Sounds From Another Room by Peter Horsley

Author:Peter Horsley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 1990-12-31T08:00:00+00:00

7

Voices

The first two or three days in Seaview were spent in a no-man’s-land between the living and dead, heavily sedated, while the doctors cleaned out the bilges, but as the will to return to the living strengthened I slowly began to take more interest in my surroundings and condition. The place I was in had been an hotel until requisitioned and converted into a Naval Sick Quarters as an emergency overflow for the reception of D-Day casualties, which had fortunately not materialized in the numbers expected. It was manned by two Naval doctors and three or four nurses. My sick bay contained six beds and during the whole time I spent in it there was only one other overnight occupant, an American Thunderbolt pilot picked up after a short ducking in the Channel. Trade was therefore extremely slack and I enjoyed plenty of attention from doctors and nurses alike.

Prolonged immersion in sea water had left my muscles in a wasted condition and I was constantly racked by cramp and spasms; the exposed parts of my body, particularly my face and lips, were covered in salt sores and, despite being packed in hot water bottles, memories of the dreadful cold brought on long bouts of shivering, but all this could be easily remedied with proper therapy. The mental disorientation was something much more difficult to explain and cope with; a lot of fuses had been blown in the long struggle for survival, followed by the final surrender. Shell-shock had become an accepted condition, but how do you explain damage to the nervous system when there had been no shells around?

In the long hours of darkness I was still tormented by monstrous waves breaking over me, only relieved by the security of dawn’s first light. Bambi was never very far away. Endlessly I went over the sequence of events to try and satisfy myself that, in omitting some action, I was not totally responsible for his death. One night in my dreams Bambi came back through the hatch, his face lit by the flames from the starboard engine and said quite clearly, ‘I forgot my parachute, Peter.’ This dream recurred so frequently in those first few weeks that his face is today as clear as it was then and I often wonder if that is what actually happened.

My legs and balance were unsteady, but after a few days, with the aid of sticks, I could make my way slowly from bed to bathroom, and so gradually began to cope with a normal routine of bathing, dressing and receiving the occasional visitor. The Seaview Hotel was situated at the end of a pier and I spent many hours sitting silently by the window watching the boats plying to and fro. Already I had begun to experience very strong withdrawal symptoms, with no particular desire to rejoin the world outside the narrow confines of my sick-room.

The Naval doctors and nurses were wonderfully kind and understanding but without specialist equipment in the sort of treatment

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