told that the barracks was to be closed down and that we would be on the last train to the Fatherland.

Because the patients that were left were the most seriously wounded, the Germans had come up with a proper hospital train. This was a converted passenger train with all the seats removed and bunks installed down each wall of the coaches. If memory serves me right, there were eighteen bunks on each side of a coach and each coach had an observation platform at each end. Fortunately for me, the Allies knew we were in Apeldoorn station and kept bombing the line in front of the train with the result that we were there for three days. I had decided some time earlier that if the opportunity presented itself I would attempt to escape, and consequently I kept one of the two sandwiches we were fed daily as a means of survival should I be successful in getting away. There was no chance to disappear while we were in the station as the whole train was guarded by about twenty S.S. men.

However, when the train was moving I hoped that I would have no trouble getting off. I had talked to my charges about my escaping when I could and they all agreed that they would be all right and not to worry about them. Finally one evening about the 10th October, the train started to move and I immediately started to put on my camouflage jacket and my small kit. There was a German medical orderly in the coach who had been working with me and it must have been obvious to him what I was going to do; however, he made no attempt to stop me or raise an alarm. He was a typical, rather fat middle-aged German who probably hoped to get some leave when the train got to its destination. Whatever the reason for his silence, I was very thankful because I had had visions of trying to knock him out if he showed any opposition to my leaving. As I moved down the coach to the exit I whispered my goodbyes to the patients and they all wished me luck.

To be continued.

Jack Peaker forwards an article by Kevin Myers which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph of London:

SALUTE TO A BRAVE AND MODEST NATION

Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan , probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops are deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will bury its dead, just as the rest of the world, as always, will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does.

It seems that Canada 's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored.

Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada , the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American continent with the United States, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions: It seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved. Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy.

Almost 10% of Canada 's entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as somehow or other the work of the "British."

The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the third-largest navy and the fourth-largest air force in the world.

The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign in which the United States had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter, John Candy, and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer, British.

It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers.

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that 1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the world's peacekeeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest peacekeepers on Earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia .

Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular imagination on Canada was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.

So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun.

It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost. This past year more grieving Canadian families knew that cost all too tragically well.

Editor's Note: It is a shame that Canada's proud record as a peace-keeping nation has been sullied by the recent military actions in Afghanistan which have turned our peace-keepers into combatants who are exposed to death and disability in an unwinable war.

Marilyn Magid forwards this story about

DANGEROUS FOODS

A doctor was addressing a large audience in Tampa.

"The food we are consuming is killing us. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. But there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all that we all have eaten, or will eat. Would anyone care to guess what food causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?"

After several seconds of quiet, a small 75-year-old Jewish man in the front row raised his hand and said, "Vedding cake?"

Gerrit de Leeuw says you might not have known this, but a lot of non-living objects are actually either male or female. Here are some examples that

EXPLAIN A LOT OF THINGS

Freezer bags: They are male, because they hold everything in, but you can see right through them.

Photocopiers: These are female, because once turned off; it takes a while to warm them up again.ey are an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed, but can also wreak havoc if you push the wrong buttons.

Tires: Tires are male, because they go bald easily and are often over inflated.

Hot air balloons: Also a male object, because to get them to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under their butt.

Sponges: These are female, because they are soft, squeezable and retain water.

Web pages: Female, because they're constantly being looked at and frequently getting hit on.

Trains: Definitely male, because they always use the same old lines for picking up people.

Egg timers: Egg timers are female because, over time, all the weight shifts to the bottom.

Hammers: Male, because in the last 5000 years, they've hardly changed at all, and are occasionally handy to have around.

The remote control: Female. Ha! You probably thought it would be male, but consider this: It gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know which buttons to push, he just keeps trying.

Bruce Galway sends this tribute:

A SOLDIER DIED TODAY

He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past;
Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his buddies; they were heroes, every one.

And tho´ sometimes, to his neighbors, his tales became a joke,
All his Legion buddies listened, for they knew whereof he spoke.
But we´ll hear his tales no longer for old Bill has passed away,
And the world´s a little poorer, for a soldier died today.

He will not be mourned by many, just his children and his wife,
For he lived an ordinary and quite uneventful life.
Held a job and raised a family, quietly going his own way,
And the world won´t note his passing, though a soldier died today.

When politicians leave this earth, their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing and proclaim that they were great.
Papers tell their whole life stories, from the time that they were young,
But the passing of a soldier goes unnoticed and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution to the welfare of our land
A guy who breaks his promises and cons his fellow man?
Or the ordinary fellow who, in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his country and offers up his life?

A politician´s stipend and the style in which he lives
Are sometimes disproportionate to the service that he gives.
While the ordinary soldier, who offered up his all,
Is paid off with a medal and perhaps, a pension small.

It´s so easy to forget them for it was so long ago,
That the old Bills of our country went to battle, but we know
It was not the politicians, with their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom that our country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand,
Would you want a politician with his ever-shifting stand?
Or would you prefer a soldier, who has sworn to defend
His home, his kin and country and would fight until the end?

He was just a common soldier and his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us we may need his like again.
For when countries are in conflict, then we find the soldier´s part
Is to clean up all the troubles that the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honor while he´s here to hear the praise,
Then at least let´s give him homage at the ending of his days.
Perhaps just a simple headline in a paper that would say,
Our country is in mourning, for a soldier died today.

Irene Harvalias is guilty of sending this atrocious pun:

MEDICINE MAN MAGIC

A skeptical anthropologist was cataloging South American folk remedies with the assistance of a tribal brujo who indicated that the leaves of a particular fern were a sure cure for any case of constipation. When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the brujo looked him in the eye and said, "Let me tell you, with fronds like these, who needs enemas?"

WEBSITE SUGGESTIONS

Don Henderson sends the url for a new medical site unassociated with pharmaceutical companies:

http://www.openmedicine.ca/

You go to your TV to turn your brain off. You go to the computer when you want to turn your brain on. - Steve Jobs