Murray Willing - Return to Australia

Transcript

By that stage I was just going in and out because I don't really remember when they grabbed me off the stretcher. Apparently, they took me straight in and bang, the doctor said afterwards what they did, he cut it all out and everything and it wasn't stitched, it was just wide open and the next day I woke up and I've got all these bandages around here and I don't know whether I had my shorts on or not or whether they…my wound seemed pretty right by then and I was happy to be there.

The orderlies came in and gave me a little tin of Johnson's Baby Powder. I still had those square tins years afterwards and I said, "What will I want that for?" and he said, "You'll know soon." He said, "Just go like that." And they just walked off laughing. And I pulled it off...and the maggots…poured it over…oh the smell of it, and that was about the same time that one of our lads walked past me and he said "How are you going?"

And I said, "I'm still here." He said, "I'm going home." He had his arm in a sling. It wasn't a day after what happened to him was he passed out, he didn't go home. He just passed out and died. But he was happy go lucky. I thought "You're a lucky bugger. I want to go home too." I was there in hospital about a week or so and then boarded a hospital ship to Australia and went from there to Tamworth.