Myocarditis

Myocarditis is described as one of the persistent physical consequences of the narrator’s near-fatal bout of typhoid in Damascus. It made his recovery uncertain and, even after he returned to flying, remained a reminder that survival had not meant an uncomplicated restoration of health.

Illness in Damascus

During the 1941 campaign, the narrator contracted typhoid and was hospitalized in Damascus. His condition was grave: the doctors gave him only a remote chance of survival, and repeated transfusions did not immediately resolve the crisis. Friends came to his bedside to offer their blood, while a young Armenian nun nursed him. The illness left him delirious for a fortnight; it took more than six weeks for his reason to return almost completely.

A lasting cardiac consequence

The narrator’s recovery involved several complications. His fever subsided, but his mind remained unsettled; phlebitis threatened his legs, an infection in his jaw had permanently paralyzed the lower left side of his face, and his gall bladder was affected. Myocarditis persisted as well. The doctors warned that the damage to his heart would probably be permanent, and doubted that he would be able to walk normally or pilot an operational aircraft again. Their prognosis set a stark limit against which his later return to flying would be measured.

Recovery and return to service

The narrator recovered gradually and, once able to speak, asked when he and his comrades could return to battle. The doctors laughed at the prospect, but three months later he was back in his Blenheim, hunting submarines over the eastern Mediterranean. This return demonstrates that the expected permanence of the heart damage did not prevent his resumption of operational flying, though the account does not say that the myocarditis itself disappeared. The condition therefore marks both the bodily cost of his wartime service and the gap between medical expectation and the course his recovery took.