Bulletin

              SPANISH MEDICAL AID COMMITTEE
BULLETIN  MARCH 1937
£20,000
We have now reached this figure. The heroic stand outside Madrid has aroused public sympathy to a great extent. In amounts varying from £1,000 from an anonymous donor to 1/ from a widow with only her pension to live on, money continues to come in.
The London Co-operative Society has donated £100, and the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society £50. A weekly collection of odd coppers at a small Trade Union branch has resulted in £50 up to now.
New Committees are being formed  and the existing ones are not slackening their activities.
In Spain
Up to the present 21 ambulances and lorries have been sent out. There are now 45 doctors, nurses, orderlies, stretcher-bearers and drivers working on Medical Aid, and glowing tributes to their skill and courage reach us. Each week we send out additional nurses and doctors, as well as the convoys of medical material, food, etc., that go regularly.
The difficulties of the petrol shortage are being overcome by our purchasing and sending out an 800-gallon tanker which will transport petrol from France into Spain. This will be used for our ambulances and lorries, and also for the British buses evacuating the civilian population of Madrid.
We have contributed financially and in other ways to the University Unit, which is doing excellent relief work for the Malaga refugees in Almeria. They have set up field hospitals, clinics and food kitchens under the direction of Sir George Young.
In Preparation
We have planned to send out two ambulances each week for the next three weeks. Of these, one comes from the Manchester Committee, one is donated by the Communist Party, two are the result of the anonymous gift of £1,000, and one is the first " Welsh Ambulance ", raised by a campaign in North Wales by a Committee drawn from all parties and denominations, with Miss Megan Lloyd George as chairman.
These are all to be filled with supplies, for which money is needed. Every attack, every air-raid, means a continuous stream of casualties pouring into our hospitals. Dressings, splints, morphine and anaesthetics are all urgently required.
New field hospitals are being equipped, each costing approximately £300.
A new type of ambulance, small enough to go very near the front lines, is being planned. Those will cost £250 each. Here is an opportunity for local committees that consider a large ambulance at £500 beyond their reach to undertake to supply one of these smaller ambulances.
Extracts from Latest Report.
" ...  we have in the last few days been dealing with 350 wounded from one of the biggest battles of the war .... every one of the doctors and nurses is doing excellent work; S-, who is in times of rest medical head of the sick hospital of the Brigade, is specialising in blood transfusions, which are saving something like two to three lives daily on heavy days; yesterday he gave eight - chilled blood from Madrid... I have myself been for a few days seriously overworked, in the sense that the work itself suffered; I did forty-eight hours almost continuous operating, and finally had to sleep it off when