No . 130
The Trusty Servant
the Japanese in December 1941 to the Japanese surrender . Originally constructed as a British Army facility in 1920s , no buildings remain today on the site in Sham Shui Po park , Kowloon , Hong Kong .
There was my own isolation with TB when at school , treated in hospital on the new drugs – streptomycin ( 1943 ) and isoniazid ( 1952 ).
Many years later , I was imprisoned in Greece , on a trumped-up charge engendered by professional medical jealousies . Thankfully the charge was swiftly thrown out by the High Court in Athens . I had to come to terms , however , with having to share a cell with two criminals who didn ’ t speak English and I was not allowed any outside communication .
on HMT Athlone Castle towards the end of the war . We were contained within that ship for six weeks en route for Liverpool – followed by an albatross across the Pacific and then picking up American servicemen in the Atlantic who had been torpedoed .
Meanwhile my father , having made a porridge of digestive biscuits and condensed milk on Christmas Day 1941 , shot his dog and set off to
HMT Athlone Castle in 1942
escape from Hong Kong which had been over-run by the Japanese . He was captured and incarcerated in Sham Shui Po Camp – relying on hidden reserves of character and resolve to overcome malaria , beriberi , malnutrition and boredom .
The Sham Shui Po camp was the main prisoner-of-war camp in Hong Kong from the time the British surrendered the colony to
A positive experience can come from all such situations of restraint . Life will be different after COVID – 19 but there will be technological spin-offs and an assessment of new values in social mixing , travel and communication .
Let us all meet the challenges ahead drawing on our lockdown experiences with common-sense , self-reliance and a personal responsibility for our own actions .
Sham Shui Po camp
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