Alma Russell Letters
Letters of British Columbia men on active service with Canadian and British Expeditionary Forces, 1914-1918. Learn more.
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satisfied with the union, so they operated again, breaking the bone and resetting it. This time they put my leg in another splint, and I had the great comfort of having 67 lbs of sand as an extension. After being in No. 7 exactly eight weeks, they decided to send me to “Blighty”.
Now, here is where the fun begins (if it can be called fun, I did not think so:) The evacuation for “Blighty” was scheduled for 11.15 a.m., at about a quarter to eleven the sister and nurse came in to fix me up, take off the weights, and get me into the stretcher, etc… The sister was practically a new sister to me, had only attended me for about a week, and to my mind was a little too slow and sleepy for my liking, so when she went to the foot of my bed to remove the weights, I took the trouble to remind her to take off the two outside weights first, and then the two inner ones next, and I’m blowed if she did’nt lift up one outer and one inner weight, consequently the other weights flopped down, giving my poor old leg an awful twist. Needless to say the room was blue for a while because it caused me unnecessary pain. Then came the thing I dreaded, getting me from the bed to the stretcher. This gave me a great deal of pain, in fact I was in such agony that the Matron said she thought I was too bad to travel but I persuaded her to let me go. Then there was the ambulance drive from the hospital to the wharf. It seemed to me that the driver was going over every stone and into every hole he could see, as a matter of fact, he was driving very slowly and picking out the best of the road. I was just off the convey and on to the boat and I’m blessed if the silly ass of an officer did not mark my card “B” instead of “A”. (“B” is Tom’s Ward,”A” officers’) and consequently I was taken along and put on a very steep schute and slid down to the deck below. When I was down there the M.O. came along and read my card and seeing my rank said “You are in the wrong ward, here orderlies, take
BC Archives, MS-1901 Box 1 File 6 / RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873 - 1964. Victoria; librarian. / Selected letter from Lieutenant Gordon Patrick Heinekey, 1917.