Description
Ms. Smith-Adamson describes arriving in Njimegen only to find that her documents and kit are missing. A doctor acquaintance arranges for her to join #1 Casualty Clearing Station in Sogol, Germany where she remains with the Army of Occupation for a year.
Helen Smith-Adamson
Helen Smith-Adamson was born in Burford, Ontario in 1916. Her father had the distinction of being the first graduate of Royal Military College. Unable to pursue a science degree because of her gender, Ms. Smith-Adamson enrolled in the nursing program at Toronto Western Hospital. After three years, she graduated and found employment as a nurse with John Inglis Co. Her husband had been mortally wounded at Ortona, and following his death Ms. Smith-Adamson enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps as an operating room nurse. She served in military hospitals in Toronto and Camp Borden, and later in a convalescent hospital in England. Ms. Smith-Adamson arrived in Njimegen as the war was ending, and transferred to a casualty clearing station in Sogol, Germany. While there, she had the distinction of treating Field Marshal Montgomery following his plane crash. After the war, Ms. Smith-Adamson was a civilian nurse until she remarried.
Transcript
I got to Nijmegen and they lost all my documents and so I was in “No man’s land”, no money, no documents, no bedroll, nothing, so a friend of mine, a doctor that I had known at the Toronto Western, I saw his name on the bulletin board so I phoned him, so he took me out for dinner and he said, “You know I don’t know what we are going to do.” “But,” he said, “the No. 1 CCS needs an operating room nurse, would you go down tomorrow morning? ” I said, “Sure,” so I was sent down to No. 1 CCS, that’s casualty clearing station, and the next day and that was in Sögel, Germany, and then the war ended when I was there and I was given the choice to go to the Far East or stay in the army of occupation for a year so I chose the army of occupation.