and these are some of our men eating their evening meal as usual at the end of another routine day just another day but believe me what followed turned out to be anything but routine this me beginning of our story a story that developed during the night and continued for several days during the early part of the night we all went about our duties as  at midnight about forty of us in the duty section got a light meal it was just about this time that things were beginning to happen it began like this at first a more followed suit and just before dawn most of the men who had the midnight meal joined their ranks you never saw such a sick bunch of men in your life and it got steadily worse bombing abdominal pain diarrhea it was hard to tell which caused the most trouble one thing is your the boys were well taken care of some of them for a while all we had time to do was bring it was sick and some of them were plenty sick get them in bed and leave them to captain kimberly and his assistant this soon as we got the chance to let up and breathe a little we got down to the business of finding the cause of all the problems naturally we had suspected some kind of food poisoning and so it was like here this is what we found these are some of the organisms of the species type in your ear which were isolated from a patient stools best from the lapse of time between our patients last leo and the outbreak of illness it was evident that the evening meals were responsible for the presence of a solvent of organisms in the stew specimens in the meantime our laboratory was working on samples of food eaten that night our results showed that the other foods were ok but the fab or the leftover chicken then the gravy to reveal the same bacteria as the stool specimens of the place or these two were thoroughly contaminated with salmonella oh and when did the chicken then the gravy become contaminated with the organism well here's one thing we'll have to assume but it's a pretty safe assumption one or more of these chickens were contaminated by the s all they don't sigh and very likely inside after the chickens were put in the  giblets were cooked separately on top of the stove and the cutting board was clean but what a cleaning it got maybe we should just say that the salmonella organisms were more completely distributed over its surface and embe and then the giblets were taken from the stove thorough cooking had killed the salmonella organism but this good clean food was rican time unaided on the cutting board as it was this contaminated gravy was not read it was prepared for service and on the steam table there wasn't enough heat to kill the organism in but there is a good chance they began to grow the story was much the same with the chicken it killed the salmonella organisms in the oven but again the young clean cutting board contaminated the safe chicken meat as it was carved or s and between the gravy and the chicken we're going to come for the men who were sick around midnight or soon after those acute cases that occurred later form another chapter in our stor how the next chapter go left over from the evening meal was saved for the midnight meal and during this lukewarm steam table the salmonella organisms continued to grow and to make matters worse the cutting board contributed a new bunch of organisms as the leftover chicken was prepared for s that by the time the midnight meal was served the chicken or liking was supporting large numbers of salmonella organism enough to make the man on the night watch so violently ill what could have prevented this sickness than suffering we couldn't know that the chickens were in fact here this is a detergent this is hot water this is a bright these are hands put them together use them and get a clean cutting board with all the trouble makers washed all the good scrubbing immediately after the raw chicken was prepared gotten rid of the salmonella organism or if this applies to our hands than anything else that might be contaminated by contact with the file we made some other mistakes too the leftover chicken should have been put into the refrigerator as soon as possible and the gravy the air base mess hall accommodated the men and three ships approximately one hundred fifty at a time out of some four hundred fifty regular personnel one hundred seventy three became infected with effected complete recovery and were back on duty within several days to about two weeks