Normandy Beach Women of the Red Cross ~ 1944

http://veteransfirstltd.org/red-cross-women-at-normandy-beach-wwii/

Here's a Normandy Beach landing photo they don't show you in textbooks. Brave women of the Red Cross arriving in 1944 to help the injured troops.

It was a man's world for many years and the nurses who served in all the wars were not applauded for all the work they did. Let's all stand and give a big salute to all people who served in all wars to protect us and take care of the injured in order to make this a better land to live in. Thank you, nurses, doctors, service people and all that went with --- protecting us! Amen.

A PICTURE STORY BY OUR FRIEND LEE R. CHRISTENSEN

 A PICTURE STORY

The Time:  1713 (military time)

The Date:  1 August 1944  

Lee R Christensen

KATHY:  I don’t know that this has a place on the Mt Pleasant History site but I thought you might  like to see what an old guy does in his free time .   lee

Trying my computer hand at a picture story.  Needs tightening  but I have problems manipulating a photo with a mouse.  I’ve a call in to Bill Gates for help.   lee

The Headlines   

                           

The Map:

                               

The Place:  Hedgerows, near Percy, Normandy, France

       

The Event:  “About then I heard an incoming shell. I hit the ground face down.  I do not recall the explosion.  I do remember the sharp stabbing in my lower left rib cage. I knew I had been hit.  I was terrified!  I had been hit and remember thinking ”I’ve been hit” but I’m still alive”. 

     Excerpted from “ The Physical and Psychic Wounding of Lt Lee R Christensen”  Can be read  by  Googling the title.   

The Evacuation: 

                       

                       

The Field Hospital:    

   

Field Surgery:

       

The Nurses:  

      

 

And a  Note from the Medical Staff:    

  Most seriously wounded means men shot through the head, lungs, bowels, or large bone of the legs, wounds that in World War I were usually fatal.

    

     Our basic technique is to open up a man's abdomen with an 8-inch incision, go through his intestines and other organs carefully looking for holes made by bullets or shell fragments. Damaged organs and bowel are removed, the holes sewed shut and the incision closed except for a loop of bowel that serves as a temporary outlet. Minor wounds are cleaned of damaged flesh and packed with vaseline gauze. We do chests as well as bellies, sometimes on the same man. We use great quantities of whole blood.  We have sulfa, which we smear liberally everywhere we can, and everybody who lives gets the new drug penicillin every four hours.. 

And I lived to Celebrated this Day 70 Years After>? 

The Music:   Glenn Miller’s “American Patrol”