NURSING SISTER KATHERINE MAUDE MARY MACDONALD
CANADIAN ARMY NURSING SERVICE
19TH MAY 1918 AGE 31
BURIED: ETAPLES MILITARY CEMETERY, FRANCE
Katherine (Christy) Macdonald was killed in a German air raid, which hit No. 1 Canadian General Hospital, Etaples at 10 pm on the night of Sunday 18 May 1918. The hospital war diary gives the complete details of the raid, which resulted in the death of fifty-three medical staff and eight patients, and the wounding of fifty-three staff and thirty-one patients, several of whom later succumbed to their injuries.
The diary records how, "At the close of what had been a peaceful Sunday enemy aircraft came over the camp in large numbers. The hospital was wrapt in slumber when the planes were immediately overhead". The raid had been designed to take place in relays, the flames from the first raid guiding the subsequent raiders. There was no doubt in the British mind that the Germans had deliberately targeted a hospital despite the fact that this was against the rules of warfare and the hospital was clearly displaying a red cross on its roof. The German response was that the British had built their hospital close to an important railway junction and that this had been the target of their raid not the hospital.
Katherine Macdonald was the only nursing sister to be killed outright when her femoral artery was severed. A qualified nurse, she enlisted in March 1917 and had had several postings before she arrived in France in March 1918. Etaples was well behind the front line and just the day before her death Katherine wrote to assure her mother, "Don't worry we are far from harm". The website for 'Legion', Canada's Military History Magazine, hosts a number of digitised letters relating to Katherine, including the one written on the 18 May and one from her fiance, John Ballantyne, to her mother passing on what he had been able to find out about Katherine's death.
