- Contributed by听
- Lancshomeguard
- People in story:听
- Evelyn Maudsley
- Location of story:听
- Calderstones Military Hospital, Whalley Lancashire
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A4002274
- Contributed on:听
- 04 May 2005
My late wife spent her war, from May 1940 until 1946, nursing soldiers returned from various battles. One of her most vivid memories was of nursing the stretcher cases brought home from Dunkirk, in a convoy of ambualnces from Blackburn Railway Station to what is now Brownhill Roundabout. The convoy travelled at around 5am, so that people wouldn't see it.
When the patients arrived at the hospital, on doing a head-count the nurses discovered they were one casualty short, so my wife and another nurse went off in an ambulance to find the chap.
He was still in the carriage, shunted into a siding at Preston Station - he hadn't been able to get off due to being stretcher-bound because of his injuries - so they brought him back to the hospital.
In order to tend to the injured, staff had to run two operating theatres for 24 hours a day - for seven days. The team amputated so many limbs the incinerators couldn't burn them fast enough.
Evelyn lived at Higher Hodder at the time, and had a pony and trap. On her days off, she used to harness the trap and herself and another nurse used to take 2 soldiers at a time on trips round the Hodder Valley, to get them out of a hospital environment.
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