The Incidents
In those days we had an Ambulance that stayed on station to deal with Accident and Emergencies and one person from the seven to three shift and one from the three to eleven shift would team up with one of the shift leaders to be the crew. This was done on a rota system and it was known internally as, the Blood Crew, the shift leader usually went in the back of the Ambulance with the patient and the other crew member drove the vehicle.I obviously dealt with many incidents over the years, some strange, some funny, and some gruesome, but I will tell you of a few that were much publicised and also that will stay in my memory for ever.
The Strange
I was doing a night shift, it was on Sunday 12th October 1969 at 1.30 am we went to a serious car accident in Southsea, a car had crashed, the driver had disappeared and the woman passenger was thrown through the plate glass window of a betting shop. When we arrived she was lying on a lot of broken glass, and above her ready to drop was another very large piece. After some time with the aid of a couple of police officers, we managed to lift the woman from the glass and put her on our stretcher, other police officers had got some paper to protect their hands and were holding the hanging glass so that it did not fall on us. The woman was very badly cut, one of her ears was missing and her arm was almost severed at the shoulder and unfortunately even with our best efforts she died on the way to the hospital. The strange bit.....We later found out that this woman was recently widowed, and her late husband was the owner of the very same betting shop that she was found in. The driver of the car was later found uninjured (the woman's new boyfriend) and there was no reason for the accident as there was no other vehicle involved, very strange.
