BOMBED FIELD HOSPITAL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 10 February 1944, Page 5

BOMBED FIELD HOSPITAL

70 TO 80 CASUALTIES (Rec. 10 a.m.) London, Feb. 9. Seventy to eighty casualties were caused among nurses and patients when German aircraft attacked a field hospital at Anzio beachhead on Monday, according to an Algiers message The dead numbered 21 in this attack' which was the second on the same hospital. IN CENTRE OF OPEN FIELD HOSPITAL CLEARLY MARKED (Rec. 11.10 a.m.) London, Feb. 9. “There can have been no possibility of German pilots .mistaking the concentration of tents. The hospital, as all air reconnaissance photographs of the enemy must have shown clearly, was at least a mile from the nearest military objective,” writes a correspondent of the bombing of a field hospital at Anzio beachhead. “The hospital." he continues. “was in the centre of an open field. He saw fighter-bombers dive and bomb from a low height. There was no barrage of balloons in the area to call for caution in pulling out of their swoops and no anti-aircraft guns near to reply to them.”

The correspondent said he counted eight bombs and went outside afrer the explosions. He found a nurse to whom he had just handed some letters dead in the receiving tent with another nurse killed near her. Three others were badly injured. He went through all the tents rnd found all had been struck by splinters. German pilots could not claim to havs made a mistake as the tent roofs were marked with a Red Cross and large Red Cross flags were pinned to the ground between lines of tents. He measured one of these, which was at least 50 feet square with a red band six feet wide crossing the sheet to its edges. ITALY’S GOLD RESERVES London, Feb 9. Italy’? remaining gold reserves were sent to Germany from Milan la.-t night, say? a British United Press correspondent on the Italian frontier. Thc go’d was carried in a heavily guarded train consisting of 14 cars. Fascist militiamen homed German soldiers to store the bullion and also gold coins into barrels weighing 136 tons, which were transported to the station in 40 lorries. By Vfweia) arrangement* Reuter* A'orld service ir. addition ti- special sources of information is used in the compilation of the overseas intelligence published in this issue, and all ! rights therein in Australia and New Zealand are reserved.