Category talk:Madeleine Frances Jaffray

The Wounding of Madeleine Jaffray

Contemporaneous accounts from the British Journal of Nursing provide a completely different account of the wounding. The letter sent home describing the air attack, in particular, seems to be complete fiction. But, according to the BJN, nurse Hilda Gill was at the very least recommended for the Croix due to her organizing the evacuation of the wounded, made more difficult by a poison gas attack. Nurse Dora Coppin was overcome by fumes from an explosion and was later invalided out. A hospital orderly and a previously wounded soldier were also hit. The "ambulance" wasn't directly hit, but explosions knocked bottles off shelves. The mobile surgical hospital where she was stationed had a fleet of five ambulances to bring soldiers from the front, and it would appear that some of the nurses were going up to the forward areas with these ambulances. Not information that was meant for the public, for obvious reasons. But, for this group to be under a surprise poison gas attack at the same time they were being bombarded, they couldn't really be at a hospital five miles away from the front lines. Certainly not, as the letter states, the work of one airplane dropping a single bomb at very low altitude. 64.64.174.164 21:38, 11 November 2023 (UTC)