>О неком Джоне Ватсоне Конан-Дойл сообщает нам следующее:
>а) в бывшем он отставной военный врач (очевидно, в отставку вышел не по своему хотению, а по состоянию здоровья)
>б) в настоящем он армейский хирург на половинном жаловании.
Нет. Читаем самое начало A Study in Scarlet
" The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.
Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the verandah, when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions.
I was dispatched, accordingly, in the troopship "Orontes," and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air—or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be."
Таким образом мы узнаем что Ватсон ранен в бою в плечо с раздроблением кости, в госпитале подхватил тиф и отправлен в Англию в 9 месячный отпуск для поправки здоровья с содержанием во время отпуска 11 c половиной шиллингов в день.
Пенсия скорее всего Ватсону не полагалась, потому что собственно военным хирургом он пробыл всего пару лет - в 1878 он получает степень доктора медицины, далее курсы армейских хирургов, в 1880 ранен и в 1881 уже снова в Лондоне.
