WAR ON HOSPITALS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16260, 10 July 1918, Page 9

WAR ON HOSPITALS.

GERMAN SAVAGERY

(feoji ocb ow.v correspondent.)

LONDON, May 28

A Now Zealand soldier, a man from Ola go, now at tho New Zealand hospi- ' tal at Walton-on-Thames, gives a vivid account of one of the most dastardly deeds the Hunnish mind ever conceived —the air raid which took place on a hospital base in Franco on Sunday, May 19t.1i. This man was in a hospital there for treatment of somo slight troublo, and ho was well enough to act as ward orderly. He now lies in bed with & cradle over both his badly wounded legs, and with a bandage across his face covering a wound which, happily, escaped his eye. . . Sunday night, he says, was gloriously moonligl'it, oveiything showing almost as clearly as if it were day. The raia camo without warning about 11 p.m. when the first of tho three enemy squadrons flew overhead, dropping bombs in all directions. But he mot with a very heavy and disconcerting fire. "You could tell by tho smind that they were flying low. Tho air seemed to be full of machines, and tho uproar was deafening. All the nurses behaved magnificently, never flunking of themselves, showing no sign of fear, concornea only for tho safety of their .patients, who lay with no protection save the frail roofs of tho huts. "Some of the patients were put under tho beds for such safety as that cover afforded, but there w©re ™any men whoso injuries did not allow them to he moved, and their ordeal was terrible. All lights were put out, but wherenecessary small lantorns were used. They had heard bombs dropping near them, when suddenly one foil into the ward, wrecked it utterly, and killed some or tho patients and wounded others, in tho darkness I could hear no voices, and badlv wonnded as I was, J had great difficulty in forcing open the door to escape into the radiant moonlight. Presently this New Zealander was dimly conscious of a voico saying "theatre," and ho had the sense to stagger to the operating theatre of tho hospital, whero tie fainted at the door. When he regained consciousness no found himself lying on a stretcher in tho theatre with wounded people, men —and somo women, too —lying about i n all directions. Tho ilo?tors were hard at work, operating by candlelight, because when they had turned on tho electric light tne enemy camo about them ugain. lne nurses wero there, -helping the doctors, or sitting on the floor beside the stretchers, doing their best, to cheer the patients, and showing no signs or fear, though the raid was still in full progross. Nothing could have been more magnificent, he said, than the coolness and devotion those nurses displayed. And this, indeed, is tho tributo of all the men. It has been told how tho turned their machine-guns on tho hospitals, but tho Otago man mentioned a further horror, when ho told how, as civilians and patients who wero able to run fled out into the streets seeking wildly for shelter, the raiders flew very low and fired on the crowds. He had heard from the nurses afterwards how the flight-commander of one squadron, whoso machine was brought down, and who was carried to ono of the hospitals ho had bombed, showed no penitence «for his horrible act, but said that the British should not place hospitals near tho, railways—objectives convenient for Germans to bomb. . , • It is quite well recogmscd that in this case, as in others, the raiders were not attacking the railway, but' came deliberately to bomb tho hospital area, and they knew perfectly well what they were doing. From a well-known Now Zealand resident, -who has been in France for newly three driving a Red Cross ambulance,'l have received a brief letter, m which ho describes tho raid as a "snorter," "over 200 poor patients, orderlies, nurses, and M.O.'s dead, and aboat 700 casualties. How any escaped was simply a marvel. I was coming quietly homo, and simply and vmtibly had to dodge bombs, for up m our sector—-'lsolation and Convalescent' —the rain of shrapnel continued uninterruptedly for two hours." The story from Headquarters mentions the assumption that two separate parties were employed, numbering between them over a score of machines, from which a great number of bombs wero dropped, many of the very largest size, making craters in the ground, lo to 20 feet across. "The scenes insido the tents were of the most piteous description, and the total casualties to patients, sisters, medical officers, and attendants must have far exceeded those of any London air raid. The redeeming featuro of tho whole horrible affair was the magnificent behaviour of tho hospital staffs, including the nursing sisters. The authorities _ had' provided shelters to which the sisters and othTS could have gone for refuge and saved themselves. But tho cots wero filled with the helpless wounded, many hundreds of whom could not be moved, as they were obliged to remjyn in some fixed position. The attendants utterly refused to leave their patients, but all the while the dreadful carnage went on the nurses moved about among tho beds, smiling and doing their # best to keop-un the courage of their poor charges? No single sis tor seems to have failed, but every one of them paid the prico of their heroism with their lives or by being wounded."