"Yes well it was on the job I was working at Tikonoon and cholera had broken out. They isolate the cholera ones, just put them in a tent with no flooring or anything you just lay in the mud. And I was working, carting baskets etc. and I suddenly felt crook, and everything went through me, I started to vomit and everything went through me, worms and everything came out. Anyway I went back to camp, that chap Josh Wicks helped me back to camp that night, and they tested me, they had what they called the glass rod test. They stick it up your bottom and, Japs do it. Anyway they found out that I was cholera carrier, so I was bunged straight away into the cholera camp. I wasn't feeling too bad, but I wasn't feeling 100%, and it was a tent a leaking tent, laying on the ground, it was all mud no flooring, and there are about 8 blokes in that tent all with cholera, dreadful.

"So they put me in there with a fellow named Lieutenant Henderson. So I said to Henderson, if we stay here we die, well we stayed there that night, and of course a couple of these blokes died, some more were brought in, and I said to Henderson I'm getting out of this, so we crawled out of it and we got under a bamboo shelter and stayed there for two days. And the germ passed right through. Just disappeared from me, same for him. So then we built a little humpy with the bamboo, and we stayed there for a fortnight, and recovered our health, and then were sent back on the railway again. I thought I was gone. If you got cholera you had Buckleys hope. Some did recover, but the only reason I recovered was that everything had gone through me."

CORPORAL BOB CHRISTIE