Oral History Gallery

Extract Text (Duration 2.58)

... in barracks, for example, then there used to be a Sick Berth rating who would stand at the Barrack Gate and as people went ashore they would collect a handful of condoms. Onboard the Zest I never did this but I always ensured that there were a gross or so with the Quartermaster so that anybody going ashore would have to, hmmm, pass them, and then I made sure that in every mess there were a gross of contraceptives, because the idea was that there could be no excuse for having unprotected sex. And the excuse was invariably that, "I was drunk Doc." But I always used to say you either went ashore for drink or other purposes, you was unwise to combine the two. It was, I think, a very good idea. I didn't mean that to sound as namby-pamby as it came out, but I remember the Americans had a disastrous way of dealing with it, and the American... on the American ships I think Congress was lobbied by the Matrons of whatever and they didn't want our American boys being exposed to moral temptation, and so what they got before the American sailor went... reached... went ashore in a foreign port, they would have a talk by the Medical Officer and this was followed by a talk by the Chaplain, and this was followed by a thing which came to be known as ‘purple hearts', which were oral penicillin tablets. Now the idea was that our American sailor went ashore both morally and medically armed against disease, he had taken prophylactically oral penicillin, so that were he exposed to venereal disease the penicillin would already be in his blood stream and all would be well. It had a disastrous effect, which explains that why in certain countries of the world there is a such a pernicious strain of venereal disease that you couldn't kill with an elephant gun let along penicillin because it just became resistant to it. And that was the two types of approach, I think, and of the two I think the approach of the British services was better.