Americans were bringing us a lot of supplies. We would burn needles to sterilize them, use cotton to clean wounds. We never got any “Serious” infections. Dr Boivin wouldn’t skimp on ether!
However, it was hard for us to get enough cloth. Some nice people would bring us their shirts. For us, we had nothing to change. Mrs. Boivin was cleaning and gave us great help while her husband was managing the whole intensive care, spending all his morning next to each injured person, sometime having to re-do huge bandages.
At night, Dr Boivin had order to have at least one nurse to reassure and comfort people.
M. Leroy was managing the whole thing.
Food was coming form the general hospital. Brought to us into milk bottles or those buckets usually used for nature’s need… Sometime it was just too much washing up!


There were many people helping. It’s impossible for me to forget all of them…


I was working mostly with Ms. Floubert. In fact in such emergency situations, requiring so many treatments and care, we were becoming real nurses. After two and an half month, I was so happy to have all these experience validated for my internship by Dr Boivin.


In terms of wounds, we had a lot of crushed bones, open wounds form explosions, cut bones and serious burns. M. Bonfardin who later became my husband had to have his right leg amputated. He was full of bomb fragments (TN: Some graphic descriptions have been removed).


Slowly people went back to find their families. For us it was hard to find enough crutch and pants. On October 16 I finally went back to Caen, in the back of an English military truck. This time, it was much faster than on the way to go! We went directly to the nursing school to work. On November 2nd 1944, we were student nurses again!"


External Link about the battle for Caen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Caen