A COURAGEOUS nurse whose bravery in Ethiopia during the famine directly led to Band Aid and Live Aid has spoken of her memories of the terrible events exactly 40 years ago reports Andy Lines of the Mirror.

Claire Bertschinger, who is a patron of Harlow based St Clare Hospice was filmed by the BBC as she desperately tried to save the lives of tens of thousands of starving children.

The BBC’s Michael Buerk found Claire on a remote Ethiopian plain and his shocking reports on the famine sparked outrage across the world.

Now 40 years on Claire, 71, who is also a patron of Harlow’s Chocolate Run which helps homeless people, spoke movingly about how she had to decide which child lived and which died.

She wrote a book 20 years ago but she said quietly: “I’ve never read the book. I won’t ever read it.
“I lived it – why would I want to read about it?”

Claire was brought up in Back Lane, Lower Sheering, went to Fawbert & Barnard’s primary school in Sawbridgeworth and volunteered for St John Ambulance in Harlow.

Claire spoke of her memories of the famine.

At the time she worked for the Red Cross, even now she still volunteers for the same organisation at one of their shops.

And she still regularly sends money back to Ethiopia to a charity that helps poor children.
As she sits at her home she looks through her photos for the “first time in decades”.

She remembers some of the children’s names.
She remembers playing hide and seek with one of them.
But she can never forget those who died.

Claire is an extraordinary woman who found herself “playing God” choosing which child lived or died.

She told the Daily Mirror: “I’ve not looked at these photos for decades.

“I don’t really want to look them. They are too horrendous.
“They’re horrible pictures – horrible in as much as they are children who are starving hungry, skin dripping off their bones, no muscle, no fat.

“One day I had place for 60/70 children and there were 1000 children – they were all malnourished
“I walked upon and down the lines. We didn’t take the really bad ones as we knew they’d die in the next couple of days.
“I chose ones that had a spark of life in their eyes. But they were very very ill.”

She added sadly: “I changed a lot of people’s lives – the ones I saved.

“But I would say that more people died and that’s what I remember.
“The ones I had to turn away who I couldn’t save and the ones dead on the side of the road.”
Then suddenly pausing she said: “I have to stop now. I can’t look any more.”

Claire retired recently as Director of Nursing at London Tropical & Infectious Diseases Hospital
The pictures have been stored away for years.

As she looked at more she suddenly recalled something and said: “Look at their tufts of hair on their heads. The mums deliberately left them there.
“If they died the mums believed they would be pulled up by their hair to heaven.”

Looking at another she said: “That’s a little baby who died – they wrapped them in old flour sacks before they buried them. “

She smiled and recalled: “I remember playing hide and seek with this little boy around the feeding centre. His name was Hagos.”
Claire recalled how in 1984 she was forced to choose which children to treat.

She said: “At first I had suggested the local staff chose them, but they refused: “they’re other brothers, our sisters, our cousins. How can we?
“You must do it, Claire.
“We can’t.
“The pressure was unbearable.
“They must have thought I was playing God, but I certainly didn’t feel like a God.
“I felt guilty and ashamed that I could save so few and was sending them to certain death.
“I felt like someone condemning innocent people to the death camps.
“I’ve lived with that ever since.”

Claire is a devoted Buddhist – a member of the Soka Gakkai is a global community-based Buddhist organisation that promotes peace, culture and education centred on respect for the dignity of life.
She recalled how she got the job she said: “I’d never been to Africa before – it certainly was a birth by fire.
“I was the only British person there at the time.
“I had no experience in famine – all I was given a little green book.
“The work had to be done and you didn’t have time to reflect.
“I was working 7 days a week – 6am to 6pm.
“We only had candles for light.”

When the BBC arrived she didn’t realise what impact it would have – but she wouldn’t realise until months later.
“What made the difference in the end was the arrival of Michael Buerk,” she said.
“Until then most people in the outside world had no idea of the scale of what was happening in Ethiopia.

“When Michael Buerk arrived – we were surprised. There was only one plane once a week – a DC3.
“He came and started asking stupid questions … at the time I thought he was a stupid prat but I can look back and I think his reports got the right answers.”

Claire is also Patron of Somerset Red Cross and works in the Langport Red Cross shop.
“Until recently I volunteered every other Friday in the shop.
“I wanted to continue to give something back. To make a difference however small.
“The ICRC has a very unique role. They act as a silent witness in conflicts across the world.
“It is an incredible organisation. I was proud to work for it in Ethiopia in 1984 and I am proud to be associated with it still today.”

Summing at the end of the interview she said: “What’s sad when I look back it is – the amount of suffering that goes on in the world.
“It’s man made and it’s so unnecessary and we have to look to alternatives to war and famine because we have got plenty of food in the world it’s just not distributed evenly.

“I went back 20 years later – but I really didn’t want to go. I felt I would be vilified.
“I came back and felt very responsible for all those deaths. It was awful.

“But as the years went on I came to realise that I had tried to help as many as I could and there was nothing more I could have done.”