NURSES' COURAGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23850, 28 December 1940, Page 11

NURSES' COURAGE

THE BATTLE OF LONDON TRIBUTE BY COLLEAGUES FORTrTUDE AND HEROISM "Some of thorn are dead, those colleagues of ours; sonio of them lie seriously injured in wards in their own or other hospitals; some have providentially escaped the whistling bomb and the falling masonry. They are all, however, on the nurses' roll of honour — the roll of those who carried on in spite of danger," says a. nursing journal, in paving tribute to members of the nursing profession in England. "Wo are not able to give their names. W"o may not mention the hospitals which have fallen casualties in this time of terror. There is, however, something particularly just in not identifying any one nurse or hospital. In cases like these the individual only represents hundreds of her colleagues who would have behaved in just the same way had they been in the same circumstances. "From among the welter of ruins and rumour," the writer continues, "have emerged some fine stories. Almost every account of a hospital bombed includes the statement that 'the nursing staff behaved magnificently.' There are stories of individual fortitude and heroism that warm our hearts —of a. sister who crawled through the wreckage of a Kentish hospital giving injections to women patients who were trapped; of the young nurse who was rescued uninjured after being buried for three hours and insisted on taking her place with the other nurses; of the nurse in a London hospital who was pinned, injured, under debris for 15 hours, and whose cheerfulness and courage were vanquished only by another air-raid alarm, the shock of which killed her. "We have seen nothing that so neatly sums up the position as this simple phrase, which appeared in a London daily paper: 'The hospital, which was bombed last night, was able to carry on to-day as a result of the fine work of the medical and nursing staffs.' "We carrv on. That is the only answer the hospitals and nurses of this country have to make to the Nazi bomber. But it will prove the last word in this dreadful argument."