Layout and Care within the Hospital

The hospital was composed of temporary huts with 20 cots in each side, 20 boys and joined by a covered walkway and there was a pharmacy and at the other end there were the operating rooms, about three, and of course they were going 24 hours a day, 24, and we’d get those boys in and all you could do was... you know muddy khaki, bloody, make them comfortable and on each boy was a card saying the type of wound, had he had penicillin, had he had surgery and had he had morphine - there were about four things that they had so the minute when they were triaged then they knew what happened so we’d get them in the ward and either prepare them for surgery or, of course, look after them once they came back. And, of course, we’d have maybe, it’s hard to think of it now in these hospitals, 7 or 8 post-op and the sides and they had to have penicillin every three hours and penicillin had just been discovered of February that year, I believe Churchill had had one of the first doses so at first it was scarce so the doctors had to first say who, very very bad wounded boys would get it and then we got enough and everybody had it every three hours so that kept you busy because you would run out of needles or you’re too busy to do anything else, you’d wipe off the needle and give it to the next boy.