In Chatham my illness was quickly diagnosed as Tuberculosis. T.B. was then a worldwide scourge until the advent of a new treatment some time after the war. It spread like wildfire in damp, humid, confined conditions and the wartime necessities such as crowded air raid shelters ensured that thousands contracted it and died whilst many more were confined to TB Sanatoria, which by the end of the war were located all over Britain. In addition, every town of any size had a 'Chest Clinic' for those patients sufficiently recovered to be treated from home. Life on crowded RN ships was another prime source of infection and any grouping of people living closely together i.e. in barrack rooms, were at risk. Many people were TB 'carriers', that is, they unknowingly carried the bacillus but were not themselves affected. However, every cough or sneeze innocently showered the makings of the plague impartially on everyone nearby. I subsequently learned a great deal about the TB bacillus and one of the things that impressed me most was the fact that they could lie dormant in dust or elsewhere for up to 15 years and then if inhaled, immediately became active. The cunning little blighters were also encased in a wax-like coating that had hitherto made them impervious to earlier drugs. Rigidly immobilised bed rest and radical surgery had been the only treatments available and even those produced a less than fifty-fifty chance of a cure.

The RMB was belatedly becoming increasingly alarmed at the number of cases amongst bandsmen and introduced instructions that instruments were not to be swapped; that brass and wood-wind instruments were to be regularly disinfected and disinfected especially carefully when handed into store before re-issue etc. Notwithstanding the rules, when you were sitting alongside a thick-headed, cloth-eared boy musician who persistently made the same mistakes, you instinctively grabbed his instrument to show him how it should go. It was later thought that one of my pupils had been a 'carrier' and was the likely source of my infection. In Chatham hospital the proportion of bandsmen was far higher than that from the RN, despite the relative smallness of our service. I was very fortunate in that my hospitalisation coincided with the introduction of chemotherapy involving antibiotics, the first real cure for the disease. It took a long time and was consistently unpleasant but it certainly pulled me through and I have never had a recurrence. I went into the hospital by no means overweight and in the first few weeks lost more than 50 lbs. There were quite a few RM bandsmen already in the hospital TB wards. Many more followed me there, some of them very good friends - who never left it again, at least not alive. Many of the service patients in the hospital were physical wrecks, having only temporarily survived radical surgery. From time to time a familiar face would no longer be seen and we learned not to ask why. It was a depressing period and for the first 3-4 months I was bedridden, restricted to minimum movement and in a 30-bed ward of similarly afflicted types. One-time-use hypodermics sets were a very long way into the future. The hypodermic needles used then were quite thick and constantly sterilised and re-used. They rapidly developed burrs and hooks on the ends and hurt like hell when plunged deeply into one's backside during a 150 day course of intra muscular antibiotics.

Food was as usual in the services, best described as adequate and nourishing - if you had any appetite. We were nursed by male RN Sick Berth Attendants (S.B.A's), who were supervised by RN Nursing Sisters and RN doctors. It was only after many months that I discovered that I had been prescribed a bottle of Guinness per day - to help build up my strength. I never saw one of them. No wonder the SBA's always seemed happier in the evenings!

Eventually I was allowed firstly to sit up (and thus able to undertake all sorts of bed-based vocational therapy. I made soft toys, wallets, wove scarves, knitted, embroidered, did jig-saws and read every book in the library) and then at last, after nearly five months, was allowed to re-learn to walk. As soon as I was able to I had my first real bath in six months and can still recall making it last for over an hour as I soaked and revelled in the delight of it! That might sound a bit silly these days, but after being washed/bathed with only a wet washer for so long, your skin goes scaly and leaves you generally uncomfortable.

Earning my eternal gratitude during all this time, each Wednesday my wife parked our then only child with a friend and began the long and tedious journey by train and bus to Chatham in order to spend an hour and a half at my bedside, before enduring the return journey. It took her a full eight hours door to door. However, it played an essential role in my recovery and became part of the strong bond that has blessed our marriage now for 51 years.

Just over six months after entering the hospital, the RM Band Service and I parted company, after first visiting Chatham RN Barracks to hand in my uniforms and equipment and thence to the Guildford Demobilisation Centre to be outfitted with 'suits, one, shoes pairs one, etc., etc., etc., civilians for the use of. And so ended my time in the Royal Marine Band Service, nine years and a few months after joining it. Suddenly I was a civilian again. Discarded like an unwanted piece of scrap. I was still officially unfit and definitely unemployed. I signed on at the local employment office and read the 'Sits Vac' ads. With a family to support and a house to pay for, what on earth was I going to do???

It had for a long time horrified me to discover that so many bandsmen had become totally dependant on the service, which had been their mother, father and entire family for so long. After spending the best part of eighteen years incanting the mantra 'Roll on my Doz', and walking happily out of the barrack gates at age 30, they would feel totally lost and presumably also naked without a uniform to wear. Very many of those who had complained the loudest would be back knocking on those same gates pleading to re-enlist for a further ten years and a pension. Of those who didn't return, when next heard of they often seemed to have exchanged one uniform for another, having become bus conductors or drivers, postmen or commissionaires.

I had much earlier decided that when I left, I was not going to follow that path. After a month or two on the 'dole' I found a job working in the Education Department Office in Dover. Then, a few years later my wife and I made our best decision ever and emigrated 'Down Under'. There, I was able to establish myself in the 'real' world and have since enjoyed a busy, successful and fulfilling life here in Australia for the past 42 years.

Did I enjoy my time as an R.M. Band-Boy/Musician? For the most part, very much indeed. It certainly enlarged my view of the world and of life in general. It provided me with many good and enduring friendships. It increased my self-assurance and reinforced what has become an immensely satisfying life-long interest in mainly classical music. However, on the downside it also gave me a distaste for self-important, jumped-up officialdom. The much more egalitarian Australian character was and still is, like a breath of fresh air. So, given exactly the same set of circumstances, would I do it again? The answer is a definite YES! 'Per Mare Per Terram' and 'Excrementum Taurui Ingenium Semper Permiscet!'