RUTHLESS BLOW AT HOSPITAL SHIP

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 20, 19 October 1943, Page 5

RUTHLESS BLOW AT HOSPITAL SHIP

Survivors’ Account

(Received October 18, 9.20 p.m.) LONDON, October 17. German planes dive-bombed and set on fire the hospital ship Newfoundland, off Salerno, Italy. There were no wounded on board, but six nurses and also all the doctors and a number of the ships officers were, killed. Volunteers fought the flames out, but the ship had to be abandoned and sunk by naval gunfire. Some of the survivors have reached a Scottish port. An able-seaman paid a tribute to British and American nurses who tended the men who were wounded in the attack, while German fighters were machinegunning the decks. "The Germans attacked the Newfoundland at 5 a.m. on September 13, when she was 30 or 40 miles off-shore. one said. “We carried huge illuminated red crosses and a fringe of green lights, and could not have been mistaken for a fighting ship. One bomb directly hit the doctors’ quarters, and the ship listed to star-? board, but we managed to launch some lifeboats and rafts. "The crew and Medical Corps men thought first of the nurses, but the nurses could not be convinced that, they should get out of the danger zone.”