…the inspiring story of the only two women honoured for sacrificing their lives in the Normandy invasion after helping 75 wounded troops to safety before going down with their hospital vessel
By MARY O CONNOR – DailyMail.com
Hidden in the creaking hull of the hospital ship SS Amsterdam lay the groaning casualties of war. Bodies shredded by shrapnel, shot through with German bullets, even missing limbs, and dreaming desperately of a safe return home. Above deck on the foggy morning of August 7, 1944, smouldered the Battle of Normandy, the campaign ignited by the historic onslaught of northern France on D-Day that sought to scorch Nazism from Europe once and for all.
The ship was just off Juno Beach where two months before, 21,400 British and Canadian troops stormed German defences. Winning the vital bridgehead cost 1,200 Allied lives, with many more injured – and as soldiers pressed deeper into Nazi territory the injured kept arriving on the SS Amsterdam.
Among the medics treating them were Matron Anyta Field and fellow nurse Mollie Evershed –whose formidable courage is now being remembered by a D-Day memorial trust.
Mollie Evershed (pictured) was, said the captain later, ‘the bravest woman I have ever known’
One survivor recalls seeing ‘two people stuck in portholes’ as the ship heeled over, which he was later told were Anyta (pictured) and Mollie
Patrolling the makeshift wards, they treated head wounds, bandaged mutilated limbs and offered comforting words. Then – just as one of the ship’s surgeons completed a leg amputation – disaster struck. The SS Amsterdam, a requisitioned passenger ferry, about to make its third trip home, hit a mine. An almighty explosion tore through the 350-foot ship, ripping it open as if by a can-opener.
Panicked crew and passengers fought to escape as the stricken vessel, almost cleaved in two, rapidly began to sink. Lifeboats were lowered and the ship’s frantic souls piled in, filling them to bursting.
In desperation, some jumped into the sea. Anyta and Mollie had every chance to escape. Instead, and showing exceptional bravery, they put their own safety last. Mollie, 27, who’d trained as a nurse in Norwich, was a slender woman with sensible, milk bottle glasses, whose energetic sense of fun won her many friends.
More broader built, befitting the popular image of a matron, Anyta, 32, had a will as strong her frame and served in India before Normandy.
Racing below deck time and again as the ship dangerously listed, the pair helped carry their wounded patients to the lifeboats. All but the most infirm had to climb three flights of stairs to the promenade deck, where one officer had made a gangplank of stretchers to a lifeboat.
Others had to be hauled through portholes to safety.
In total, they helped save 75 men. One of the last to be rescued was the very soldier whose leg had been amputated just minutes before the explosion.