PG 202
Lucca
Lucca
from: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2-1Epi-c10-WH2-1Epi-i.html#name-018474-mention
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection, with many thanks.
A New Zealand doctor was on the staff of a prisoner-of-war hospital at Lucca (Campo 202). Although the British doctors in this hospital began with ill-defined ancillary duties (‘The Italian authorities apparently expected us to act as dressers.’), they eventually took over the running of the hospital almost entirely. Many stupid and hampering regulations were overcome by ‘our gradual encroachment’. This doctor credited the Italians with sincerely sharing his own desire for the welfare of the 500 patients, though their medical methods were astonishingly callous. The terrible condition of some Yugoslav patients, who had been living on four ounces of bread and some cabbage soup daily, showed that British prisoners were apparently receiving the best treatment Italy could give. Nuns were attached to this hospital, and their help with the feeding and welfare of prisoners was invaluable.
A complaint made by medical officers was that the Italians persistently treated them as prisoners of war and not as protected personnel. They had to fight all the time for the status and privileges allowed them as non-combatants under the Geneva Convention: for instance, the right to take two walks a week under guard. But their right to repatriation, together with badly wounded prisoners, was recognised. Patients for repatriation went before a combined Italian and neutral medical board. At Lucca the patients voluntarily submitted to being examined first by an unofficial British medical board, so that the candidature of those who had obviously no chance of passing the board would not prejudice the chances of those who had every right to expect repatriation. Every wounded prisoner hoped for repatriation and it was a difficult and invidious task to select who should go. Once they had made their own selection the doctors’ attitude was to get everybody page 31 past the board, and by judicious exaggeration of patients’ infirmities a number of border-line cases were passed. About 220 New Zealanders were repatriated from Italy to the Middle East. An Italian hospital ship took them to the Turkish port of Smyrna, where they were transferred to a British hospital ship for passage to Alexandria.
Many doctors and orderlies remained in Italy to carry on the work they knew to be vital to the health of prisoners of war. The men who were repatriated were able to report on hospitals and camps in Italy, and in some instances protests made through the protecting power, Switzerland, secured amelioration of the conditions of those who remained behind.
NAMES
(Please email names to powsitaly@mail.com
Harold Cornock
William Henry Gale
David John Spearing
Alan Ward
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection, with many thanks.
A New Zealand doctor was on the staff of a prisoner-of-war hospital at Lucca (Campo 202). Although the British doctors in this hospital began with ill-defined ancillary duties (‘The Italian authorities apparently expected us to act as dressers.’), they eventually took over the running of the hospital almost entirely. Many stupid and hampering regulations were overcome by ‘our gradual encroachment’. This doctor credited the Italians with sincerely sharing his own desire for the welfare of the 500 patients, though their medical methods were astonishingly callous. The terrible condition of some Yugoslav patients, who had been living on four ounces of bread and some cabbage soup daily, showed that British prisoners were apparently receiving the best treatment Italy could give. Nuns were attached to this hospital, and their help with the feeding and welfare of prisoners was invaluable.
A complaint made by medical officers was that the Italians persistently treated them as prisoners of war and not as protected personnel. They had to fight all the time for the status and privileges allowed them as non-combatants under the Geneva Convention: for instance, the right to take two walks a week under guard. But their right to repatriation, together with badly wounded prisoners, was recognised. Patients for repatriation went before a combined Italian and neutral medical board. At Lucca the patients voluntarily submitted to being examined first by an unofficial British medical board, so that the candidature of those who had obviously no chance of passing the board would not prejudice the chances of those who had every right to expect repatriation. Every wounded prisoner hoped for repatriation and it was a difficult and invidious task to select who should go. Once they had made their own selection the doctors’ attitude was to get everybody page 31 past the board, and by judicious exaggeration of patients’ infirmities a number of border-line cases were passed. About 220 New Zealanders were repatriated from Italy to the Middle East. An Italian hospital ship took them to the Turkish port of Smyrna, where they were transferred to a British hospital ship for passage to Alexandria.
Many doctors and orderlies remained in Italy to carry on the work they knew to be vital to the health of prisoners of war. The men who were repatriated were able to report on hospitals and camps in Italy, and in some instances protests made through the protecting power, Switzerland, secured amelioration of the conditions of those who remained behind.
NAMES
(Please email names to powsitaly@mail.com
Harold Cornock
William Henry Gale
David John Spearing
Alan Ward
