I have been sent a report of the second year's
work of the Friends' Ambulance Unit, composed practically, if not entirely, of men who have been granted exemption from military service on conscientious grounds, and have been working in blitzed towns in this country, and in Finland or Greece, or Egypt, or Ethiopia, or China. As an illustration of the kind of work that falls to the lot of members of the unit, I may perhaps quote the ex- periences of one member of it of whom I happen to know something personally. He started by driving an ambulance, bombed by the Russians, on ice-bound roads in Finland, till the Finns made peace. He and some others then managed to drive through Sweden and Norway, and got to Namsos just as the evacuation of that country was finishing. They had barely time to burn their ambulances and get on board the last ship, or one of the last, to leave. In spite of air and submarine attack, they got home across the North Sea safely. Then a spell of shelter-work and fire-fighting—and getting rather badly burned —in the East End. Now ambulance-driving once more, under Japanese bombs this time, on the Burma Road. Not very many regular troops have had a livelier time than this so far.
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