After taking Amarah, he, like his many of his men, fell ill after drinking dirty water, and suffering from severe diarrhoea and vomiting, he left his command for a modern hospital in Bombay to recover. The ordinary soldiers who fell ill were not so privileged and had to manage as best they could with a ramshackle medical system. The American journalist James Perry wrote despite the overwhelming need for hospital ships to provide better medical care that, "The idiotic Nixon still hadn't provided hospital ships or ambulances or nurses or ice and electric fans".