At night time after tea, when the hospital pathways were quiet and not many nurses and doctors were walking around, we used to have wheel chair derby's around the hospital buildings and grounds, and we often ended up at the back of the hospital down near the mangrove swamps. The morgue house was down that way, with its eerie light on the front of the grey painted buildings. We often stopped outside this place wondering how many bodies would be inside. One night we dared each other to park outside the door for fifteen minutes 'alone'! It was 10 p.m. and the moon was fairly full behind dark scudding clouds. We all sat for a moment and thought, and then all of us big brave soldiers hightailed our wheelchairs back up to the main building.
MORGUE HOUSE DITTY
Robert C. Evans ("Bones")
Private-2/401370-1953
It was Christmas Eve in the morgue house.
The place was all cold and drear,
When a corpse arose from a marble slab
and said„ by Christ it's cold in here.
Then in rushed the morgue housekeeper.
He was full of tooheys beer,
Lay down there you bloody fool,
You can't do that there, here!.
But the corpse took no notice
As he jumped from slab to slab
He said we don't want no rain in here
Stick it up the Morgue Keepers rear!
(As told to Pte. Peter Crowe and Pte„ Keith Hasler. All three were in the 2nd Battalion R.A.R. in Korea, 1953.)
