SAVED PATIENTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 31, 6 February 1943, Page 4

SAVED PATIENTS

BEDS WERE BLAZING HEROIC EXETER NURSES LONDON. 'Nurse Emily Knee, of Exeter City Hospital, looked round the blazing ward. She saw the beds on fire and sick men calling for help. She saw blazing timbers fall on to the beds. The floor above her started to collapse. Showers of sparks lit up the ward, black smoke billowed all around. "They'll be burned alive. I can't leave them, I can't," she shouted. Nurse Knee lifted a dozen men from their beds and carried or dragged them away. . She pulled blazing bedclothes off unconscious patients, spoke tender words to agonised men. And all the time she ignored her own burns. Roof Crashes Watching calmly from his bed an old pensioner murrriured: "It doesn't matter about me, dearie. The roof is going any minute now. God bless you. You have done enough." But Nurse Knee pulled the old man from his bed of fire and took him to safety. i At last . firemen shouted: "The roof's collapsing," and ordered the nurse away. She was crying as she turned her back on the hospital. The roof crashed in smoke and flame. I went down to Exeter to tell Assistant Night Nurse, Mrs. Emily Knee, of Marriville Road, St. Thomas, that she had been awarded the George Medal for her gallantry on the night the Germans found Exeter City Hospital listed in Baedeker, said a writer in the Daily Herald. "It was my duty," said this woman of 47. "It is all over now." . There were other heroines and heroes in the hospital that night. Fought Blaze Assistant nurses Mrs. Mary Britt and Mary Ann Walker have been awarded the B.E.M. Many incendiaries had hit all parts of the hospital. Mary and Mary Ann were on duty together in the women's ward when flames swept around them. They stayed there, Mary fighting the blaze, Mary Ann carrying out the women patients. Then they would change over their tasks. "Tiwing to ignore the flames and not think what was happening outside was the hardest part," said Mary Ann, aged 26. "We did not know if we were trapped or when the roof and walls would cave in. But we tried to be happy." Nurse Britt is 40. Her husband is in the army. She has just heard that he is missing. After the raid the fire chief said every member of the hospital staff displayed great gallantry. The London Gazette singled out seven, three women and four men, for'commendations for bravery. "A Bit Annoyed" They are Assistant Nurse Mrs. Cartwright, Assistant Nurse Annie Gunter, Charge Nurse Elsie May, Robert Cheeseman, assistant hospital master, Alfred Braven, male attendant, Albert Hallett, male nurse, and Walter Morris. Wally Morris, aged 47, is the hospital gardener. "I got a bit annoyed when Jerry started planting incendiaries among my flowers," he said.