SURGERY IN BURNING WRECKAGE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 76, 27 February 1918, Page 3

SURGERY IN BURNING WRECKAGE.

AMPUTATION TO SAVE LIFE.

A number of remarkable acts of

bravery are recorded in the list of awards of the Albert Medal published in. the London Gazette in December.'

j By a railway accident in France a mari was pinned down by the legs under some heavy girders. The wreckage was on fire, and. the flames had readied the man's ankles, when Captain Charles It. Hoskyn, R.A.M.C., crawled into a cavity in the burning | wreckage and after releasing one of the man's legs, amputated the other. The man was then drawn out alive, Captain Hoskyn keeping hold of the main artery until a tourniquet could be put on. j A French motor lorry loaded with i 30001 b of aeroplane bombs took lire in a camp of the Serbian Army on October 22, 1916. When efforts to put out the flames with earth failed, Major Lewis C. Beanie, D. 5.0., and Private Albert E. Usher, both of the Army Service Corps, crawled under the lorry with extinquishers and put out the lire at the risk of their lives. Major Beanie was severely burnt about the hands and arms.

I When a soldier dropped a live bomb Second Lieutenant Arthur Halstead, M. 0., West Biding Regiment, sought to screen the man by getting between him and the bomb. He then tried to kick the bomb away, but it

exploded, fatally wounding him. The soldier escaped with slight injuries.

'A somewhat similar act of self-sacri-jfice was that of Potty Officer Alfred j Place, R.N. During practice at Blandford on June 16, 1916, a live bomb fell back into the trench. Place' pulled back two men in front of him, j and attempted to reach the grenade.! It, however, exploded before he could reach it, inflicting fatal injuries. ,