GIVEN UP AS DEAD.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LVII, Issue LVII, 20 August 1910, Page 8

GIVEN UP AS DEAD.

SWED BY FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. CHRISTCHURCH, August 18. To be drawn back from the brink of death's aby&s is not an experience that falls to the lot of very many men, although in these days of modern hygiene and wonderful surgery it is by no means rare ; but to be saved by a noble woman whose deeds have blazoned her name high in the world's estimation is a different matter entirely. Such a peculiar honor is held by Edward Bond, now living in Christchurch (says to-night's Star). He was in the Crimea when a youth of seventeen years, and was engaged as interpreter to the police at kadakoi, near Balaclava. Under the rigors of the climate he broke down, and after a brief illness with rheumatic fever was given up as dead by the army doctors. In the rude hospital he was covered over with an Army blanker, and i over his head the army card announced I that he was to be transferred to the "dend tent." j On that day Miss Florence Nightingale arrived at Balaclava, and made her first inspection of the hospital. I Bond's bed was the first inside the ! door. Miss Nightingale paused before ' it, read the card, and then said softly : "What a pity to die so young." She went to the head of the bed to turn down the blanket, and at once said: "Why, he is not dead." Efforts were at once made to secure his recovery, and ultimately Bond walked out of the hospital and resumed his duties." "All that I learnt," said the veteran to a reporter, "from the man m the bed - next to mine was that if Miss Nightingale had not seen me I would ! have been taken out to the dead tent — a cold miserable place where the dead were placed until opportunity could be found to bury them. The damp and ; cold would certainly have finished me ' off. Some time afterwards I saw Miss [Nightingale just before she was taken I ill herself, and I thanked her. She remembered me, saying, 'Oh, you are the boy they ordered to be buried.' I have | one lively recollection of the first day I regained consciousness. I turned in my bed and saw a nurse at my bedside. We had never before had nurses, and in mv youthful mind there came the idea that I had died and was in another and brighter world."