"During the Somme we practically never stopped. I was up for seventeen nights before I had a night in bed. A lot of the boys had legs blown off, or hastily amputated at the front-line. These boys were the ones who were in the greatest pain, it was frightful and we had nothing to give them. Aspirin was not much good but there was nothing, no pain killer, between that and a morphine injection at the other end of the scale, which they got if they were very bad. But that made them unconscious, so it was only given in very extreme cases.
The worse case I saw - and it still haunts me - was of a man being carried past us. It was at night, and in the dim light I thought that his face was covered with a black cloth. But as he came nearer, I was horrified to realize that the whole lower half of his face had been completely blown off and what had appeared to be a black cloth was a huge gaping hole. It was the only time I nearly fainted.
It's amazing what you get hardened to." - Nurse Clair Tisdall, London, District Ambulance Column, Somme, France 1916 #reality #ww1 #stayzero #zerofoxtrot