The end of Brazen Chariots

We are finally at the end of Robert Crisp's book Brazen Chariots. The benefit to me is that I have read the book much more carefully than I ever have previously done. Robert Crisp ends, saying that he had a long gap in his memory, from when he was at the Tobruk hospital, in the midst of the chaos. He eventually ended up in a hospital, which actually had female nurses, "between Fayid and Geneifa on the edge of the Great Bitter Lake". The nurses were interested in the Fleet Air Arm pilots who were convalescing, but whose boisterous voices jarred Robert's injured head. At least, a male nurse got him the "blue ointment" needed to remove the crabs. There was a specialist there, Professor Smith, from Edinburgh, who was puzzled that Robert had complained that his big toe hurt (from his brain injury). The good professor, who saved Robert's life, gave Robert a lecture on needing him to want to live. Robert, of course, very much wanted to live. He did want to be left alone, though, when he was feeling badly. Eventually, Robert had developed an infection in his mastoid, and Professor Smith needed to operate on him. When they took him into the operating room, the nurse "reassuringly" asked him for his next of kin information. The book ends with that incident. This is based on Robert Crisp's book Brazen Chariots.