Dieppe Landing Patients

Heroes Remember

Dieppe Landing Patients

This video format is not currently supported!

Transcript

Interviewer: The Dieppe raid took place in August, 1942. Did you get casualties from that? Oh we did, yeah. When we knew when the Dieppe raid, the raid was going to happen, they evacuated our hospital. Everything, we didn't have a patient. But to keep the people in the district thinking we were still going back and forth, we wore our full uniform, our veils and everything. On our bicycles, we went over to the hospital, the time we'd go over to go on duty. The time we'd come off duty, we'd come back to our quarters, and stayed there, to fool the public. Interviewer: But the hospital was empty. (Yes, we had nobody at all) and being made ready for these casualties? Yes that's right and when we got to Dieppe and we had mostly Winnipeg Camerons, that's what we had most of all. I was on the surgical ward. And I had near all the Officers. It was the Officers ward I was on, at the time. I had some precious patients, believe me. Interviewer: So their spirits were good? Oh yes. Interviewer: After the devastating loss at Dieppe, was the morale of the men affected? No, they were all ready to go more, they wanted to get back. No we didn't have, it was really surprising. But one patient that we had at Bramshott, he was an engineer. I don't know if you've ever heard of him, Allen Piper. He lost both arms with a grenade, and this is before we ever went overseas. And ah he was in the Officers ward too. He was a Lieutenant at that time. He had no arms and he was just a joy to look after. He was blind, he had shrapnel in both eyes, he couldn't hear. But if the door would blow closed form the wind of anything, he would get it opened somewhere. He'd get attention, someone to open the door for him. But, I still hear from him. He's in Peterborough, Ontario. He was the first one to have artificial arms. And he wanted to go to the Officers mess. He wanted, they were having a party, and he wanted to go over. He was a beautiful dancer and he wanted to know if he could take one of the nursing sisters. And I got a nursing sister to go with him over to the engineer's. And he came back, he had a little cap made to put on the stump of the arm with a pen in it, and a knife and fork in another one, like a little dog muzzle. Interviewer: That would be fairly revolutionary at that time? At that time they had no artificial, it was some time after that. And then that night he went to the dance, he could not dance. He lost his balance with both arms gone but I still hear from him Beautiful writing, and that's a joy. I should have left that in the... Interviewer: But have you kept in touch with many of the patients that you'd had? Oh, quite a number of them, yeah.

Description

Ms. Dunn recalls the large number of patients that resulted from the Dieppe landing.

Ruth Dunn

Ruth Dunn was born in Mount Herbert, Prince Edward Island in 1903. She received her business training in Charlottetown followed by three years of nursing training in Toronto. She went on to the University of Toronto for a one year Public Health course, completed in 1927. She then spent a number of years nursing at a number of Toronto specialty clinics. Ms. Dunn joined the Canadian Army on September 2, 1939, a day after Britain declared war and almost a full week before Canada followed. She initially was assigned to the 15th Canadian General Hospital Unit located at Toronto's Grace Hospital and later renamed the Toronto Military Hospital. She worked with a staff of 60 nurses. A few months later, she joined the war in Europe, arriving in Liverpool, England in June, 1940.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 03:24
Person Interviewed:: Ruth Dunn
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Branch:: Army
Units/Ship:: 15th Canadian General Hospital Unit
Occupation:: Nurse

Language selection

Dieppe Landing Patients

Heroes Remember