HID RED CROSSES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 228, 25 September 1940, Page 10

HID RED CROSSES.

FROM NAZI BOMBERS.

AMBULANCE DRIVER'S STORY.

(By Air.) SAn FRANCISCO, September 7. Wearing her khaki uniform because it is all she has, and driving the car in which she transported blood for wounded soldiers, Miss Estella Lloyd, formerly second in command of the French Women's Ambulance Corps, has arrived home in Los Angeles. She is with her mother, Mrs. Carolyn Lloyd, 3268, Cadman Drive, after 15 years in France. And with her is Mise Ida Jorgensen, a Dane, who was evacuated from France with her. They do not yet know what has happened to 600 other women drivers. "I turned my chateau, 40 miles from Paris, into a 16-bed hospital for military use," Miss Lloyd said. "Later, Miss Jorgenaen took charge of the hospital while I managed a canteen unit. As the real war broke out in May, I had charge of recruits, teaching nursing, convoy driving, mechanics, night driving without lights. "Something we did not do in other ware was prepare blood for transfusion and carry it to the wounded almost in the fighting lines," she said, explaining that she had the serum, refrigerated, and in large boxes ready for transportation in convoy. "I could carry enough for 50 transfusions in my coupe."

As the Germans approached, Miss Lloyd suddenly found herself -in full charge of the entire equippage. "I have been 'bonubarded all over France," she declared. "We left there on June 22 to relieve British women drivers for further work in their own country. And we reached Spain just hours before the Germane."

She said that the soldiers in the hospitals were not wounded but burned, when the advance spearhead of Germans came into France. "They had such peculiar methods of terrifying the people," the American woman said. "I don't think I will ever again think an aeroplane beautiful. Every time a Red Cross train or ambulance arrived, the bombers would 'be there simultaneously. We carried green branches on top of our ambulances to hide the red crosses. The Germans were orderly, but had orders to 'bombard, and I think there were infinitely more civilian than soldier deaths."

Miss Lloyd, a native of Los Angeles, who went to France to study music, expressed anxiety over the plight of the United States, comparing the economic and labour unrest here with that of France the year before the war. "Of course we have to prepare," she contended. "I'm not a defeatist. Life in Europe is not worth living. This country is practically the last place on earth in which you can 'breathe a free breath. We must realise the power of this new kind of war, that can destroy an entire town of 60,000 persons, in three waves of bom'bers that can fly on to other towns and more destruction." Miss Lloyd's plans at present are uncertain. She still cringes at the sound of a 'plane. She was tired from the long journey and from the shocks and the sight of frightened children. But she wants to awaken her fellow country men to the horrors of the new warfare, and the dangers of lethargic assurance of the inviolability of oceans.