From Dogfight to Diplomacy by Donald Macdonell

Author:Donald Macdonell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781783033720
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-07-12T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Breakdown of Health

A few months later I became ill. It began with a persistent headache which no amount of aspirin would dispel. I lost weight and couldn’t sleep. Once, on parade, I began to sway and had to be led off by my Adjutant. I reported sick and was given eye tests, as my vision was becoming blurred. The MO spoke with ‘Doggie’ and I was grounded for a week. But the headache remained and if anything got worse. I began to behave oddly and people in the Mess would say, ‘It’s all right, Mac, just take things easily.’

I had made friends with the two resident RAF chaplains, one a Roman Catholic. We used to spend long hours after supper in each other’s rooms and had fascinating discussions not only about Christian ethics and behaviour but about the philosophers and the beliefs of Marx, Engels and Lenin. They were stimulating messmates and I valued their knowledge and open-mindedness. They lent me books and, though of different persuasions, never quarrelled. Others often joined us; it was good talking. Then one evening when I was feeling decidedly groggy, the RC chaplain accompanied me back to my room. I had been talking rather wildly, so he said, and he wanted me to take a sleeping draught and insisted I see the MO in the morning. I cannot remember what followed. I presume I slept but I only recall being visited in bed by the Senior Medical Officer, who sent me straight into the Sick Quarters and, by the afternoon, had me packed up and, in the company of his subordinate, on my way to the RAF Hospital at Halton, near Aylesbury, where I was bundled into the psycho-neuropathic wing and put to bed.

So I was mad? I made a fuss. I said that I was okay, just a bit overtired. They were kindly and condescending. They gave me an injection and said I would be seen by a Squadron Leader the next morning.

The Squadron Leader, presumably a psychiatrist, was a few years younger than me. He must have been about twenty when the War had broken out. But he did his best. He asked me questions about the Battle of Britain and clung onto my recollections of being a POW. He had a report from Cranwell which spelt out the pressure under which I had worked as Chief Flying Instructor. He seemed to be looking for a neat formula to encapsulate my condition. I don’t think I was very cooperative. I asserted that I was not mentally ill, that I had been under a lot of strain and simply needed a break. I probably used words and phrases with which I had become familiar when talking to the staff at St Andrews Hospital. He picked me up, ‘You seem to understand a lot about mental disorders.’ So I told him about Diana. This made him really sit up and we had a long session mainly centred on my reaction to my wife’s illness.

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