Cretanvista Site Special - Christmas Greeting 2007 Issue 58 |
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Closed for Christmas.. Just this once!!.... Well, the website is still open and functioning as always, but the news desk has taken a short break this Christmas, our first in several years. We hope that everyone will understand our need for just a little time out with our families, relatives and friends. We will be back with all the latest and updated news early in the New Year as well as bringing you new photo-galleries; our 2008 Calendar; book reviews and, as usual, all the very best about Crete. We leave you now with our very best wishes, our Christmas card and our Christmas story. Enjoy! From all at Cretanvista. PLUS Latest Crete Weather Link
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Many years ago while working at a West Suffolk Hospital, I was
privileged to know an Irish Ward Charge Nurse named John McFadden. John was
once a prisoner of war in the notorious Japanese prisoner of war camps in south
east Asia. He was also very familiar with James Joyce's 'Ulysses'.... One
Christmas, in conversation, he told me (and later published in the hospital
magazine) about an incident involving himself and a fellow POW,
Sergeant Baker, incarcerated in a camp on Java.
Sgt'. Baker approached along the verandah and asked me if I could read Gaelic and understand it. I said I could and he handed me a book and asked me to translate a verse in Gaelic, which I did. I can picture him now - khaki shirt and trousers on, no socks and army boots, unlaced, much too big for his thin feet -his head shaven, as were all P.O.W.s in Java. It was about 1944 or maybe 1943. He was about 28 years old, a sergeant dispenser in the R.A.M.C., a Londoner and a Jew. He was married. We P.O.W.s had books handed to us to form a library. We always ran our camps on commune or kibbutz lines - the strong helped the weak - all for one, one for all.
The book I was handed by Sgt'. Baker was
Ulysses by James Joyce. He was quite taken up with the book, it was apparent, as
if he had found a pearl of great price. He was quite thrilled with the
translation, was generous with his thanks and satisfied with the job I did. No
doubt he was taken up with Ulysses and I was a 'Godsend' to help him read
it in that damp, landsop P.O.W. camp. I checked my translation with a Sgt'. who was
reared in the Shetlands with his grandmother. He had spoken Gaelic there and was
still fluent in the Language; his translation tallied with mine.
John McFadden. 1972.
Post Script. Some small
liberties have been taken with the grammar in an attempt to relate the story as
the author told it. What is not possible to relate is the sheer horror of the
conditions which existed in the Japanese POW Camps around the time of the
incident related, around 1942/1943, from which many of those incarcerated never
returned. Also impossible to relate is the sheer humility of the author - who
spent his life after repatriation helping others - and who clearly felt
some of the responsibility for Sgt'. Baker's fate. |
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