An Account By Lt John
Ross - Vx39036 |
About Dental
Officer Capt. John Rosson - Vx48269. |
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John Rosson was a dentist in Selarang Barracks. He managed
to stake a claim to a one-car garage which, with a medical officer Capt.
John Sierby, which they used as their surgery.
One day the Japanese Camp Commandant, Captain Takahashi,
called on John Rosson in his ‘dental surgery’ and commanded
him to attend a painful abscess in his tooth. When John inspected the
abscessed tooth, his eyes boggled at the size of its huge gold crown.
It looked very attractive to a half-starved dentist. The tooth would have
to come out and John agreed to extract it the next day. He then laid plans
to win the gold.
Captain Takahashi duly arrived at the surgery in the morning,
his courage primed with saki. Drawing the tooth carefully with all his
professional expertise, John casually tossed it into the spittoon beside
the chair and down went the tooth with its crown of gold. The spittoon
consisted of a heavy piece of rusty two-inch metal pipe with an inverted
metal light shade on top to serve as a bowl. The pipe went through the
floor, deep into the slushy mud below.
Captain Takahashi, startled to see his tooth tossed away
so nonchalantly was about to comment when John quickly placed a swab in
his mouth and instructed him to bite on it to stop the flow of blood.
He busied himself swabbing and attending the damaged gum for quite some
time. “Taka’ could say nothing. When he had prolonged the
task long enough to take Taka’s mind off the subterfuge, he gave
him a mouth rinse which, in due course, followed the tooth down the pipe.
By this time, with the help of John and the saki, Taka’s
pain had been relieved. He thanked John for his trouble and strutted out
the entrance, making no mention of his tooth. After sufficient time had
lapsed, John lifted off the spittoon, drew up the metal tube and recovered
the tooth from the wad of cotton gauze he had plugged a little way down
the pipe. John melted down the gold into an unrecognizable lump, which
he sold to one of the Korean guards for a fine price. A victory to the
Allies!
This story was provided by John Ross who makes the
following comment. “On my return home I studied dentistry and never
for one moment have I regretted it”. As at 2004 John lives at Bibra
Lake WA. He has approved reproducing the article as too has Colin Finkemeyer
the author of the book “It Happened To Us”.
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