|
George Oscar Tichenor
ME1, FFC, Maplewood, N.J.
At 11 PM, the 4 AFS ambulances slowly drove to the southwest corner of the camp, where the engineers had been cutting a passage through the minefields, and took their places in the line waIting to drive through the opening, a zig-zag passage about 500 yards long and up to 15 yards wide at its broadest point, flanked with loose coils of barbed wire. Tichenor was followed by Semple, then by Kulak and McElwain in one car, and finally by Stratton, all cars carrying as many wounded as they would hold. [...] Semple later reported: "Our private little convoy moved on again, leaving me behind. Tichenor disappeared... while a moment later Kulak and McElwain went ahead and also disappeared." [...] Stratton completes the story: "Later someone came limping out of the blackness, and he took hold of me and we got to the truck... I landed on a pile of wounded men, who could not help but groan. I crawled over onto a pile of blankets, but thought the blankets too solid. I edged onto a toolbox, which was cold and very wet. Tichenor was lying under those blankets, but I didn't know it then. He was dead.
Tichenor had been killed immediately. His ambulance took fire and while he worked with the wounded he had been hit in the head and had fallen across the wounded men. His body lying across them had saved their lives. "One man, blinded, told me that... he had been in Tich's ambulance." Later that morning, shortly before dawn, the English buried Tichenor about 8 miles southwest of Bir Hakeim, near the rendez-vous point where the French were finally met by a British column from the north. (Rock, pp 81-83)
Source :ourstory.info  
Laurent Laloup le lundi 04 juin 2007 Contribution au livre ouvert de Georges Tichenor | |
