Dangerous Travel

Heroes Remember

Dangerous Travel

Transcript

'43 we were at Colchester getting ready to go to Italy and in Colchester there was great confusion because number one, these are two Montreal hospitals, number 1 and number 14. One was a two thousand bed and our hospital was six hundred, that, you could imagine how many, in six hundred bed there be eighty-five nurses plus all of the physios and other, extra home sister and then, extra. It just accumulated a little bit more. Now in, other hospital, I would think, I don't really, can tell how many nurses they had in number 14, but I know in number 1 we had eighty-five. And we had a six hundred bed hospital so they had 1200 beds so that would double. (Inaudible) They must've had about a hundred to two hundred nurses, and there was a lot of confusion. You know how rumours spread and we kept getting the rumours that number 1 wasn't going to, the captain of the ship that was taking us, wasn't going to have the two hospitals together with all the nurses and doctors. He was going to separate them, and there was great confusion. Anyhow, we didn't know, whether we were going or not, so number 14 set off in all her glory and feeling very smug that they were going. But on November the 6th, they had an aerial torpedo and their ship went down, but they had quite an experience. 'Course they all got in, into the boats and then they had to, the nurses had to row the boats because some of the staff didn't know enough about a... The time... Interviewer: You can keep going. You can keep going. Just tell me about them, the nurses rowing in the boats. Oh, yes, they still talk about it if you see or, you know if you get into a gathering you, you talk about these things and, but we were happy that we didn't go, because I'm sure I would have gone down. Interviewer: Were there any, any lives lost in that? No. Interviewer: They were all managed to... And the American ships that were in the area came to the rescue, and the girls had to, I think one girl fell in. You know these ropes that go up the side of the ship. One of them got half way up and then she fell down, but somebody dived in and rescued her. She was the only one that had any trouble. After they were torpedoed, they put us on the hospital ship with all the lights going on. We were terrified seeing all the lights, because, we seen from 1940 to '43 we hadn't seen a light and the ship was all lit up, the hospital ship was all lit up, as a precautionary measure so that the Germans wouldn't bomb it. And, then we landed in Algiers and the only good place in Algiers, as far as we all were concerned, was the Officers club and we all joined the Officers club. It's the only place but, oh Algiers was terrible. The interesting part about Algiers the Matron said, "Alright you girls aren't, we're going to be here for awhile, not too long, but," she said, "why don't you take five girls or so and I'll arrange that you relieve the British nurses that are in tents," and so off we trotted and we had a very enjoyable time, but they were mostly all burn cases, very, very bad cases. Interviewer: They were mostly air force, were they? (Yeah.) And then when we came, let's see now, when we, oh yes, then we went on to Naples and then worked in the British hospital in Naples and there we had all these guardsmen with their legs off and amputated, just sickening. But in the middle of the floor they had German prisoners and when we went into the wards, they said, they had little things on, "Don't forget the middle of the ward" and a few more words or something, you know, and of course we weren't going to forget that. I did the dressings while I was there and that was all there was to it. But Naples Hospital, was a beautiful hospital. It had been, but the Germans had been there before, and they had left a lot of their bits and pieces down below. And we used to have to climb up a ladder to get to the wards... They had, they must have kept their dead down below then, by the smell of it, I thought. Interviewer: How long did you stay in Naples then? No, well that was just in transit. I guess we went to Avellino after that, and this was, Avellino was, must have been '44. Avellino was getting ready for the last round of, to get Rome, and that's where I went out on a field surgical unit with another girl and two doctors and six orderlies. And we were a mobile unit that we could assemble the whole, in twenty minutes we could be on our way. Now going out on that, we travelled at the outskirts of Cassino and Pignataro and, and a number 5 CCS was a 5 Pignataro. And they called, we were called to go there and assist because they had heavy causalities from the Gustav Line and from Cassino. So there the Germans made a direct hit on the lighting system. Of course, all the lights went out, the patients on a table, but they all seemed to have survived. Most of the doctors and nurses were under the tables, but the patients were pinned down anyhow. There was always somebody up floating around. That was, I don't know, it was, it was a very upsetting area because everything was in rooms and as you go along you saw crosses with helmets on and dead cows and all that sort of thing. It was just disruptive. It was, I don't think of that very often, because it was so horrible and when we first started out at, on this trip you could smell death. You could smell it. It got into your nostrils and, and into your mouth and in your clothes, and you came like this and then bang, it hit you right, right between the eyes.

Description

In 1943, the hospital in Colchester, England where Ms. Moll was working prepared to make a major move. It was an eventful and dangerous voyage. The group eventually arrived in North Africa for a short stay in Algiers before going on briefly to Naples, Italy and eventually to Avellino as the push for Rome was beginning.

Patricia Moll

Patricia Moll was born in Ottawa, Ontario on August 21, 1912. She received her schooling in Ottawa. On finishing high school, she moved to Montreal where she received nursing training at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. After her formal training was finished, she went to work on the nursing staff at the Alexandria Hospital in Montreal. Ms. Moll enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1940 and joined the staff at #1 Canadian General Hospital.

Meta Data