They drove south to Almeria, more than miles northeast of Malaga, arriving on February Malaga, a town of , inhabitants, was under attack by mechanized Italian and Nationalist units. Shelled by two German cruisers and bombed daily beginning February 3, the civilian population followed orders to evacuate on February 6. They left for Almeria along the coastal highway. While men, women and children fled in terror, the military defense collapsed behind them. Nationalist troops swarmed into the defenseless city, and tanks, supported by aircraft, raced ahead to massacre the tail end of the human column stretching to Almeria.
Despite warnings that Malaga had fallen and that Nationalist troops were advancing, Bethune decided to drive on. Several miles out of Almeria they met the first survivors struggling along the road. As they continued, the procession grew thicker.
People begged transportation. Unable to tolerate the distress. For three days and nights, working in shifts, the three men carried their human cargo:. Thousands of children — we counted 5, under 10 years of age — and at least 1, of them barefoot and many of them clad only in a single garment Our car was besieged by a mob of frantic mothers and fathers who with tired outstretched arms held up to us their children, their eyes and faces swollen and congested by four days of sun and dust.
Two hundred kilometers of unrelieved misery. She had stopped walking for 10 hours only. Here was a woman of 60 unable to stagger another step, her gigantic swollen legs with their open varicose ulcers bleeding into her cut linen sandals. Many old people simply gave up the struggle, lay down by the side of the road and waited for death. On the evening of the twelfth when the little seaport of Almeria was completely filled with refugees, its population swollen to double its size, when 40, exhausted people had reached a haven of what they thought was safety, we were heavily bombed by German and Italian fascist airplanes.
The siren alarm sounded 30 seconds before the first bomb fell. These planes made no effort to hit the government battleship in the harbor or bomb the barracks. They deliberately dropped 10 great bombs in the very centre of the town where on the main street were sleeping, huddled together on the pavement so closely that a car could pass only with difficulty, the exhausted refugees.
The street was a shambles of the dead and dying. That night were murdered 50 civilians and an additional 50 were wounded. There were two soldiers killed. His anger had been growing for months. From Almeria Bethune returned to Madrid where he threw himself completely into the work of the transfusion service and helped expand it greatly. On March 8, Franco initiated a new offensive. During the battle, Bethune and Sorensen were delivering blood to a frontline hospital.
Bethune was at the wheel. After leaving their cargo, they drove down the road a quarter mile from the hospital and came under fire. Bethune stopped the truck and ordered everyone to get out and crawl back to the hospital in the ditches on either side of the road. This near contact with death thrilled Beth-. It is the only place that is real. Life and death are parts of the same picture and if you ignore death the picture is unreal.
The front is reality. There is the most beautiful detachment there. Every minute is beautiful because it may be the last and so it is enjoyed to the full.
Beginning in early December with a small staff and little money, Bethune created in five months a service that. He made no specific scientific discovery in the use of preserved blood. His contribution, greater than any discovery that he might have achieved in research, arose from his inflexible determination to takethe blood to the wounded near the front.
Others had conceived the idea before Bethune, but no one had carried it into action. The Spanish rewarded him by granting him the highest military rank held by any foreigner in the medical service — unquestionably his military medical contribution was the greatest in the Spanish. Civil War. Perhaps the most significant tribute to him is the fact that mobile blood-transfusion units like his own were used by the belligerents in World War II.
The Civil War provided the environment in which his dominating needs could be satisfied. In the early months of the war, when the Republic was struggling for its existence and Madrid lay under siege, many of the military and administrative units were operated ad hoc by organizations such as the trade unions. Later the Republican government gradually extended its power to control all the various state functions normally belonging to it. During this earlier period Bethune was able to operate as he always liked to — independently.
He had justification for this since the funds for the functions of the service were being raised in Canada by the Spanish Aid Committee.
Incidents developed when Bethune would drink too much and reveal his hostility toward any attempt to control him. He did not care about diplomatic courtesies, and his outspoken comments about the family quarrels among the left-wing forces did not endear him to either side. In Malaga, a Communist-Anarchist dispute contributed to the Republican defeat. View Article Pages. But in his birthplace of Canada, Dr. Norman Bethune's communist beliefs and unorthodox personality made him a controversial figure.
As he said in "The rich man recovers and the poor man dies. In he went to Russia and was impressed with its socialized medical system. When he returned home he promoted a similar system for Canada. But in a country that feared the spread of Communism, the reaction to his ideas on socialized medicine was generally hostile. In Bethune joined a handful of Western doctors in China, where the war with Japan was devastating the country. While there he met with the Communist leader Mao Zedong in a cave, where their discussion lasted the entire night.
In addition to working with his mobile unit, Bethune made other improvements to China's medical system. Altogether, Bethune spent less than two years in China. He died in November He had been operating without gloves and cut his finger.
The finger became infected and he died of blood poisoning. Of course Bethune's Communist beliefs didn't always go over well not only in his home country, but with his own family. His niece Betty Cornell remembered her uncle as a free spirit. As a result, Chinese officials were coming to Canada. Many of them were eager to visit the site of Bethune's boyhood home in Gravenhurst, Ontario.
Problem was, there wasn't a lot to see. In Bethune's opinion, who are the real hypocrites in the medical profession? Act 1 Scene 7. What evidence is given to show that Bethune has become a successful surgeon in Detroit? In spite of his success, Bethune is clearly discontented with his medical practice. What in his opinion, is wrong with the way the doctors in the Detroit hospital practice medicine?
Act 1, Scene 8, Frances and Bethune get a divorce. Why has their marriage failed? In Act 1 Scene 10, Dr. Archibald hires Bethune. In Act 1 Scene 13, he supports Bethune against his critics. However, eventually, in Act 1 Scene 16, Archibald dismisses Bethune. Why does Dr. Archibald hire Bethune? Archibald support Bethune even though Bethune has antagonized many people? Archibald eventually fire Bethune? From to Bethune achieves great success in his profession.
Ironically he also becomes increasingly alienated from his medical colleagues, his wife and Canadian society. What are the weaknesses in Bethune's opinion, of the medical establishment and of Canadian society at this time? Why does Bethune decide to go to Spain?
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