RED CROSS BOMBED

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 2, 2 July 1940, Page 9

RED CROSS BOMBED

TACTICS OF GERMANS

ATTACKS ON AMBULANCES

"The courage and fortitude of the British soldiers are marvellous," said a nurse who has returned from France with the 8.E.F.,' reported the "Manchester Guardian" on June 6. She spoke of a private soldier brought in from the battlefield with both eyes bandaged and terrible head wounds. One eye was destroyed, but when she bathed the other and, he found he could see he said cheerfully, "Oh, I have got one eye, sister." In this hospital was a Bavarian soldier who spoke perfect English and who declared that "the war was brutal and unnecessary-" The hospital was bombed every time ambulances arrived. "The Red Cross is the thing the Germans want to bomb out of existence," said the sister. "Our wards were in the shelter, the second floor underground, and there we lived. We had a number of' French soldiers." Another sister was serving in a mobile hospital in France when orders came to evacuate it, but sl:e did not hear this till all the others had gone, as she was in a separate part of the hospital with four wounded British officers. She put them into a motor r ambulance and set off for the station, only to find that the train had been obliged to leave, and that the station! was in ruins. SUCCESS AT LAST. They drove to a port thirty miles away and found that their boat had been bombed, so they drove to another ] port and found that because the harbour had been, mined no ships could leave. At last they got on to a 1 ambulance train which took them to Dieppe, and there they were taken on to a hospital ship. They were bombed at intervals during their long drive. The .roads were crowded with refugees and the ambulance was continually held up. During traffic blocks the sister dressed the wounds of soldiers and refugees by the roadside, and when she ran out of dressings she tore up her white cabs for bandages. She has brought back her steel helmet, which was dented by a bullet when a German airman swooped down and machine-gunned her as she was leaving the mobile hospital. Two sisters had been serving on hospital ships for months and were eager to get back. They had experienced two. bombing attacks on the ship the second when no wounded were on board, and they said thai no one is frightened by such attacks. "When a bomb comes down you wait for the I next." They were glad they had had the experience the men have to face. One sister, who spoke of the extraordinary kindness of the French people, said she had the greatest admiration for the women, who were driving trams, sweeping streets, and doing any other work that came to hand.