'Stretcher-bearers': (24) At Termoli, 4.10.1943

Account given by Jack Blockley, 11 Field Ambulance

"The next morning (4.10.43 at the River Biferno, near Termoli) we joined the infantry, the Lancashire Fusiliers, and the fighting began.
We were in a barn putting a Thomas splint on a casualty with a broken thigh when we received a direct hit. I was wounded in the back and arm and was tangled up in a despatch rider's motor-bike.
When I got free I looked at Capt. Williams who was sitting on a box behind me. He was dead. I did not see any wounds on him and think maybe the blast killed him outright.
The place was a shambles. One poor fellow was sitting near the entrance, the front of his leg blown off. It was a horrible sight, but he said it didn't hurt.
Shells were falling near the place and I ran across the open ground to join a group that had also left the barn. Fred Sutcliffe bandaged my back and arm and, to my amazement, there was an ambulance which had come right to the front. With a load of casualties it drove back across the bridge and I was on my journey down the line.
I was very impressed by the medical services and the spirit of the wounded in the different stages of the evacuation, most of them in improvised farm buildings. I remember one fellow who had lost his leg saying quite cheerfully that it wouldn't be much of a handicap."

Extract from "Algiers to Italy" by Cyril Ray. Page 89.
"It was later in the same battle that Capt. J.O.D. Williams and four other ranks were killed and nine other ranks wounded when a section of 11 Field Ambulance working with the Lancashire Fusiliers were hit by shell-fire."

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