The Red Cross Under Fire
The Ships of Youth. By Geraldine Edge and. May E. Johnston. (Hodder and Stoughton. 7s. 6d.)
THE idea that it is unfair to shoot at the wounded had taken deep root in the society which grew up between Florence Nightingale's day and 194. It was one of the ideas which helped to gloss over the beastliness of war by their implication that it is a game with rules. The Nazis may have contributed more than the pacifists to war's ultimate outlawry by their ruthless disregard of the Red Cross. Why, they evidently argued, allow the enemy to save his wounded and bring them back into line? To them, the wounded. and those attending them, were as good a target as any other. The Ships of Youth is an account by two Army nursing sisters of nine months' service on board the hospital carrier Leinster.' She reached La Goulette in North 'Africa on July loth, 1943, the, day the Allies landed in Sicily. She went in to the Siciliah beaches without mishap. At Salerno in September, having taken on board, a few casualties, she was ordered to cruise all night, fully lighted, with four other hospital ships. One, the Newfoundland,' was sunk by a direct hit on the medical officers' and sisters' aleepiNg quarters. Six of fourteen sisters and her five medical officers were never heard of again. Eight men of the R.A.M.0 and nineteen of the crew were also lost. Fortunately, she had only two wounded aboard. and they were rescued; "it was consoling to learn how well stretchers float," remark the authors grimly of another incident. At 8.30 next morning the Leinster ' returned to the beaches, collected 400 casualties under air raids and shelling, and sailed for Bizerta, which she reached at 5 pin. during a raid. warning. She was told to put to sea and cruise for the night " We could not at first grasp it. . But the order was dear and had to be obeyed." The night passed without incident, and the patients were landed safely in the morning Off Anzio, the `Leinster,' the St. David,' and the St. Andrew,' cruising fully lighted one night, " were attacked by dive-bombers nine times. After we [the `Leinster '1 were set on -fire, they left us alone until we all three started to steam off again, then Ihe planes returned and never stopped bombing us until they hit the `St. David.' After dropping flares over her to make sure she had sunk, they flew off and did not attack us again." At least so of the St. David's' complement of over 200 were lost. Yet the, authors (who write as a single " I "), can still say, " When I had the experience of being a prisoner of war on a German ship, and ,cursing others in the same state, I was impressed by the sympathy extended to our people by the German doctors and their assistants." . The authors have interesting and even amusing things to say about many other matters: for instance, the French Moroccans they carried several times—" grand soldiers and excellent patients," but " totally unhouse-trained "—and the shortcomings of their Italian patients, about brief spells of off-duty time, and the peculiarities of officers in charge of disembarking casualties. The Ships of Youth is part of the harvest of this war's stories of courage and endurance under fearful strain told simply, directly, and modestly.
IRENE CI.EPHANE.
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