Amputees at a hospital in Budapest, Austria-Hungary in the summer of 1915. Some had lost their feet to freezing in the Carpathian Mountains in the winter. From 'Antwerp to Gallipoli' by Arthur Ruhl.
In a hospital garden, Budapest. All of these Austro-Hungarian soldiers have had one or both legs amputated.
"A boy from Idaho, a big broad boy, had his head all bound up and the tag around his neck, put on at a dressing station, said: 'Eyes shot away and both feet gone.' I talked to him and patted him on the shoulder, assuring him that everything would be all right now. He moaned through the bandages that his head was splitting with pain. I gave him morphine. Suddenly aware of the other wounds, he asked: 'Sa-ay! what's the matter with my legs?' Reaching down to feel his legs before I could stop him, he uttered a heartbreaking scream. I held his hands firmly until the drug I had given him took effect."
Excerpt from I Saw Them Die by Shirley Millard, quoted in World War I and America. Millard served as a Red Cross nurse in a French military hospital. The heartbreaking boy from Idaho was likely a casualty of the Franco-American Aisne-Marne Offensive.
World War I and America by A. Scott Berg, page 513, copyright © 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, publisher: The Library of America, publication date: 2017
1918-07-28, 1918, July, casualty, hospital, nurse, amputee
