Sr Alicia Kelly (Mt Dandenong), Australian Army Nursing Service: At the 3rd Casualty Clearing Station, France. From her diary: ‘The noise was so terrific, and the concussion so great that I was thrown to the ground and had no idea where the damage was. I shall never forget the awful climb on hands and feet out of that hole that was about five feet deep with greasy clay and blood (although I did not know then that it was blood). A bomb had fallen directly alongside the pneumonia ward (pre-antibiotic). Though I shouted, nobody answered me, or I could hear nothing for the roar of planes and artillery. I seemed to be the only living thing about.
I flew through the chest and abdo wards and called out: ‘are you alright boys?’ ‘don’t bother about us’ was the general cry. I cannot remember what came next, or what I did, except that I kept calling for the orderly to help me and thought he was funking, but the poor boy had been blown to bits. Somebody got the tent up, and when I got to the delirious pneumonia patient, he was crouched on the ground at the back of the stretcher. He took no notice of me when I asked him to return to bed, so I leaned across the stretcher and put one arm around and tried to lift him in. I had my right arm under a leg, which I thought was his, but when I lifted I found to my horror that it was a loose leg with a boot and a puttee on it. It was one of the orderly’s legs which had been blown off and had landed on the patient’s bed. The next day they found the trunk about 20 yards away’.
Pte Alex Duncan (Lilydale), 14th Battalion: Is wounded in the field, burnt right hand and fingers, and is evacuated to hospital in France.
Pte John Albrey (Seville), 2nd Pioneer Battalion: Arrives in Australia from Europe on the HMAT Port Lyttleton to be discharged as medically unfit as a result of contracting myalgia. He had spent eight months serving in England before getting sick and never arrived in France.
Spr Dennis Shepherdson (Lilydale), No 5 Tunnelling Company: Arrives in Australia from Europe on the HMAT Port Lyttleton to be discharged as medically unfit as a result of contracting chronic rheumatism and because of his age.