Monday May 20th, 1918
Stand to 4:30, Breakfast 6am, work four hours 7am to 11am. Very hot day, posted letter home. Would like to spend Whitsuntide at home. Hope to next year. Joe Harrison takes Malaria, look after him. Hope he will be better.
Friend’s Malaria
Private Joseph Robert Harrison has gone down with malaria and Frank is nursing him. Joe’s service number is 5950 of 13th Battalion. Later in the war he will join the 2nd Battalion, King‘s Shropshire Light Infantry as 45654.¹
The onset of malaria could be very rapid. Archibald Don wrote to his mother on July 16th, 1916, ‘After six weeks of perpetual and undiluted sun from 5am to 7:30pm, we have had a shower of rain. Now the sun is out again, and there is a freshness, an English flavour, in it which makes the day quite good…. The rain has made all the difference to the colours. The Belashitzas are blue again, instead of a foggy grey. … As for me I am most robust.’²
Half an hour after writing this letter Archie was lying, covered by blankets, with benign tertiary malaria. Two days later he was sent down to a hospital in Salonika. By the 20th he wrote that he was ‘through the attack‘. He was then moved to Malta and by the end of the month he wrote, again to his mother, ‘You should regard me as a fraud and truant and no invalid.’²
Archie rejoined his regiment at the end of August. His brother Robert, in the same Battalion, said of him, ‘He was… in the best of health, looking fat and with a good colour and in great spirits at getting back to us all.’ Two days later he got diarrhea, became weaker and was sent down to Salonika again. Archie died on September 11th, less than three months after his initial attack.² He is buried in Salonika (Lembet Road) Cemetery. The inscription on his grave also remember his brother Robert who is to be killed in action on the Dojran Front in 1917.³
Let’s keep our fingers’ crossed for the full recovery of Joe Harrison.
13th (Service) Battalion War Diary – 20th May 1918 – Sporan
A searchlight was seen behind Trapeze de Pobreg, the beam shining WSW at 03:35 hrs. Our artillery was moderately active. There is nothing to prove whether enemy artillery is being relieved or whether new batteries have come in but his shelling of the last two days points to the fact that he is registering all his barrages nearly everywhere. There was slight aerial activity on both sides during the day. Our planes appear to carry out a bombing raid on a small scale each fine morning. Nothing was seen or heard of the enemy by patrols. On the west slope of Goldies I a patrol picked up a German hand grenade (stick bomb). The trench on the west end of Devedzelli Spur has been deepened during the night. A bugle band was heard in the direction of Pobreg at 08:30 hrs.
References & Further Reading
¹ Information provided by Charlie on Manchesters.org
² ‘Archibald Don – A Memoir’ (1890-1916), edited by Charles Sayle, published 1918 by John Murray. From a collection of the Salonika Campaign Society.
³ Record for Archibald Don on Commonwealth War Graves Commission
* Portrait of Archibald Don in 1915, from page 85 of ‘Archibald Don – A Memoir’. Image may be subject to copyright.