About three years ago I was serving on board a Royal Navy aircraft carrier named the Illustrious. We had been on a 5-month trip to the Gulf of Oman, and were returning home to sunny England when we were called to attend to some troubles happening in Sierra Leone, just of the coast of Africa.

After this debacle was over and we were on our way home, disaster struck! It all started with just a few people getting the squirts, nothing of note... but it was ten or twelve people all at exactly the same time, and the medics were scratching their heads as to the cause of it.

As the day went on, the ten or twelve people turned into 30 or 40, and then into 100 to 150, and by the next day 500 people on a ship populated with about 1000 were ejecting gallons of watery slurry into the ships sewerage system.

I myself was a victim of the ache-that-returns-all-too-soon, and I counted my visits to the toilet in one day at around the fifteen mark. My rectum felt like a tattered windsock. Moving about was bad enough, let alone running around on a flight deck all day in 95-degree heat and 100% humidity.

Things came to head for me when I felt that familiar pain at around one o'clock in the morning. Leaping from my top bunk, I showered those below me with gut effluent and gobbets of the days gammon steak.

I made my way down to the med bay in the morning, determined to get some relief via Imodium or some such medicine, only to be confronted by a weary "scablifter" (Navy term for medic) who had had more than his fair share of foul smelling sailors arguing with him and giving him abuse.

"Can I have some medicine for my shits, please, mate?" says I.

"Sorry mate, no can do, you have to be ill to get this medicine" says he.

"Eh?" I said " I've got fucking dysentery or something!" I half shouted.

"No, you haven't, you're just excited about going home to see your girlfriend and buddies and that's what's causing the shits," he helpfully explained.

I staggered off in disbelief and suffered for another day, waiting to get off this godawful ship that had been a prison for six long tedious months.

We got to within a day of docking in the UK, and the shitfest was still raging on board. Everyone was moaning and complaining about the dodgy egg rolls that were the prime suspect for all our woes when the rumor went around that the port authorities were going to hold the ship in quarantine until this epidemic had died down.

All of a sudden there was no squelchy pants problem at all -- and it was not even mentioned amongst fellow sufferers on the way to the shitter.

Fear is the best cure for diarrhea.

-- DaveyM