Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
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242581
Pte. Sidney David Wells
British Army 14th Light Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps
from:5 Glen Neath Villers, Dover Road, Sandwich, Kent
Dave Wells was my father. He served throughout the war as an orderly with 14th Light Field Ambulance RAMC.
He was sent to France with the B.E.F. At Dunkirk they drew lots which let him try to get back to England. He was lifted off the mole by an almost new Destroyer with only one set of rear guns and two sets of torpedo tubes believed to be HMS Harvester.
The unit was then sent to North Africa, Syria(attached to Australians), back to north Africa. For a time he was an orderly in an American Field Service ambulance. These were volunteer American drivers and dodge ambulances supplied by the American Red Cross.
After North Africa he was in Italy before returning to the UK for the Normandy landings. From then on to Belgium, Holland and Germany.
He did not often talk of his experiences. Once he said that after large tank battle the M.O. was with them and if the casualty was beyond help they would be given an excess of morphine.
He was also at Bergen-Belsen a few days after it was liberated and said if you were not there in person you would not be able to take it all in.
All the years I knew him he never used the word ambulance it was always a Blood Wagon.
After the war he worked at Betteshanger Colliery in Kent as a male nurse