Title: Medical Services in New Zealand and The Pacific

Author: Stout, T. Duncan M.

Publication details: Historical Publications Branch, 1958, Wellington

Part of: The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–1945

This text is the subject of: ‘Something of Them Is Here Recorded’: Official History in New Zealand

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I: Hospital Arrangements

THE transit camp at Salonika, northernmost town and port of Greece, was occupied by many 2 NZEF men in their first days of captivity. It was called Frontstalag 183 and was in a dilapidated old army barracks.

All who passed through it, whether they stayed a month or two, or even just a day, remember this transit camp for its starvation diet, filthy conditions of existence, the all too frequent shooting affrays, the heavy labour under strict German guards, and also the badly equipped hospital.

Eleven medical and dental orderlies, some of them New Zealanders, were selected from the 300 British prisoners of war collected there in May and ordered to form the nucleus of the British medical staff, which would take over the hospital from Serbian medical officers when the British prisoners of war started to come through from the main collecting base at Corinth in southern Greece.

Two concrete huts in a corner of the compound had previously been a small hospital. One hut was used as a dysentery ward, the other partly for surgical and partly for medical patients. It was decided that these wards with their sixty-five beds would not be sufficient to take the influx of sick that was expected, so the nearest barrack, a double-storied building, was quickly prepared to accommodate about 160 patients. It was split into two main wards on the ground floor, with six small rooms and a medical inspection room upstairs. Water was not laid on. Iron trellis beds with wooden slats and straw mattresses were all the patients had to lie on. The staff managed to get two blankets for each bed and a few sheets and pillows.

On 12 June the first draft of men arrived, and each day brought more and more until at one time 12,000 men were crowded into the camp. Three British doctors, headed by Captain Cochrane, RAMC, arrived and also four medical orderlies and a group of the British Friends' Ambulance Unit, bringing the total staff of the hospital to 5 doctors and 30 orderlies. The staff worked long hours, on many days from five in the morning until after eight at night. There was always too much work to do and too few to do it all.

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Men from Corinth camp were transferred by train to Salonika transit camp, but they were forced to march 30 miles over the Lamia Pass. They arrived exhausted, as conditions at Corinth camp had been deplorable, and many soon fell easy prey to disease and sickness. All through June the medical inspection room gave over 400 treatments a day. The two small buildings were overcrowded with enteric cases. One large ward in the improvised hospital was filled with all the other medical cases. These included men with slight wounds which had become aggravated on the march, skin complaints, poisoned feet, cuts, sandfly fever, jaundice, nephritis and tonsillitis.

A large ward of sixty beds was prepared to take malaria cases. The location of the camp was right in the centre of a malaria belt, and the men were without mosquito nets or ointments. The Germans issued 10 grains of quinine a day to each prisoner of war. This undoubtedly saved many thousands from malaria.

The small wards upstairs were soon occupied by cases of typhoid, typhus, pneumonia and beri-beri. The patients were of many nationalities – Scots, English, Australians and New Zealanders. Then came the Serbs, Indians, Palestinians, Cypriots, Arabs and Greeks.

The diet given to hospital patients consisted of the same food as that received by the men in the camp – mainly three-quarters of an Italian biscuit measuring about five inches square and a cup of German mint tea for breakfast, and a pint of barley, bean or lentil soup for dinner. (Three-quarters of this was water and, as the big meal of the day, it did not encourage sick men back to health.) Tea consisted of one-sixteenth of a loaf of bread and mint tea. The Greek Red Cross supplemented the hospital diet with vegetables and extra bread, some milk and a few eggs.

Medical supplies were hard to get from the Germans, drugs impossible, and it was only with captured supplies which were handed over by the Germans that the staff could carry on.

Many and varied were the illnesses encountered under these appalling and trying conditions – malaria, sandfly fever, Malta fever, intermittent fever, kala azar, pneumonia, bronchitis, tonsillitis, tuberculosis, diphtheria, enteritis, jaundice, beri-beri, neuritis, nephritis, septicaemia, impetigo, typhoid, typhus, poliomyelitis, epilepsy, debility, etc.

The days grew hotter as June crept by. By the middle of July the heat was very trying on the starving men. Malaria was taking its toll and the ward was full. Beri-beri affected everyone; at one time over 600 men in the camp were suffering from it. The complete lack of vitamin B brought suffering to hundreds. Their feet began to page 118 swell and sometimes their hands and faces. The little energy they had was further depleted. The men dragged themselves around the compound. Many, however, were forced to go out to work, carrying heavy timber, rolling drums of petrol into trucks. Some men came forward with tins of marmite and a little spread on bread had good results. Praise must be given to these few who gave vitamins to help others, denying themselves what they could well do with to keep up their strength. Sandfly fever was raging through the camp and each night many cases were admitted.

In August many prisoners arrived from Crete and with them came more sickness, including poliomyelitis. Enteritis was a common complaint. There were cases of typhus, typhoid and pneumonia. The water supply was cut off for three to five days at a time.