HMS Oxfordshire picked up HMS Dorsetshire's wounded from the beached hospital ship and made for Durban. 'It took three weeks,' Vernon remembered. HMS Oxfordshire broke down in the warm sea around Mombasa doing Vernon's injured hand no good. By the time they got to Durban the hand wass smelling and gangrenous. First opinions were that it must be amputated but Dr Wassing intervened and and, although inflexible, Vernon still has his hand- no doubt with the help of the new miracle drug Penicillin.

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