"Sister Alice Ross-King was on duty at the Second Australian Casualty Clearing Station near Armentieres in France in July 1917 when the Germans began a bombardment on the hospital. Summoned to a delirious pneumonia patient, shewas walking along the duckboards behind Private John Wilson, an orderly, when a bomb fell near them blowing a crater two metres deep.
When shegot up she raced along the duckboards to check her patients. "The next thing I knew I went over into a bomb crater. I shall never forget the awful climb on hands and feet out of that hole about five feet deep, greasy clay and blood, though I did not know then that it was blood."
Ross-King found that the tent with her pneumonia patient had collapsed and she shouted for help. Eventually someone got it up again and she found her patient crouching on the ground at the back of his stretcher. She leant across the stretcher and tried to lift him in. She recalled, "I had my right arm under a leg which I thought was [the patient's], but when I lifted it I found to my horror that it was a loose leg with a boot and puttee on it."
It was Private Wilson's leg, which had been blown off. Next day, they found his torso up a tree about 20 metres away.
Ross-King wrote that she had no very clear recollection of what followed but apparently she carried on with the job. ..."
From the book Anzac Girls by Peter Rees.
The mini-series was great and is available to watch online.
