大象传媒

I had just completed six months as a newly qualified house officer at my London teaching hospital when I received my call up papers to join the RAMC. Within a few weeks, I found myself posted to Oxford to join an RAMC military hospital which was forming up in the University Examination School鈥檚 building. However very soon I was sent with a small unit from the hospital to the Isle of Wight for a couple of weeks training on three ton amphibious trucks (DUWKs), aka 鈥榙ucks鈥�.

A few months later we found ourselves on an American Landing Ship, Tanks (LST) Medical anchored in Southampton. This vessel, a sort of roll-on roll-off ferry with a lift to the upper deck like an aircraft carrier, was already fully loaded with a miscellaneous collection of vehicles. Deep at the rear of the vehicle hold was our 鈥渢heatre鈥� tent containing all our main medical equipment.

The units on the ship were from the 231 Brigade, to which we were being temporarily attached as a sort of sea-borne field ambulance. We realised our unit was being prepared for a beach landing operation. There were about three hundred men on board. On June 5th, we were informed we would be unloading our vehicles by Rhino ferry on to a strip of beach referred to as Jig Gold, next to the village of Le Hamel on the Normandy Coast at H + 2 hours the next day. Our emotional tension was not lessened by a twenty-four hour delay because of bad weather but real fear was subdued by growing confidence in the mighty organisation we saw assembling all around us, including what looked like floating castles and giant cotton reels. However when we were a mile away from the coast there was a shattering explosion from behind us - a war ship had loosed off a salvo over our heads at some target well inland. This reminded us of the task ahead.

Then a naval launch approached us, thumping its way through the choppy seas in bursts of spray, and soon a notice was given out over the tannoy that a naval chaplain had come aboard and would shortly celebrate Holy Communion on the foredeck. All were invited to attend. When I decided to join in, I was astounded to find that I had been beaten to it by well over two hundred others. Immediately in front of the chaplain, who wore a white surplice over his uniform, was a table covered with a white cloth, anchored down by pieces of assorted weaponry, on which was a silver cross, chalice etc. The bread and wine was shared out and men returned to their places of waiting, a little subdued perhaps but with a new degree of calmness.

By the evening occasional DUWKs were still coming aboard. Casualties of war predominated, but mostly they had already been operated on at the beach dressing stations and it had been possible to get a number of the worst cases straight to the hospital ship anchored a mile or so out. So our work became a matter of administering morphine, keeping 鈥榙rips鈥� going, renewing dressings and continuing the administration of sulphonamide and penicillin. This latter new and magic drug had been very scarce in civilian practice but was now freely available to any who were wounded. Once it was dark the ship, now about half full of casualties set sail back to Portsmouth.

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