RED CROSS DRIVER'S RESOURCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17060, 13 August 1917, Page 5

RED CROSS DRIVER'S RESOURCE

One of the voluntary drivers of the British Red Cros3 unit in Italy (says a writer in the "Cornhill Magazine") was bringing down, over an especially difficult piece of ground, an ambulance full of wounded from a lofty sector of the Alpine front, when he encountered 3 soldier in a desperate condition from a gaping bullet wound in the throat. Realising that the man was in imminent danger of bleeding to death,, the driver lifted the inert body to his seat, propping it up the best he could next to where'he sat behind the steering-wheel. Driving with his right hand, while with a linger of his left hand he maintained ft firm pressure on the severed carotid artery, he steered his ambulance down the slippery, winding mountain road to the clearing station at the foot of the oass.

The laconic comment of the astonished but highly pleased Italian doctor on the incident was direct but comprehensive : —"Well, young man," he said, as he took hasty measures further to staunch the gushes of blood, "you've saved his life, but in five minutes more you would have throttled him."