麻豆社

Sligo, on the west coast of Ireland, is nearly a thousand miles away from the battlefields of France but local people felt they needed to help out nonetheless. In 1915, a group of them decided to raise funds for an ambulance which would be sent to the front.

In the space of two weeks, they collected 拢458 鈥� a vast sum of money for a small town in those days. They bought the ambulance and adorned it with a plaque saying: 鈥淧resented by the Town and County of Sligo, Ireland鈥�. The local paper carried a photograph of the vehicle before it was dispatched to France.

Meanwhile, two local women drove ambulances 鈥� and even ammunition trucks 鈥� at the front. One of them was Richard Wood-Martin鈥檚 aunt, Kathleen. She served in France until close to the end of the war and became a doctor when she returned to Ireland. Kathleen died on Remembrance Sunday 1935.

Richard Wood-Martin remembers his aunt Kathleen, together with historian Hugh Trayor.