FRIGHTFUL CARNAGE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 151, 27 May 1938, Page 7

FRIGHTFUL CARNAGE

BOMBING OF ALICANTE. INSURGENT RAIDERS. FIFTY BUILDINGS DESTROYED. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) VALENCIA, May 26. The insurgent raid on Alicante, in which 240 were killed and 1000 injured, lasted for 20 minutes, more than 100 bombs being dropped by six aircraft. Fifty buildings were destroyed. Two bombs exploded in a market place which was crowded with women. The worst damage was done in the centre of the town.

The port was also bombed, but none of the five British ships iii the harbour was hit. The Consular Corps, representing 18 nations, collectively presented its condolences to the civil Governor and decided to fly hags at half-mast for three days as a protest against the raid. The diplomatic corps also telegraphed a protest to General Franco against the bombing of non-military objectives, pointing out that only civilians' were killed. The raid is the most frightful since the Barcelona carnage. The centre of the city is a terrible sight and the recovery of the bodies will take days. -The raiders added to the terror by swooping low and machine-gunning the crowded streets.

IN CATALONIA. HEAVY FIGHTING CONTINUES. BARCELONA, May 26. The Republican and insurgent statements are so conflicting that it is Impossible accurately to sum up the trend of operations on the Catalonian front. Each side consistently denies the other’s claims. It is known, however, that heavy fighting continues over a wide area with substantial losses on both sides. “OUT FOR REVENGE.” CAPTAIN OF THORPE HALL. Received May 27, 10.35 a.m. London, Mav 26. The British United Press Madrid correspondent, in a telephone interview with Captain Andrews, master of the Thorne Hall, at Valencia, says the latter declared: “I am out for revenge and will return immediately a fresh ship is available. They can’t frighten me.”

Captain Andrews divides his disgust between General Franco, for disregarding the rights of neutrals, and the British Government for "favouring General Franco.” SUFFERING IN SPAIN. NURSE SHARPLES’S STORY. HORRORS OF BOMBINGS. WELLINGTON, May 27. Tales of ruthless cruelty, indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations and hospitals, and the horrors of civil warfare in Spain were told by I\lrse Millicent Sharpies, of' Levin, who returned to Wellington yesterday after nearly a year of service with the international ambulance brigade behind the Government lines. Nurse Sharpies left Wellington in company with Nurse Dodds and Nurse Shadbolt, who are still in Spain. They travelled under the direction of the Spanish Medical Aid Committee. On arriving at Portbou she was immediately given the job of driving an ambulance through to Valencia, three days’ journey, with a convoy of more than a dozen other ambulances. She was afterward stationed for three' months at the English base hospital at Huete, where the other New Zealanders still are. She was in charge of the hospital by night. It was the main hospital for casualties from the Madrid front. Afterward she was transferred to the Aragon front, within three miles of the firing line. , ‘‘This is not what you’d call a proper war,” she said. “It is just an invasion by Germany and Italy. All this non-intervention is an absolute farce. If the Spanish had been left to themselves it would all have been over long ago. BOMBING OF BARCELONA.

“I was at Barcelona when it was bombed. It happened all of a sudden.' There was no warning. The aeroplanes, numbering about a hundred, came over at a great height, then shut off their engines and swooped down without a sound to give warning of their arrival. They dropped their bombs quite indiscriminately! One bomb struck a big building where only girls were employed—no men at all. The whole lot were killed —such lovely girls. Afterward there were splashes of blood and human limbs everywhere. Three days after we were still digging out living people, many badly injured, who had been buried under fallen masonry in the part of the town that was bombed.

Some of the bombs contained liquid, gas, encased under tremendous pressure in a thin aluminium case. When they exploded they affected people over a considerable area; the effect of the gas was to interfere with -the heart’s action and to cause choking. The concussion of the heavy bombs was terrific; after ohe went off all the vcorrugated iron roofs would be warped and twisted, the shutters wrenched from the windows, and the panes smashed, within a couple of hundred yards of the scene. They tore huge holes in the streets and pavements and brought down the buildings like card houses. “It was curious, however, that within a day or two of the air raid one saw the factory girls -going off to work again and business being carried on as usual, just as though nothing had happened. ' “MURDER OF NON-COMBATANTS” “I was very lucky. Whenever I was in a town that was bombed, it happened that I was not in the particular area that suffered most. In about ten minutes, at Barcelona, 700 were killed and COO wounded. It was not a bit of good to get in a panic, or rush out into the street. The noise was terrible. It was wholesale murder of the non-com-batants, and afterward there were hundreds of civilians lying dead in the streets, tbeir bodies unrecognisable. “This war was not like any other war; there were no trenches, but whole armies of ’planes sweeping the skies, and dropping their bombs indiscriminately. At Tortosa they dropped their bombs on a village full of' old men,and women and children—all the active men had gone away to the war. After I joined : the 35th International, Brigade, on the Aragon front, they' bombed our hospitals several times. Once we had to evacuate, with, the

equipment and patients. “There were nurses of all denominations and creeds serving with the Government forces. Most of the money and hospital and ambulance equipment for the medical service was supplied by English and other outside sources. The Spanish are easy-going people, and they were quite unprepared for any Sjich emergency. I don’t know what they would have done without assistance from elsewhere.” Nurse Sharpies said that when she arrived at the front the opposing forces were so stricken with typhoid, enteric fever, and malaria, that they were hardly able to move against each other. The armies included thousands' of volunteers from all over the world— English, Americans, Germans, Austrians and Hungarians; and to cope •with the nursing the Spanish Government would have been hopelessly illequipped and organised without the foreign nurses. They were training the Spanish girls, however, to play'' their part. The Spanish were a wonderful people, and appreciated what was being done for them. Even when they were on short rations they were eager to share them -with the foreign nurses and doctors.