The Bombing of Base Hospital No. 5
At 10:35 on the evening of September 4, a German plane dropped seven bombs, five of them scoring direct hits on Base Hospital No. 5 and killing four men.
Although not present at Camiers during the event, Harvey Cushing sent this account of the air raid and bombing of the hospital to the Dean of Harvard Medical School a few days after the event. The editorial corrections made by Cushing were incorporated into a published version of the letter which appeared in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin on October 25, 1917.
In Cushing's account:
The third bomb struck at the end of one of the five-marquee tent wards, in what are called the "C-Lines", and the next one directly on one of the marquees of this same ward, fatally wounding an orderly, one of our original enlisted men, named Tugo, the explosion being severe enough to knock down the nurse in charge, Miss Parmelee, who was standing beside him. Fourteen British Tommies were re-wounded in this, and in the adjoining ward.
The fifth and last of the bombs made a direct hit on the reception tent, and it is lucky we were not "taking in" at the moment, for when a convoy of wounded arrives, this is the most congested spot in the hospital camp, with ambulances, stretcher-bearers, and medical officers in addition to the crowd of walking and lying wounded. Sergeant Edwards and three other men were on duty there. Edwards saw the earlier explosions, shouted a warning, leapt from the chair he was sitting in, and rushed to the end of the tent. Our bugler, Woods, a regular, attached to us at Fort Totten, got up from the floor, thanked him for the seat he had vacated, sat down, and was instantly killed; as was also Rubino, another regular. Two other privates in this group, Mason and McCloud, were badly wounded, and the latter, who happened to be standing, has had to have a double thigh amputation—in fact three amputations—the last a high one for a severe secondary gas infection. That he is recovering is a great credit to Cutler's skill. Flying fragments from these bombs, as from the first two, spread widely, some of them reaching as far as the little laboratory where Stoddard was at work, making media. Stoddard was intent on his job and didn't budge, not fully realizing what had smashed his sash and broken his window.